Pride Goes Before a Fall

The Forgotten Discipline of Market Forces

Carbon emissions trading schemes are the flavour of the month. Well, they have been up until the cold light of economic reality started to bite. It would be a wonderfully kind divine providence if the current economic correction were to have the side effect of shutting up New Zealand's planned carbon emissions trading scheme up in a cold dark room and throwing the key into Mount Doom.

Cap and trade systems have worked remarkably well, we are told, in some sectors. Fishing is one. Effectively, the government (using research data and advice from its scientific experts) sets a limit upon the tonnage that can be caught. The limit is set at a level to ensure the species sustainability. Effectively this is a supply control on the market. Then the state sells the right to catch up to that amount per year. It is called a quota. Effectively this is a tax on the industry.

The fishing companies are then free to buy and sell quota at a market set price--which ensures that the fishing industry is effectively freed from government control to compete and generate the efficiencies which always flow from competition, without destroying the fisheries.

Of course there have been a few minor hiccoughs along the way, such as allegations of falsifying catch records, stand over tactics against competitors to drive them out of business and take over their quota entitlements, and so forth--but this is a policing issue. It is not an intrinsic failure of the system itself.

The success of cap and trade in industries like fishing is one of the reasons why everyone got so excited about using a cap and trade system to control carbon dioxide emissions. They all forgot one minor point. Fish are a scarce resource. Every fish taken out of the ocean diminishes the resource, until replaced by natural generation. The fishing quota system is designed to limit the taking of the resource so that it will always have sufficient stock to reproduce and maintain itself. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, is not a scarce or diminishing resource. Every breathing animal, including all human beings, emit carbon dioxide. Virtually all human activity, including all economic activity, emits carbon dioxide. Therefore, the market price for carbon dioxide is always going to trend down towards nil. Anything above zero is an artificial price. The only way to avoid this paradox is to have less living beings on the planet. Fewer human beings would likely result in lower carbon emissions.

The "market" in carbon emissions will always tend to have an oversupply of carbon credits. The more humans engineer their commercial activities to reduce carbon emissions, the more credits are created. To compare back to the fishing quota analogy, it would be akin to a situation where the government kept issuing fishing quota, until it became virtually worthless. If the price of carbon credits is falling, it becomes relatively inexpensive for big carbon emitters elsewhere to buy up quota and belch out lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Europe has been really gung ho on introducing a carbon emissions trading scheme. Spiegel Online recently exposed the complete failure of the system to date. It shows up how carbon dioxide trading systems are doomed to abject failure.

Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals

By Anselm Waldermann

Despite Europe's boom in solar and wind energy, CO2 emissions haven't been reduced by even a single gram. Now, even the Green Party is taking a new look at the issue -- as shown in e-mails obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Germany's renewable energy companies are a tremendous success story. Roughly 15 percent of the country's electricity comes from solar, wind or biomass facilities, almost 250,000 jobs have been created and the net worth of the business is €35 billion per year.

But there's a catch: The climate hasn't in fact profited from these developments. As astonishing as it may sound, the new wind turbines and solar cells haven't prohibited the emission of even a single gram of CO2.

Under current EU law, German wind turbines aren't helping to reduce CO2 emissions. They simply allow Eastern European countries to pollute more.

Even more surprising, the European Union's own climate change policies, touted as the most progressive in the world, are to blame. The EU-wide emissions trading system determines the total amount of CO2 that can be emitted by power companies and industries. And this amount doesn't change -- no matter how many wind turbines are erected.

Experts have known about this situation for some time, but it still isn't widely known to the public. Even Germany's government officials mention it only under their breath. No one wants to discuss the political ramifications.

It's a sensitive subject: Germany is recognized worldwide as a leader in all things related to renewable energy. The environmental energy sector doesn't want this image to be tarnished. Under no circumstances does Berlin want the Renewable Energy Law (EEG) -- which mandates the prices at which energy companies have to buy green power -- to fall into disrepute.

At the same time, big energy companies have an interest in maintaining the status quo. As a result, no one is pushing for change. Everyone involved is remaining silent.

Not an Instrument against Climate Change

In truth, however, even the Green Party has recognized the problem, as evidenced by an e-mail exchange last year between party energy experts and obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE. One wrote the following message to a colleague: "Dear Daniel, sorry, but the EEG won't do anything for the climate anyway." Ever since the introduction of the emissions trading system, the Renewable Energy Law had become "an instrument of structural change, but not an instrument to combat climate change."

That means: wind turbines and solar energy plants are revolutionizing Germany's mix of power sources, creating jobs and making the country more independent from imports. But they aren't helping in the fight against climate change.

In the worst case scenario, sustainable energy plants might even have a detrimental effect on the climate. As more wind turbines go online, coal plants will be able to reduce their output. This in itself is desirable -- but the problem is that the total number of available CO2 emission certificates remains the same. In other words, there will suddenly be more certificates per kilowatt of coal energy. That means the price per ton of CO2 emitted will fall.

That is exactly what happened in recent trading. A certificate to emit a ton of CO2 cost almost nothing. As a result, there was very little incentive for big energy companies to invest in climate friendly technologies.

On the contrary. Germany was able to sell unused certificates across Europe -- to coal companies in countries like Poland or Slovakia, for example. Thanks to Germany's wind turbines, these companies were then able to emit more greenhouse gases than originally planned. Given the often lower efficiency of Eastern European power plants, this is anything but environmentally beneficial.

This phenomenon is especially apparent whenever the sustainable energy industry grows more quickly than anticipated -- as in recent years when growth in the renewable energy branch quickly rendered the EU Commission's CO2 plans obsolete.

Building Renovations Are Better than Windmills

Experts from the Green Party are taking the problem very seriously: "We are in a veritable crisis situation, and that means we must reconsider and alter things we once took for granted," writes one contributor, adding that it's important to re-examine "whether we have set the right priorities."

Another expert begins his e-mail with a general clarification: "Dear People, I'm not fundamentally against the EEG. I only emphasize this because Manfred has repeatedly and erroneously described me as an opponent of the EEG." But here comes the big "but": "When reduction of CO2 emissions is more cheaply achieved through insulating a building than using a wind turbine, that is where we should concentrate our support." When it comes to climate change, everything else is secondary to reducing CO2 emissions.

Indeed, when it comes to climage change, investments in wind and solar energy are not very efficient. Preventing one ton of CO2 emissions requires a relatively large amount of money. Other measures, especially building renovations, cost much less -- and have the same effect.

The e-mail exchange ends with a conciliatory "What do you think?" But it is quickly followed by a bitter PS: "Do the Greens think that this problem (of climate change) will solve itself if we just screw solar panels onto our rooftops?"

Environmental Groups Admit to the Problem

The German Renewable Energy Federation is clearly not thrilled about the debate. The lobbying group's official line is: "By implementing renewable energy, there will by a reduction in 2008 of 120 million tons of CO2." When pressed, however, representatives of the federation will admit that this only applies to Germany. But the reality is that the freely traded CO2 certificates can be sold and used abroad.

Likewise, one federation employee openly said that there is "a certain degree of inconsistency" between the EEG and emissions trading.

But does it really have to be like this? Is it really so impossible to reconcile both of these instruments for protecting the climate?

In theoretical terms, of course it's possible. To do so, however, currently existing laws designed to prevent CO2 emissions would have to be reconciled. In real terms, for example, that means that every time a new wind turbine is built, the state would be forced to take certificates off the market. It is only in this way that you can achieve real positive effects on the climate.

Politicians Buckle to Business

There were discussions about such a system under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who governed in a coalition with the Green Party. At the time, Minister of the Environment Jürgen Tritten wanted to exclude the amounts of energy covered by the EEG from the calculations used in the carbon-trading scheme. Instead, the industry-friendly regulations currently in effect were pushed through. Major energy corporations, which had claimed as many CO2 certificates as they possibly could, lobbied heavily.

So why has nothing changed? According to experts, one reason has to do with technical problems. In the course of an ongoing trading period, they claim, adjusting the volume of CO2 certificates is no easy task.

