Would a Real Green Party Please Stand Up

The Environment is Too Serious a Matter to be Entrusted to the NZ Green Party

We at Contra Celsum believe that the cause of the environment is wretchedly served by the NZ Green Party. We suspect that the time has come for a truly genuine, serious, and responsible green political party to be formed in New Zealand. It is time to wrest the environmental brand and mantra away from those who are using and abusing environmental responsibility to foster a world-view and agenda which ends up being dangerous to both the environment and to humanity.

For whatever reason—and this remains an enigma—the NZ Green Party has never been required to be rational or consistent or coherent in its positions. It has been tolerated as whimsically loopy. In the long run, this has served us badly because the large majority of the population can never take their MP's seriously, whereas concern over the environment ought to be a serious and weighty business.

The most deeply held tacit conviction of the NZ Green Party appears to be that the state (law, coercion, taxes, regulations) is the original and ultimate power in the universe. By rules, laws taxes and regulations, the Greens believe, human nature and behaviour can be changed. Thus, Bradford and her colleagues believe that criminalising parents for corporal discipline of their children will result in a fundamental change to human nature, such that violence in society will reduce. To make New Zealand more environmentally responsible, Norman is advocating selective taxes. The Party constantly is calling for rules, regulations and bans of one kind or another—cannabis excepted, of course.

A second, deeply objectionable aspect to the NZ Green Party is its studied ignorance of, and myopic blindness toward, the real world. The Greens advocate a kind of economic autarky in which New Zealand needs to become self-sufficient in food, energy, and anything else. (We note that autarky as an economic policy has never been advocated, except in the case of those states whose control over human life is frightening, to say the least. Modern examples are Myanmar and North Korea. Historical examples are Soviet Russia and early twentieth century Turkey. All were, and are, abject failures. As an economic model, autarky is thoroughly discredited, and is advocated now only by those who are willfully blind or naively stupid.)

In the NZ Green Party's version of autarky, we are to dismantle the dairy industry (we export over 90 percent of the country's dairy produce) and instead use the land to grow those foods we currently import (wheat, rice). If you inquire how this is to be accomplished, refer back to the NZ Green Party's most deeply held belief in the omni-competence of the state to create out of nothing. “We” of course means that the government is to dismantle the dairy industry, and create wheat and rice substitution.

Since we need exports in order to pay for imports, presumably dismantling the dairy industry will mean that we can no longer afford to import steel, automobiles, machinery, airplanes, electricity turbines and so forth. But that's OK, because autarky means that we will just have to turn to and become economically self-sufficient in these things as well. We will just have to manufacture them for ourselves. Let's start ripping up those iron sands on the west coast. (If you are beginning to think that the position is becoming eerily reminiscent of Stalinist Five Year Plans you would be right. If you believe in the omni-competence of the State and you want to deny economic reality and create an alternative that has New Zealand withdraw from the global economy, the only possible way is to have a centrally planned and organised economy.)

If autarky is marked by one massive failure it is waste—an incredible waste of human and economic resources. Autarky implicitly denies the concept of competitive advantage. It asserts that all peoples and nations have equal distributions of resources, equal climatic conditions, equal topography, etc. Even to state the concept is to see it reduced to absurdity. Consequently, whenever autarky is practised, it leads to incredible costs, inefficiencies, and waste. Let us be clear: waste is always environmentally destructive. The NZ Green Party is the enemy of genuine environmental care and protection.

A third deeply objectionable NZ Green Party trait is its constant recourse to special pleading and resulting inconsistencies. Here is a classic. At its recent conference, co-leader Norman enunciated a fundamental principle of NZ Green Party equity and property rights. He was calling for a tax to be applied to water use by businesses. (This, of course, was yet another example of the NZ Green Party's belief that it can remake the world through the involuntary force of government.)

However, the fundamental principle enunciated by Norman was striking: “if you use a public resource to make a profit then the public should be paid rental for that use.” In this case the public resource was water. The public (aka, the state), according to the NZ Green Party, has ownership rights to all water, since water is a public resource. When the Living God sends rain down upon the farmer's carrots, from the time the drop leaves the cloud, the public owns it, and the farmer should pay a rent for the use of it. Spare us the humanist idolatry.

But, no, let's take Norman seriously. Or more to the point, we wish that he would take himself seriously. Is he really listening to himself, one wonders? If water is a public resource, then the wind and the sun must also be public resources—that is, owned by the public (state).

If Meridian Energy sets up an electricity windfarm, Norman's dictum requires that they must pay a special tax (rental) because they are making money out of a public resource. What! The NZ Green Party has been prattling on about wind power for decades, despite being told repeatedly that wind power is unreliable, costly, and inefficient. No matter. It is renewable, and non-polluting. Norman's dictum just blew electric windfarms off the planet. He is calling for their being hit with an extra tax, because they use a public resource. The public (aka, the state) will need to be paid special rent for the use of wind.

The same would apply equally to solar power. The sun, in Norman's Alice-in-the-Looking-Glass world, would be publicly owned. Any power generated by a business using solar energy would need to be specially taxed. There goes any hope of renewable energy sources making any contribution to New Zealand's energy needs. At the stroke of Norman's pen they are suddenly made more non-economic than they already are. Oil is looking much more attractive.

But what about hydro power? Same again. Norman's dictum would require a special surtax on the use of water for hydro power. It is using a public resource to make money.

Further, one cannot help being highly sceptical at this apparently convenient Norman distinction between a corporation using a public resource to make money and a private person using a public resource to provide goods and services to one-self. Norman was very particular to stress that this was an important distinction and that he was not advocating taxing water for private consumption. Why? Why the special pleading?

If I were to set up my own solar powered panels, would I not be using a public resource—something that is owned by the state? Why would I, as a private individual, not be charged a rent? Presumably, Norman would argue that as a member of the public I actually have personal and private ownership rights in the sun already. So, I should not be charged rent for what I already own. But why would a money making corporation not equally also enjoy such ownership rights?

But let's run with this a while. This would imply that as a member of the public of New Zealand I have personal and private ownership rights in everything in which the state claims an ownership right. I would be entitled to use these things for my own private benefit--without charge. See a Crown BMW going by (hopefully with a NZ Green Party politician inside)? Grab it and use it. You have an ownership right already.

Absurd? Yes, but no more than the loopy principle of the Norman dictum that if you use a public resource to make a profit, then the public should be paid a rental for the use of it, where “public resource” is sufficiently vague as to include the natural world: water, air, sun, wind, sea—and all the rest. Does Norman really believe that Man, the Public, the State is god? It looks suspiciously like it.

In summary, either the Norman dictum should be taken seriously or not. If serious, then it will price renewable energy off the market, so the NZ Green Party has just shot a big hole in its own foot. It is just one more example of NZ Green Party inconsistency and special pleading. Loud laughter.

But if it is not to be taken seriously, then the Party ends up being the butt of one more round of jokes and ridicule. More loud laughter.

New Zealand very much needs a green party with credibility, gravitas, and intellectual rigour, a party which is neither naïve nor utopian, a party which can lead meaningfully in public debate on reasonable and believable policies to protect against needless, wasteful environmental damage; a party which not only lives in the real world, but has the substance to deal effectively with it, rather than one which lives in Alice's Looking Glass.

New Zealand desperately needs a green party that with sufficient gravitas to carry the respect of everybody, even when not in agreement. New Zealand needs a green party that is not the footstool of the liberal utopian loony left wing. Would a real green party please stand up.