Still, an SPD insider provides yet another explanation: "Politicians just have to resign themselves to certain things." As he sees it, if the state went back to the companies and took away the certificates they had been allotted, the result would be an uproar. "What do you think the companies would say to us?" he asks. "As a politician, there are certain storms that you simply can't weather."

So, the unintended consequences of Emissions Trading Schemes--at least according the European experience--is that they end up increasing carbon dioxide emissions. Well, we can hear you say, that is easily solved. Governments should reduce the amount of carbon credits available as more and more "green" energy becomes available. But if you reduce the amount of credits, you remove the so-called incentive not to emit carbon dioxide. It becomes self-negating.

The biggest flaw and error in carbon trading mania is the assumption that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. It is not. It is as life giving and necessary as oxygen. Might as well impose a cap and trade system for oxygen. Yes, let's do that. If we are going to be asinine and stupid, might as well go the whole nine yards.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

One Fit to Be Our Judge

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to all men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.
Acts 17: 30—31

This text represents Paul's concluding remarks to the crowd gathered on Mars Hill at the Areopagus in Athens. He could not go any further because they cut him off at that point, not prepared to listen any longer. Jerusalem had clashed with Athens. The Greek crowd had taken great offence at Paul's declaration that they were going to face as their judge One whom God had raised from the dead.

The Greeks, of course, had a prevailing religion—held in common with a great deal of mankind today—that this world, particularly its physical and material aspects, imprisoned and limited men. Upon death, the soul of man was understood to be liberated to move to new dimensions where it would achieve a truer and higher state of being. Thus the idea that they, and all of mankind, would face a Judge who was a material and physical being was deeply offensive. It was as if a mature adult were to be eternally judged by a just born child. It was as if weakness were to judge strength. If filth were to judge purity.

To the Greek the sins in the flesh and the body were nonsense for the body and the material world were intrinsically inadequate; sins of human nature were an oxymoron—a contradiction in terms.

So they concluded that Paul was proclaiming monstrous, notorious rubbish, unable to be borne any longer. Of course, if Paul were alive today, and preaching in any public gathering in our cities he would be likewise rejected. For modern man (like the Greek) has chosen not speak of sin, but weakness. All our sins, even our crimes, are but peccadilloes due to insufficient care, or provision, or nurture of our being. This continuity through centuries tells us a great deal about Paul and his Gospel; it also tells us a great deal about man and his unbelieving evil heart.

As we approach the Easter season we again fix our attention upon the death and resurrection of our Lord. For Paul these events were first and foremost to do with God's judgement of mankind. With the coming of our Lord and His climactic passion and resurrection all human history changed. The tectonic plates of human existence altered forever. Human history could now be characterised as “before” and “after”. The Cross stands as the fulcrum point of time and history. As a result of the death and resurrection of our Lord, nothing would ever be the same again.

Paul's “take” on this that fateful day on Mars Hill was that prior to the Cross God was patiently indulgent towards mankind. He overlooked the idolatry and brute stupidity of men because they were living in ignorance. That had been an important constitutive part of human history prior to the Cross. The Gentiles were left alone, as it were. God, while yet providentially controlling all men and nations, rarely, if ever, bothered with them. The Gentiles were on remand, as it were, awaiting the constitution of God's court. His focus was upon His people, Israel. It was in Israel that He has chosen to establish His Name and His presence. And the role of Israel was to bring forth the Judge of all mankind.

But all this changed with the resurrection of our Lord. Now, every Gentile was called. Every Gentile was summoned to judgement. God had fixed a day to judge every man in righteousness. Both the judgement and the Judge had been revealed.

The Cross was (and is) the greatest revelation of judgement the world had ever seen. It was far more terrible and terrifying than the flood of Noah, the exile to Babylon, or the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70—devastating though these judgements were. These were but echoes of the original which was Golgotha. In the Cross, God's hatred of sin and His wrath against it was shown in a way never before or since seen. He would rather punish and execrate His own beloved Son, Whom He loved, and in Whom He delighted, than accept or tolerate the sin of His people. There was no escape. There was no mitigation. There was no indulgence. No tolerance. There was no “other way” for which Messiah pleaded in the Garden.

If there was to be an atonement and a mercy seat and a covering, if there was to be forgiveness, the sin of His elect still had to be punished and His wrath and vengeance against all that is wicked in their lives must needs be satisfied. If that satisfaction could only come through execrating and cursing His only begotten Son, then so be it. And so it was.

That event changed human history forever. Now all men had seen the holy hatred of the Living God against all their sin. It had been revealed to them as never before nor since. It was as if an accused murderer were sitting in court awaiting trial, while witnessing the trial and execution of his confederate before him, knowing the fate that awaited him. Therefore God no longer left the Gentiles unattended or not confronted. If Christ had been appointed by God as the only Name by which man could be saved, then any who deliberately continued in unbelief and rebellion against their Creator knew for sure what awaited them. The judgement to come had already been revealed. The terms and procedures of the court had been made evident. The Judge had been appointed. The day had been fixed.

The resurrection of our Lord established final and certain proof that He alone, although He had borne the full wrath of God against sin, was the holy and pure and accepted One. The Lord raised Him up—making Him the Man who would judge all men. He had borne and experienced God's hatred of sin and its punishment. He had borne it as one pure and without sin. He was therefore raised up again. He alone is fit to be our Judge—He who is both our peer in His humanity and yet peerless in His innocence and holiness. There will be no excuses before Him.

Every man every where, every people and every nation must now repent and turn to Him as their Saviour and thankfully accept His blood atonement for their sin, or they would face Him as their Judge. Before Him, there can be no excuse or mitigation.

The Roar of Chainsaws

An Apocalyptic Nightmare

Apparently there are caverns and bat caves beneath the civilised streets where lurk a feral breed of people. They are poisoned by a hatred of trees. They each have a chainsaw--which is the initiation requirement to be part of this community of primordial slime. Every now and then one of these hideous miscreants will start his murderous machine up, and the caverns will be rocked with the raucous sound of his instrument of death, while his comrades lick their lips and sway ghoulishly in the half-light.

There is excitement in the caves--not seen for years. Word has been received that the ignorant and cruel government is about to remove from local councils--those noble institutions which keep at bay the dark forces of a long banished past--the power to decree vast swathes of territory as "tree protection zones." Like orcs bred in the caverns of Isengard, the tree killers are poised to swarm up and out, ravaging the countryside with their axes and chainsaws, wreaking their savagery upon innocent trees.

"It's clearly a return to the Dark Ages," said Anita Oak, Tree Protection Officer for the Upper Hutt Council. "In a more primitive era white colonists came to this country and cut down native trees and bush everywhere. And why? Yes there is the shame of it. They wanted to make money. Money! It's going to happen again. Profit ahead of trees."

Rimu Moana, of the Forest and Bird Waitakere branch agreed. "It's a sad, sad day," she said. "Under the current regime--so enlightened, long may Helen live--local councils could just decree large areas as tree protection zones and people could not cut down trees in those areas. It has been wonderful. It works. Now it is going to be terrible. Councils will have to identify each single tree as worthy of protection. The costs will be prohibitive. It's just not going to work."

The North Shore City environmental policy and planning manager Raupo Reid said that huge numbers of trees will no longer have legal protection. "Imagine that," he said. "How could it have come to this? The human rights--err, excuse me, the arborial rights of trees are being trampled upon."

None of these watchmen on the walls of civilisation wished to talk about their darkest fears. When pressed they acknowledged that they had heard of the anti-tree, chainsaw mad, cavern dwellers. Some visibly shivered when we raised the issue. Others were more indignant. "Look," said Nobby Totara of the Action Valley Coalition and who had personally chained himself over fifty times to trees to try to protect them, "we know they are out . . . I mean, down there. It's worse in the cities because they can congregate underground and feed their feral instincts starting up their chainsaws and all. They are far worse than Boy Racers and gangs--let me tell you that! They are going to emerge like cockroaches and cut down whole valleys of lovely trees as soon as this law passes. Then the government will be sorry."

But Mr Totara is arguing that this will simply be a call to arms for all tree lovers everywhere. "We will fight those bastards in the forests, and on the beaches. We will never surrender. And should our land last for a thousand years, they will say, this--this--was their finest hour." We left him puffing contentedly on a cuban cigar.

Tree Council chairwoman, Silvio Birch said that the change in the law would mean a whole lot more work. Councils were going to be inundated with requests to protect individual trees. Environmental lawyer, Janette Cypress, who represented the Tree Council in court cases protecting trees, said that it was going to be prohibitively expensive for councils to list each individual significant tree.

But an entirely different picture was given by the General Manager of Christchurch City Council, John Maple. "Look, there's a bright side to all of this. More council work, more money, more committees, more field officers, more submissions, more lawyers. Submissions and hearings for every single tree in the city! It's great for local government. I have always said that bureaucracy was recession proof."

When it was pointed out to him that some trees might be cut down, he shrugged and said that it was important for everyone to keep an eye on the greater good, and a few trees dropped as collateral damage was a price well worth paying if it kept council staff and environmental lawyers in a job.

Slow Learners

The Liberal Ideologues Cannot Help Themselves

The Proverb says, "A hundred blows on the back of a fool makes no impression; but a word to the wise is sufficient."

We and many others have written on how welfare-rights-entitlement ideologies were at root substantially responsible for the banking crisis in the US (and, due to financial disintermediation and securitisation subsequently, a global problem.) The morally bankrupt idea that the poor had an entitlement right to own their own homes led to Congress led policies which forced banks to lower lending standards and grant mortgages to people who had little or no hope of servicing them.

This has resulted in a large number of mortgages being defaulted upon, which has brought great strain to US and international banks. So the US government, marshalling its ability to spend, has loaned billions and billions of dollars to banks to shore up their balance sheets, compensating them for all their mortgage assets which have gone sour. If banks don't have sufficient capital, they cannot continue to lend. Even creditworthy and sound lending opportunities then cannot find capital, leading to a rapid contraction in business in almost every place. So far, so good.

But now, we are told, the welfare-entitlement-rights folk in Congress and the Obama administration have decided to have another crack at forcing banks to engage and continue in bad lending. The basic rationale is the same as that which promulgated the crisis in the first place. It is the belief and assertion that people--especially poor people--are entitled to own a home. Therefore, Congress has decided it is going to tell banks how to do business, if they accepted Federal money. They must keep lending to insolvent, bankrupt, poor people who cannot service the loans which they should never have been given in the first place.

We have heard plenty about executive bonuses, salaries, fat-cat spending etc. etc. Congress has railed against such misuses of government money. So, according to the Herald Tribune, Congress has put rules in place to prohibit such excesses. But it has also began to instruct banks not to foreclose upon and evict people in default of their mortgage commitments.

U.S. financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must lower dividends, cancel employee training and morale-boosting exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens.

As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the administration of President Barack Obama and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds. Some experts say the conditions are necessary to prevent Wall Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, but others say the conditions go beyond protecting taxpayers and border on social engineering.

Thus, banks are now being forced, once again, to engage and maintain bad credit lending. The result: weak banks are being forced to continue bad lending practices which will have the effect of making them weaker still, leading to more and more bank defaults (or more bank bailouts)over time.

A growing chorus of industry experts is warning that asking weak banks to carry out the government's economic and social policies could increase the drain on the public purse. These experts say that the financial assistance, while helpful in the short run, could require weak banks to engage in lending practices that will lose them even more money, and that the government inevitably will become more heavily involved in dictating how banks do their business.

In other words, government policy is now forcing banks to increase their risks, not reduce them. Risky lending. We thought that Congress and the Obama administration believed that banks excessive risk taking was the cause of the problem. Now they are requiring federally assisted banks to become even more reckless. But, hold on, it's OK, because the poor are having their entitlement rights served. And that has been the cause of the problem all along.

It the fool will not learn, no matter how many adversities are visited upon his hapless head. Rights based ideologues and zealots are fools. They will continue to follow policies that bring devastation and destruction right through the community because they are blinded by their idolatry and ideology. Welcome to Athens!

But it is not all bad. The smart, stronger banks have woken up. They have decided to give the Federal money back.

Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to give the bailout money back. The list includes small banks like TCF Financial of Wayzata, Minnesota, and Iberiabank of Lafayette, Louisiana, as well as giants like Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank in San Francisco. They say they plan to return the money as quickly as possible, or as soon as regulators set up a process to accept the repayments.

Wells Fargo has been a very successful bank over a long time. Their decision is significant. These are the institutions which are fundamentally sound and are likely to go from strength to strength in the current environment. What is likely to happen is the bank sector in the US will be split into two: those banks which are sound and which have decided to have nothing to do with the Federal government's blood money; and those which have accepted it and are are becoming weaker by the day as the government forces them to engage in more and more risky commercial behaviour.

The policies of the Congress and Obama administration will probably be judged by history to have been the biggest single cause of the destruction of the banking system in the first decade of this century. But that's what fools do. An ironic development is likely to be that banks which accept federal bailouts will be branded as weak, near insolvent, and to be avoided like the plague. So much for a federal bailout: it will turn out to be a Judas kiss. We recall the sage words of Ronald Reagan: the most terrifying words in the English language are, "I am from the Federal Government and I'm here to help you."

We leave the closing word to one smart banker.

C.R. Cloutier, the president of MidSouth Bank of Lafayette, Louisiana, and a survivor of the savings and loan debacle, said that his institution accepted $20 million from the rescue fund because he and his board believed it was patriotic and would help them offer loans during a recession. But faced with what he says is an unwarranted stigma of participating in the program, as well as the new restrictions that are imposed on banks taking the money, he is now considering whether to return the money, as other institutions have sought to do.

"Two things you learn in the banking business," Cloutier said. "The first is concentration is bad. We now have 64 percent of deposits in eight institutions. The second rule is your first loss is your best loss. Get it over with. Don't pump water in a dead fish."

Indeed. Now there is a wise man for whom a mere word is sufficient.

Ugly Duckling or White Swan

The Glory of Nuclear Energy

There are plenty of people, particularly in New Zealand, who have a visceral fear and loathing of nuclear energy. It is always bad, bad, bad.

The Scriptures, however, tell us that nothing which God has created is intrinsically good or bad in itself. It is the uses to which it is put that make it so. The idea that something in the created world is intrinsically evil is nothing less than a modern manifestation of primitive animism.

We came across a piece recently which should interest anyone who is willing to be objective on the subject of nuclear energy. According to the ABC, there appear to be some truly exciting technological advances arriving on the scene.

Why Old Nuclear Power is Not New
Barry Brook

Previously in this forum I have expressed the view that nuclear power will likely play a key role in the world's future energy mix. My bottom line was this: the climate and energy crises need fixing with extreme urgency, and both require solutions which completely solve their underlying causes. Half measures at best merely help to delay the same eventual result as business-as-usual (and at worst encourage complacency) - saddling future generations with a climatically hostile planet with a scarcity of available energy.

The comments in response to my openness about the nuclear option were not unexpected. In short, five principle objections were mounted against the viability or desirability of nuclear power.

First, uranium supplies are small, such that if the world was wholly powered by nuclear reactors, there would be at most a few decades of energy to use before our resource was exhausted and the power plants would have to shut down. Second, nuclear accidents have happened in the past, and therefore this power-generation technology is inherently dangerous. Third, expansion of nuclear power would axiomatically risk the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Fourth, in taking the short-term nuclear energy option, we would be bequeathing future generations with the legacy of long-lived nuclear waste requiring thousands of years of management. Fifth, large amounts of energy (and possibly greenhouse gases) would be required to mine, mill and enrich uranium, and to construct and later decommission the nuclear power stations themselves.

Cost and embedded energy arguments used against nuclear must be left for another day, because to be addressed fairly, this also requires a critical examination of the costs and embedded energy requirements for the alternative sources (renewables and fossil fuels).

Now all five of the above points have some merit, although their relative importance compared to threat of climate change and the societal disruption caused by critical energy shortages is debatable. The chaos and bitter complaints which stemmed from the power shortages experienced during the current heatwave in southern Australia demonstrate how dependent we are on a secure, reliable energy supply. But to be honest, there is little point in even having a debate on how persuasive these five objections are, because none will be applicable to future nuclear energy generation.

Of the more than 440 commercial nuclear power stations operating worldwide today and supplying 16 per cent of the world's electricity, almost all are thermal spectrum reactors. These use ordinary water to both slow the neutrons which cause uranium atoms to split (fission) and to carry the heat generated in this controlled chain reaction to a steam turbine to generate electricity. Because of the gradual build-up of fission products (nuclear poisons) in fuel rods over time, we end up getting about 1 per cent of the useable energy out of the uranium, and throw the rest out as that problematic long-lived waste.

Modern reactors are incredibly safe, with physics-based 'passive' safety systems requiring no user-operated or mechanical control to shut down the reaction. Indeed, a certification assessment for the 'Generation III+' Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) put the risk of a core meltdown as severe as the one which occurred at Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979 at once every 29 million years. For reference, the TMI incident resulted in no deaths. Similarly, comparing the inherently unsafe Chernobyl reactor design to an ESBWR is a bit like comparing an army revolver to a water gun.

Did you get that? Apparently the risk of core meltdown is now itself been subject to meltdown.

Fast spectrum reactors, also known as 'Generation IV', are able to use 99.5 per cent of the energy in uranium. There is enough energy in already-mined uranium and stored plutonium from existing stockpiles to supply all the world's power needs for over a century before we even need to mine any more uranium. Once we do start mining again, there is enough energy in proven uranium deposits to supply the entire world for at least 50,000 years. Fast reactors can be used to burn all existing reserves of plutonium and the waste stream of the past and present generation of thermal reactors.

Did you get that? Present uranium stock piles will meet all the world's power needs for over one hundred years. As we have argued before in these pages, access to electric power is one of the essential technologies to enable people to lift themselves out of squalor, disease, and poverty. Supplying the whole world with electric power is now possible and feasible.

And, if proven uranium deposits are mined, there is enough to power the world for fifty millennia!

The safety features of Gen IV designs, due for instance to the metal alloy fuel used, is superior even to the ESBWR. The nuclear fuel used by fast reactors is fiendishly radioactive and contaminated with various heavy elements (which are all eventually burned up in the power generation process!), making it impossible to divert to a nuclear weapons programme without an expensive, heavily shielded off-site reprocessing facility which would be easily detected by inspectors.

Even better. The latest reactors could be deployed around the world without creating a situation of easy access to nuclear weapons capability.

Yet in reality the only nuclear waste material that will ever leave an Integrated Fast Reactor complex (a systems design for power stations which includes on-site reprocessing) are fission products, which decay to background levels of radiation with a few hundred years (not hundreds of millennia), and can be readily stored because they produce so little heat compared to 'conventional' nuclear waste.

For further details, I refer you to my review of the book Prescription for the Planet, which discusses the Integral Fast Reactor technology in-depth, as well as ways to transform our vehicle fleet to use zero-emissions metal-powered burners and how to convert our municipal solid waste to plasma.

So, the nuclear waste problem looks like it will be a thing of the past, as well.

Business-as-usual projections suggest that at current pace, we may have Gen IV fast spectrum reactors delivering commercial power by 2025 to 2030. Too late, you say! True enough, but these same sort of forward projections resulted in the International Energy Agency recently predicting that non-hydro renewables will go from meeting 1per cent, to 2 per cent, of global energy use. Either option therefore requires radically accelerated research, development and deployment, if it is to make a difference to climate change and energy supply. A project of Manhattan-style proportions (America's development of the atom bomb, three years after the first controlled chain reaction) or the audacity of the moon-shot vision (12 years from Sputnik to Neil Armstrong's famous small step), is required.

There is no doubt in my mind that we have the means to 'fix' the climate and energy crises, or at least avert the worst consequences, if we have full recognition of the scale and immediacy of the challenges now faced. New generation nuclear power is one possible path to success, and one that all nations should actively support - though certainly not to the exclusion of other zero-carbon energy options such as renewables and efficiencies. So let's be sure, when rationally considering energy planning, that we are not mired in old-school thinking about exciting new technologies.

The real driver for development of the Gen IV technologies is not the prevention of global warming. That is a fundamental misdirection. The real driver is to provide access to essential electric power to the entire human race, the majority of which remains in poverty and squalor.

Mid-Week Miscellany

They Are Drinking Our Beer Over There

First up this week is the appearance over the weekend of an article on John Key in the Wall Street Journal. Now the prestige and breadth of readership of the Journal is pretty much peerless so this is quite significant.

For those of our readers who have not yet seen the article, we reproduce it in full below.

There are a couple of things which stand out. Firstly, Key's candour in acknowledging the limitations of government. One of the most disgraceful things to become evident recently has been the way politicians, journos, and the chattering classes have all expressed outrage that the government is "not doing more." They mean by this: spending more money in a spectacular way.

There has been a chorus of calls to cancel tax cuts. Why? So the government can have more money to spend on the crisis. What has been on display in recent weeks has been the shameless devotion to the mantra "the government is our god". People have wanted their god to deliver them, to be doing something, to save us.

How refreshing and realistic it is to have the Prime Minister keeping the limitations of government firmly in his mind. In our view he needs to repeat this publicly and often.

Secondly, it is salutary to have the Prime Minister worrying about the burdens of debt.

When we were being pulled back from the brink of economic devastation by the Douglas reforms in the 1980's, New Zealand used to get positive international press regularly. It is possible that we will see that again as New Zealand works its way through the recession and comes out the other side. Certainly at the moment New Zealand is marching to be beat of a very different drummer than the rest of the developed world. We believe in time it will be evident that it was a much better drummer to boot.

You Can't Spend Your Way Out of the Crisis

New Zealand's prime minister wants to give his country a competitive advantage instead.

By MARY KISSEL

Wellington, New Zealand

These days, you have to travel far to find a national leader who is talking about market-based approaches to the global recession. All the way to the other side of the world.

"We don't tell New Zealanders we can stop the global recession, because we can't," says Prime Minister John Key, leaning forward in his armchair at his office in the Beehive, the executive wing of New Zealand's parliament. "What we do tell them is we can use this time to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with."

That idea -- growing a nation out of recession by improving productivity -- puts Mr. Key and his conservative National Party at odds with Washington, Tokyo and Canberra. Those capitals are rolling out billions of dollars in stimulus packages -- with taxpayers' money -- to try to prop up growth. That's "risky," Mr. Key says. "You've saddled future generations with an enormous amount of debt that then they have to repay," he explains. "There is actually a limit to what governments can do."

The 47-year-old Mr. Key, a pragmatist by nature, knows a thing or two about how the public sector works. The youngest of three children, he was raised in state-owned housing in Christchurch, on New Zealand's South Island, after the death of his father. His mother worked at blue-collar jobs to keep the family afloat. Mr. Key earned a bachelor's degree in commerce from the University of Canterbury, took a job the next day at a local accountancy firm, and married his high-school sweetheart. After seeing a TV advertisement about a foreign-exchange trader, he started canvassing banks for a job. That kicked off a career as a foreign-exchange trader, with postings in Singapore, London and Sydney -- most recently at Merrill Lynch. "Bank of America," he says, with not a little mirth, "it's probably soon to be owned by Barack Ob-ah-ma!" -- emphasis on the "ah" in Kiwi-speak. His press secretary rolls her eyes.

Mr. Key's coalition government, which includes parties to the right and left of the Nationals, has moved fast to implement a program of tax cuts, regulatory reform and government retooling. He won't label it supply-side economics and smiles when I ask if he's a Milton Friedman or Friedrich Hayek acolyte. "I'm not deeply ideologically driven," he says. "I believe in good center right politics."

Mr. Key is returning the country to a formula for prosperity that's worked in the past. As in Britain, the U.S. and Australia in the 1980s, New Zealand's government implemented a wide-ranging program of economic liberalization, including deep reductions in tariffs and subsidies, and privatization of state-run industries. The plan, nicknamed "Rogernomics" after then-Finance Minister (now Sir) Roger Douglas, was akin to Reaganomics, and the island nation grew smartly.

But while the U.S. and Australia broadly continued their economic liberalization programs under both right- and left-wing governments, New Zealand didn't -- until now. Over the past nine years, Helen Clark's left-wing Labour government rode the global economic expansion and used the revenue surge to expand government welfare programs, renationalize industries, and embrace causes like global warming. As a result, the economy stagnated while Australia took off.

"We have been on a slippery slope," Mr. Key says, pointing to the country's slide to the bottom half of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's per-capita GDP rankings. "So we need to lift those per-capita wages, and the only way to really do that is through productivity growth driving efficiency in the country." He talks at length about how to attract and retain talented workers. What does he think about populist arguments about the end of capitalism? "Nonsense!"

Mr. Key's program focuses first on personal income tax cuts, which -- given that the new top rate, as of April 1, will be 38% -- are still high, especially when compared to Hong Kong and Singapore. "We just think it's good tax policy to lower and flatten your tax curve," he says. "People will move in labor markets and they look at their after-tax incomes."

Cutting the corporate tax rate -- which is now 30% -- isn't as crucial just now as keeping liquidity flowing, Mr. Key argues. "A lot of [companies] won't pay tax if they don't make money," he reasons. "So they might be slightly less focused on corporate tax in the immediate future. Longer-term, they will be." Why? Corporate money is "mobile." "If you really are out of whack with the prevailing corporate tax rates, and there's been a global shift toward countries lowering their corporate tax rate, then you're not likely to attract capital, or you're likely to lose capital." Mr. Key and his coalition partner, the ACT Party -- Mr. Douglas's party -- want to eventually align personal, trust and company tax rates at 30%.

For now, the prime minister is focusing on chipping away entrenched regulations that drive away foreign capital -- a contrast to the U.S. and Australia, which are reregulating their markets in the wake of the financial crisis. "Good regulatory reform can be an important catalyst toward driving economic growth and coming out of the recession faster," Mr. Key says. His government is revising legislation meant to protect New Zealand's pristine environment from private-sector development but misused by greens to stymie all stripes of business plans.

Big government is also coming under the gun. Mr. Key launched a "line-by-line review" of every government department, and committed the government to cap new spending in its May budget. "If we want to fund new initiatives, we by definition have to stop [funding] some of the things we don't think were working. . . . We're just getting better value for money."

The Key government also is wary of climate change orthodoxy. "Half of all of our emissions come from agriculture," he says, meaning cows "burping and farting." "We don't have an answer to that. . . . So at the moment, we either become more expensive or we cut production. And neither of those options are terribly attractive." Mr. Key is reviewing the economic impact of the previous government's cap-and-trade plan. "New Zealand needs to balance its environmental responsibilities with its economic opportunities, because the risk is that if you don't do that -- and you want to lead the world -- then you might end up getting unintended consequences."

Much of Mr. Key's reform agenda hinges on his belief that he has to prepare his country to compete in the global economy. "The world, whether we like it or not, will become more and more borderless," he says. That means Wellington is planted firmly behind free trade. "The sooner Doha is completed," Mr. Key says, referring to stalled global trade talks, "the better from our point of view."

Mr. Key chuckles when I ask him about the "Buy American" provision tucked into the Obama administration's stimulus package. The previous government's "Buy New Zealand" campaign got a "lukewarm" reception, he recalls. "There are so many component parts manufactured in different parts of the world, you're chasing your tail the whole time about where something's actually made."

New Zealand last year inked a free-trade agreement with China, recently signed a deal with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and announced the start of negotiations with India and South Korea last month. Korea "obviously" wants an FTA with the U.S., he says.

Does New Zealand's model hold lessons for the Obama administration? Mr. Key says that might be "presumptive." But he does outline a few general lessons: "Your citizens are entitled to expect you to be realistic . . . to be specific about what it is you're going to do, what you can or can't do. And finally, I think, to be confident that you can get through it. Now there's plenty of doom and gloom merchants out there. But the single biggest risk is that everyone believes them and stops doing anything. I can't see how that helps us." What did he learn in his former trade? "It taught me not to panic."

Going forward, he worries about, among other things, the U.S. dollar's path. Like most other trading nations, the bulk of New Zealand's exports is denominated in dollars, and the country's private sector borrows heavily from offshore markets. Says Mr. Key: "For anyone trying to manage currency risk, and indeed often interest-rate risk, you know, it's not generally the absolute level, it's more the volatility that becomes the determining factor." A strong and stable dollar policy out of the Obama administration would be helpful.

But ultimately, Mr. Key says his biggest fear is rising inflation on the back of rising money supplies. "Economic theory will tell you that inflation is going to rise -- and that inflation will be exported around the world. . . . In the short term, I'm not criticizing U.S. policy: I think inflation is probably the thing that's going to be necessary to get them out of the current issue. [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke sort of signaled that. But longer term, inflation is cancerous to your economy."

So would Mr. Key, the onetime foreign-exchange trader, buy or sell the U.S. dollar? As we move toward the door, the press secretary steps in: That's one call that's off the record.
Ms. Kissel is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Asia.

Mainstream Media Are Beginning to Ask Questions

Just how cold has been the northern winter? An article in the Boston Globe tells us.

The United States has shivered through an unusually severe winter, with snow falling in such unlikely destinations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. On Dec. 25, every Canadian province woke up to a white Christmas, something that hadn't happened in 37 years. Earlier this year, Europe was gripped by such a killing cold wave that trains were shut down in the French Riviera and chimpanzees in the Rome Zoo had to be plied with hot tea. Last week, satellite data showed three of the Great Lakes - Erie, Superior, and Huron - almost completely frozen over. In Washington, D.C., what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which paralyzed the capital.

Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has acknowledged that due to a satellite sensor malfunction, it had been underestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles - an area the size of Spain. In a new study, University of Wisconsin researchers Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis conclude that global warming could be going into a decades-long remission. The current global cooling "is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Swanson told Discovery News. Yes, global cooling: 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade - global temperatures have not exceeded the record high measured in 1998, notwithstanding the carbon-dioxide that human beings continue to pump into the atmosphere.

None of this proves conclusively that a period of planetary cooling is irrevocably underway, or that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are not the main driver of global temperatures, or that concerns about a hotter world are overblown. Individual weather episodes, it always bears repeating, are not the same as broad climate trends.

But considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, shouldn't the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice? Isn't it possible that the most apocalyptic voices of global-warming alarmism might not be the only ones worth listening to?

We wonder how long it will be before similar questions find their way into the MSM in New Zealand.

The S-Files

It's What We Need More Of

Contra Celsum has decided to bestow an S-Award upon Jerry Rickman, Waikato Health Board Chairman.

Citation:

Jerry Rickman has announced his resignation as Chairman of the Waikato Health Board. He has cited potential conflicts of interest between his role as chairman and his consultancy work with Price Waterhouse Coopers in Hamilton.

The Board uses the services of the Auckland office of PWC.

Of note here is that Rickman had already disclosed his interests, both to the Minister of Health and to the Board. Both accepted there was no unmanageable conflict. According to a news report, he said he was resigning because he did not want to place the Government or the minister in a position for potential public embarrassment.

No doubt Rickman's firm, PWC, applied some pressure. It has very strict rules for its staff and consultants on issues of conflicts of interest.

We applaud the high standards of integrity on display here. Public service and corporate life would be vastly improved if such standards were routinely followed. If the standard expected was not just actual, but perceived conflicts, resignations would be flying around everywhere.

We also hope that this resignation might reflect a greater consciousness amongst the media and the public generally over issues of conflict of interest. The health sector has had several high profile cases of allegations of conflict of interest in the past year.

The current Prime Minister has eventually removed the appearance of any conflict over his personal investment portfolio by placing it in a "blind" trust. It took time, but he got there. His predecessor never did get there. The former government seemed to specialise in cronyism with all the attendant conflicts that follow.

Jerry Rickman has gone beyond what many would consider was required. But the example is important and the effects will be salutary. We trust that they will spread far beyond the Waikato Health Board.

S-Award, Class I: Jerry Rickman, former Chairman of the Waikato District Health Board, for actions in the course of public duty which have been Smart, Sound, and Salutary.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

The Wisdom of the World And Its Prospects

For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
I Corinthians 1: 19,20

In our humble opinion, the opening two chapters of the first letter to the Church at Corinth should be written on the forehead of every Christian in the West. This should be so because the “wise” of our age, taking their cue from the post-Christian Enlightenment, have succeeded for a time in reviving the intellectual traditions of the classical world. In these first two chapters of I Corinthians, Paul confronts the vanity and emptiness of those classical traditions—and so, indirectly, confronts the dominant spirit of our age.

If Jerusalem is to avoid the idolatry of our age, on the one hand, and increase its influence and power over it, on the other, it is essential that the truths of this portion of God's Word be deeply inscribed into our hearts and minds. Without it we will simply join with t the wise men, the scribes, and the debaters of this age—we will become like them and subject to them.


The intellectual traditions of the classical world were marked by a deeply rooted rationalism—by which we mean, that the ground of truth, its vindication, and its precepts were understood to be finally dependant upon the mind of man. Human reason was ultimate. It was Man who established the truth. Man was the measure of all things. Man's mind and reasoning gave meaning to the world. Autonomous human reason was sovereign over all things. It was on this common ground of the autonomy of human reason that all the religions and the philosophical schools of the ancient world stood as they debated and argued amongst themselves.

Collectively they represented what Paul calls the “wisdom of the wise, the cleverness of the clever,” and the debates of the debaters.

Paul declares that the Gospel can only proceed to go forward into our culture if it attacks and destroys the fundamental rationalism of our age. Why? Well the answer is obvious: God has declared that such wisdom is not wisdom at all: it must be torn down and destroyed. God has declared the wisdom of this age to be utter foolishness. The bottom line is that Man is not the measure of all things: Man does not give meaning to the world. God alone does. God establishes man, not the reverse.

In this vortex of who establishes whom there is no neutral or middle ground. Note that Paul does not proceed by arguing that in his confrontation with the wise of his age there was a lot they all had in common, and that there was much agreement between them. He was not merely seeking to correct things at the margin. Rather, the entire edifice of Unbelief, of the wisdom of his age, was rotten, awaiting its dissolution. God had declared it all to be utter foolishness. Every thought and intention of man's heart was evil. It had to go.

As long as an individual soul clings to the notion that he will determine and establish whether God is or not, by means of rationalistic tools and techniques, he remains in darkness and sin. His rationalism is his sin. It is the seat of his rebellion against the Living God. What the Unbelieving Mind confirms, verifies, establishes and ratifies, it need not accede to nor submit to. If Man proves, or establishes or confirms or rejects a god with his “wisdom”, it is the god who must bow to Man, not the reverse.

The neo-classical ideology of the West—the “wisdom” of the age—asserts the rational is the real, and what is real is rational. But this is actually a misdirection: what the debater of this age really means to say, if he were more accurate and a little less disingenuous, is “the rationalistic is the real, and the real is what is rationalistic”. This is a very different proposition, and one more tawdry and decrepit in the cool light of day.

Paul goes on to state that Jerusalem is not opposed to reason or wisdom, properly so-called. “We do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away.” (I Corinthians 2: 6) The faculty of reason and the quality of wisdom were created by God: but they only function properly when they are from the outset subject to Him.

Therefore, true faith rests not on men, nor on the wisdom of this age. It can only rest on the power of God and on His Spirit. When men are regenerated by God's Spirit, only then can they sit, clothed, and in their right mind. Only then are they able to receive and believe the proclamation of Christ crucified for their sins. Only then can they start to reason and think properly and truthfully. Only then can they become wise, but not according to the wisdom of this age. In that powerful regenerating work of God's Spirit the roots and tentacles of the wisdom of the wise of this age, and the cleverness of the clever of this age are ripped up and torn out of the human soul. Only then can the idolatry of rationalism be crushed.

So Paul concludes:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we speak, not in worlds taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men. But a natural man does not accept things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
I Corinthians 2: 12—14

The wisdom of the world is passing away. It re-emergence in the West in the post-Enlightenment world is a throwback, soon to pass. It is like the final death throes of a smitten dragon. Christ alone is Lord. The rulers of this age are fading.

The Changing Geo-Political Landscape

Crystal Ball, Anyone?

Foretelling--at least of the crystal ball variety--is a reckless business. No-one knows with certainty what the future holds--at least no human being. The best we creatures can do is make educated guesses--but guesses nonetheless.

The present economic crunch is applying the blow torch to global politics in that it is likely to exacerbate and turbocharge some longer term trends which have been percolating away for decades now. For the light relief of our readers, and their mild (possibly raucous) amusement, we thought we would throw out a few thoughts as to what the next few years may see eventuate.

The West has been in decline relative to the rest of the world for nearly thirty years now. The end of the Cold War meant that the binary division of the world into those for us and against us was relaxed; new configurations and alignments have arisen--most of which have involved other nations and regional groups growing in power and influence.

One evidence of this has been the rapid military build up in countries like Indonesia and China. As Huntingdon observed:

Increased military spending and force improvements were the order of the day; China was the pacesetter. Stimulated by both their increased economic wealth and the Chinese build up, other East Asian nations are modernising and expanding their military forces. Japan has continued to improve its highly sophisticated military capability. Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are all spending more on their military and purchasing planes, tanks, and ships from Russia, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other countries.
Samuel P. Huntingdon, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 89,90.

The world is no longer a Western lake. The economic crisis will likely speed this Western declension. The welfare policies favoured by rights-based western nations, requiring greater and greater government spending to meet entitlements, have been funded by increases in taxes, rising levels of national debt, and easy-credit-consumption led economic growth. Now the credit bubble has burst in the West (and it is predominantly a Western problem--this economic crisis.)

The upshot is that Europe, the UK, and the US cannot afford their entitlement programmes. But even less can they afford the reckless government spending to try to get their citizens ramping up their consumer spending and appetite for still more debt (which they argue is the way to get out of the current economic downturn.) The rise in national indebtedness (and therefore of the dead weight of taxation upon their economies) will weaken them still further over time.

We will likely see a significant quantum shift in economic power and influence away from Western nations to the emerging economies of Asia. The Western economic crisis will make this transfer more quick and palpable.

There are signs that this is happening now. The whole artificial construct of the European Union is under threat. It may not be able to withstand the strain put upon it by the pain of the current economic deleveraging and deflation. Right-based entitlement societies don't usually cope well with hardship. They just make their demands more loud and querulous.

The Herald Tribune recently carried a piece on the current economic crisis threatening the idea of "one Europe."

The leaders of the European Union gathered Sunday in Brussels for an emergency summit meeting designed to tamp down the centrifugal forces unleashed by the global economic crisis that threaten to spin the bloc - and its single currency - apart.

In a statement afterward, the leaders tried to reassure their publics, promising to hold to the single market, promote growth and reject protectionism.

A call from Hungary for a large bailout for newer, eastern members of the union was rejected by Germany, the richest EU nation, and received little support from other countries. . . .

Europe may now be "whole and free" after the collapse of communism. But the European Union is not a country, and the deep global contraction is stimulating nationalism, not consensus.

With uncertain leadership and few powerful collective institutions, the union is struggling with the strains this economic crisis has inevitably produced among 27 different countries with different economic histories. The traditional concept of "solidarity," of one for all, is being undermined by protectionist pressures from political leaders with national constituencies and agendas. . . .

"The European Union will now have to prove whether it is just a fair-weather union or has a real joint political destiny," said Stefan Kornelius, the foreign news editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany. "The whole project of a joint currency is being tested for the first time. We always said you can't really have a currency union without a political union, and we don't have one. There is no joint fiscal policy, no joint tax policy, no joint policy on which industries to subsidize or not. And none of the leaders is strong enough to pull the others out of the mud." . . .

The construct of a united Europe has always been artificial; it was likely never to endure. (Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: The Dirty War for Europe's Money. London: Faber and Faber, 1995. While Connolly was writing over ten years ago, this volume is showing up to be prescient in the light of the present internal struggles within the EC.) The present pressures are merely bringing the fault lines and the fissures into sharper focus.

Secondly, we have recently seen Gordon Brown grandiosely calling upon President Obama and the United States to join with Britain and march forward to save the world. Obama for his part recently called upon Brown to join forces to help deliver an international climate change treaty--due to be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of this year.

Climate change lunacy has generally been ardently propagated in the West. Third world and Asian countries have been happy to go along--provided everybody agree that it is a Western problem and the West must pay. It is the only kind of deal they are interested in. Obama and Brown will have to agree to cap and tax their respective nations into poverty if they are to get a "genuine" international agreement on climate change. We expect that those two will be supine on the issue (while trying to sell it to their own electorates by rhetorical teleprompter flourishes such as "leading the world" and "setting the path forward" and "change we can believe in" etc.)

We expect that the East will negotiate harder than ever in Copenhagen this year for the West to bear the brunt, if not all the cost for so-called global warming. "You caused the problem, you fix it" will be the script. The dependence of Western upon Eastern and Middle Eastern capital to fund their ever burgeoning deficits will lead to capitulation--or at least far less Western stridence. Cap and tax regimes will lead to one of the greatest global wealth transfers we have seen in recent history. And so it gets worse.

Shades of things to come were evident in Hillary Clinton's recent trip to China. Gone was the vexatious hectoring the Chinese over human rights (the Chinese have never bought into western rights-based ideologies). Hillary put her harpish persona in the closet and brought out the sweet, reasonable face. She did not mention human rights. Instead sShe encouraged the Chinese to keep buying up American debt (that is, encouraged them to keep lending money to the US). There we have it in a nutshell. You don't bully people or nations upon whom you depend for economic survival.

Obama will soon find that negotiating international climate treaties with other nations, whilst you are sit on a mountain of national debt which is exploding volcanically under your reckless ideological spending binge, means that you are forced to speak very loudly while you wave nothing more than a limp feather. He will need his teleprompter more than ever. But he will end up being humiliated, along with the nation he leads.

For our part, we are glad that New Zealand is increasingly forging its economic future in Asia and doing do by a growing raft of free trade agreements. We are also glad that whilst our debt is worrying and we certainly have more de-leveraging to go through, we will likely end up less scathed than most.

If only we could get rid of our own rights based entitlement ideologies. In the long run they will kill us just as surely as they are ravaging the US, Europe, and the UK at present.

Michael "Scorched Earth" Cullen

How to Weaken a Nation

We found ourselves laughing derisively the other day when it was rumoured that Central North Island tribe Tuwharetoa were on the verge of hiring Michael Cullen, former Finance Minister of New Zealand, as their chief negotiator with the Crown over indigenous compensation and Treaty claims. We wondered if the iwi was mad or just plain dumb.

Dr Cullen has to have earned the sobriquet of being the worst negotiator in the world--that is, if you want to avoid deals and settlements that end up costing you billions of dollars. We would rather have Forrest Gump as our lead negotiator than Dr Michael Cullen.

Let's review two disastrous deals that bear Cullen's watermark arrogance.

Firstly, the Crown's purchase of a controlling interest in Air New Zealand. It bears all the hallmarks of Cullenesque skills. It began with an obduracy against any potential owner of Air New Zealand that did not have Qantas in its name. At the time, Cullen was fixated on Qantas owning Air New Zealand because he thought it was inevitable that the two countries would grow closer together economically, and that he could be persuaded to support globalisation and free trade and internationalisation of commerce as long as it did not extend further than the Tasman Sea. Cullen was clearly in a 1970's time warp. Time had passed him by, but Cullen still had an old socialist cloth cap hanging in his closet. Apparently there was no dust on it; it was used regularly in secret rituals and always on the first of May.

He pushed and pulled to stymie a substantial investment by Singapore Airlines in Air New Zealand (which was desperate for fresh capital at the time, after its disastrous foray into (yes, you guessed it) Australia with its much vaunted purchase of Ansett--the sick man of Australian aviation. Ansett had collapsed and Air New Zealand was in a parlous condition.) Cullen wanted Qantas to invest. Qantas bosses were too smart and commercial.

So Singapore Airlines got unceremoniously jilted--which they (and Singapore) will not forget for a long time--so Cullen had to end up putting taxpayer's money at risk, forced to purchase a controlling interest in Air New Zealand. The taxpayers' investment is in the red. Cullen is responsible for a substantial loss to all of us--and it is highly questionable whether the investment will ever now generate a return which matches the cost of capital. Airlines remain one of the highest risk businesses on the planet, and Air New Zealand is a small bit player operating from one of the smallest most far-flung countries in the world.

The second example of Cullen's brilliance is his purchase of Kiwi Rail. He deliberately sidelined his own Treasury officials (he knew they would not approve or endorse his actions) and engaged in direct negotiations with Toll Holdings. Cullen the negotiator, the big commercial kahuna, cutting and thrusting at the front end of commerce, swinging the big deals. He ended up paying an exorbitant price for an asset which Toll regarded as an albatross around its neck. Now, the projected costs for the business have ballooned out to over $3bn.

The Australians could not believe their luck. They called it the "Sale of the Century." They could not believe that Cullen could be so stupid, commercially naive, and ignorant of the true costs of running a capital intensive, moribund business, relying on outmoded technology. But for Cullen--being a socialist--the cost of taxpayers capital was zero. He signed the deal for over $500m purchase cost because to him, $500 million was--literally--nothing! It was taxpayer's money and the cost of that capital was zero. Thus passes the folly and ignorance of a seventies cloth-cap socialist. Now we all have the pay the costs for such madness.

We could go on to mention Cullen's illegal interference in stopping the sale of part of Auckland International Airport to a passive Canadian pension fund investor. Well, what did you expect. Canada is way beyond the limits of the Tasman Sea. Then there is the financial scandal of the ACC. The Labour government, believing in the intrinsic superiority of a state run and owned insurance monopoly, blithely increased its coverage and services (because the cost of capital is zero, after all) and has left us with a $3 billion unfunded shortfall.

As David Farrar says, the graph is eloquent.



Cullen knew this--or at least he knew there was a significant unfunded liability to the Crown accounts--but chose, illegally, to cover it over prior to the election. A man full of arrogant guile and deception.

We will not mourn Cullen's passing from political life. He appears to have been a dishonest, deceitful, small-minded man, yet one who saw himself as a legend in his own time. "I have spent it all!" was his arrogant boast. But, worse, he has spent way beyond what the government had. Long years of the yoke of public debt have been left to us. He has done great damage to the country that will take years, if not decades to repair.

We hope Tuwharetoa have their eyes wide open.

It's Ethics, Stupid

He Has Told You, O Man, What is Good

We have been treated to an expose of what ethics have come to mean in our modern humanistic world. Shaun Holt, billed as a "doctor, researcher, and author" by the NZ Herald, has written a startling piece about how "ethics" operate in his particular corner.

Holt, to his credit, is railing against the inanity and stupidity with which he, and many others, are being confronted as they try to engage in scientific and medical research. He at least is one who will not go quietly into the night. Here is what he wrote:

Medical research is hugely important to our well-being and many commentators and politicians have stated that scientific and medical research is crucial for New Zealand's economic development.

Despite this, a study from Auckland University showed no clear increase in the number of clinical trials occurring in New Zealand in recent years.

Funding may be contributing to this lack of growth, but a major factor is the system of ethical approval of medical research. Ethics committees were introduced in the 1970s so a further set of eyes could make sure that medical research studies did not cause unnecessary harm or distress to research patients and participants.

This was a sensible step forward after the horrific Nazi medical atrocities in World War II and other medical research scandals in the US and Britain. These committees originally consisted of a brief review by some senior doctors and then, in another sensible step forward, a non-medical layperson was invited on to the committees to make sure that the doctors were not simply rubber-stamping their colleagues' research.

Since then the process has grown into a hugely complicated bureaucracy, which has lost touch with its original aims.

As an experienced medical researcher and an ex-member of an ethics committee, I am likely to know about the ethical requirements of medical research. Last year I submitted an application for a simple study to see if honey could help treat a common skin infection in children that is otherwise very difficult to treat. Only 15 children were required for the study, and all the caregivers had to do was to apply the honey, cover with a dressing and see if it seemed to help.

In order to apply to the ethics committee, I had to consult a Maori health provider to make sure there were no cultural issues if any Maori children took part and see a justice of the peace to sign a statutory declaration.

The application itself needed around 9000 words to complete and over 350 pages had to be submitted. For a study which could not be any simpler and had almost no chance of causing any harm, the application process took longer than doing the study would have.

The study was rejected by the committee and around 40 points were raised, most of which were either wrong or not relevant to the ethics of the study. For example, I was told to consult at least two more Maori health providers and to have systems in place for interpreters, even though the study was to be undertaken by a few GPs who would ask their own patients with this condition if they wanted to take part.

This example demonstrates how the ethics review system is extremely onerous for researchers and not capable of quickly approving simple ethical studies. Rather than the international standard of five committee members of whom one is a lay person, New Zealand requirements are for 12 members of whom at least half are lay people, and a lay person chairs the committee.

Medical researchers are hugely frustrated by the quality of the ethical reviews of their proposals, the work required for an application and the time taken for the responses and approvals. One of our leading orthopaedic surgeons has said the greatest impediment to medical research here is the growth of the ethics committee process.

Since then the process has grown further. The solution is simple. The Minister of Health can approve private fee-paying ethics committees, which can operate according to the international guidelines. There are people ready to run these committees and a one-week simple process, as opposed to the current 10- to 20-week nightmare, would also attract research to this country.

The global clinical trials industry is worth over US$60 billion and is growing rapidly, yet we undertake only around US$10 million here.

Also, clinical trials give participants free access to the latest medications and reduce the burden on the health system.

The New Zealand medical research ethics review system wastes researchers' time and energy and stops good research that can be of huge benefit to our health and economy. This surely is unethical.

How has such a shameful and destructive situation come to pass? Clearly, one could point to the bureaucratic mind. The ethical review system of medical and scientific research clearly shows all the hallmarks of a state organ set up to administer government rules and regulations, and ensure compliance with the prevailing politically important issues of the day--such as consultation with tangata whenua over everything as to whether one is allowed to live, move, and have one's being.

But the malaise is deeper than that. The City of Athens has been built upon a foundation which is a-ethical. There is no right or wrong in any final or absolute sense in that City. There is only what man declares to be good or bad. The declaration will vary, depending upon the prejudices and preferences which have achieved wide currency in any generation. In Athens, ethics never rises beyond the standard of that which is currently acceptable to the public. Ethics is thus always a mere political construct.

What Dr Holt rails against is the norm. One is a bit surprised that he is so provoked by it. How else would one expect secular humanism to operate? After all, secular humanism, the dominant religion of our day, asserts that the Living God does not exist, that all deities are figments of human imagination, and that ethical principles are expressions of human preferences, particular conditioning, and societal prejudices--and nothing more. While Kant may speak of categorical moral imperatives (for Kant it was the "golden rule") his claim rises no higher than the particular prejudices and convictions of one Immanuel Kant. There can be no agreement upon any permanent, universal ethical principles per se. Not in Athens. In the world view of secular humanism, or rationalism per se, a rationalistic absolute is an oxymoron.

Dr Holt's proposed solution of private-sector ethical committees to speed up the vetting and approval process for scientific research projects sadly misses the real problem. The real issue is what are the particular ethics to be brought to bear upon any particular project? Modern Athens has only one answer to that question at the end of the day: the ethics to be applied are those which are politically acceptable. Ethics becomes that which is politically correct.

Political correctness in the world-view of Unbelief refers to that which does not discriminate, but ensures that every group's demand rights are considered, consulted, and met to the fullest extent possible. The loudest demander gets the most consideration. Since there are no ethical absolutes to begin with, ethics degenerates into a matter of process--a matter of a process of consulting with as many people (views, opinions, beliefs) as possible.

Ethics in the modern world is no more than a process of balancing competing demand rights, in such a way that the prevailing prejudices of the age are not upset. Ethics devolves and degenerates into negotiation, consultation, listening, appeasing, and balancing. Ethics is politics in action--no more, no less.

This is not an aberration. The politicisation of ethics is an inevitable outcome of Unbelief, where man sets himself up as god. What is right and what is wrong can be no more than that which is politically correct. See the demons you have unleashed, O Secular Man. You are doomed to live under them as long as you persist in bowing down to yourself.

Tax and Spend

Why Some Things Will Never Change

We are seeing the decline and fall of the American empire taking place before our eyes. Well, actually, it has been pretty evident for some time. For over two hundred years the United States has been infected with a malaise that finally appears to be developing into a terminal condition.

The United States has haboured in its bosom the belief in its own Manifest Destiny to lead the world as the most powerful nation upon the earth. Granted, it was a new kind of Manifest Destiny--the spawn of Enlightenment humanism--which believed that every human being on earth was entitled by right to enjoy the privileges of living under a social and political system that reproduced the accomplishments of the United States. The role and responsibility which fell to the United States was to showcase utopia, provide a beacon of hope to oppressed peoples, lead by example, make the world safe for democracy, and cajole, encourage, push and shove the rest of humanity towards the US version of heaven upon earth.

Now of course it would be an overstatement to suggest that this hubris was universally believed--there have been many in the history of that nation who have argued strenuously and trenchantly against such folly and idolatry. But they have always been out voted at the end of the day. The mantra "USA, USA USA!" has always pulled more votes than the contrary.

The burden of saving the world, coupled with the fatal internal contradictions of humanistic rights-based politics, has meant that for over two centuries the people of the United States have increasingly looked to their government as their god. Manifest destiny was always too big for individuals and the private sector to accomplish. The duty to save the world had to be invested in the government--man in his collective form--which would appropriate and pool all the resources of the nation and deploy them to showcase the US as a secular humanist utopia, and extend its salvific influence around the globe.

And that has meant an insatiable appetite for more and more money to fund an ever expanding government. The land of the free increasingly has become the land of the indebted. Successive governments have run up greater and greater debts, which, in the end, the people have to pay. It's a costly business saving the world. For in order to save the world, one has to keep America in a "saved" condition--and that means government spending.

What we have seen in recent months is a massive increase in government spending in that country, spending way above and beyond the income of the federal and state governments (which by any reasonable measure must be regarded as bankrupt). The graphic illustrates the quantum and scale of Obama's mania.



(Hat Tip ScrubOne. Please note that this projected deficit is the "best case" scenario--that is, it is fantasy land. It does not take into account the lower economic growth to result from higher corporate taxes. It assumes that growth in the US economy will "grow by a solid 3.2 percent in 2010. That growth would be followed by even stronger increases of 4 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012 and 4.2 percent in 2013". Good luck with that. As some political wags noted, it looks like one of the most popular woman, Rosy Scenario, is back in town. Also, the deficit factors in only an "initial deposit" on some of the largest Obama spending programmes: that is, the deficit does not reflect the full cost of the maniacal "bold vision.")

There are only three known ways to fund this enormous spending splurge. The government can increase taxes--and Obama has already announced a one trillion dollar increase in taxes--most of which are aimed at the higher socio-economic group and at businesses. Secondly, it can borrow--and the Treasury is now running a debt issuance programme of historic proportions. And, thirdly, it can simply print money--which the Federal Reserve is increasingly being driven towards. "Helicopter" Ben looks like living up to his sobriquet.

The end result will be a significant drag on the productive sector of the nation as state enterprise squeezes out private enterprise, replacing it with the inevitable inefficiencies, waste, and featherbedding of state-run, artificially-propped-up enterprise. Increased business taxes will also impede and drag upon the private commercial sector, weakening it still further in the face of global competition. And the United States will increasingly become indebted to other nations. It alone does not have the financial resources any longer to buy up its own government issued debt. The monster's appetite can no longer be satiated by its own citizens. It needs the world.

But the borrower becomes the lender's slave. So, the enslavement of the people of the United States to their government is morphing into enslavement to other nations. American Manifest Destiny lies shattered. It is just that few Americans have noticed yet.

The secular humanists do not have many options. Because they believe in the omni-competence of governments to deliver their materialistic rights-based utopia, they insist on the government spending more and more and more, and growing and growing and growing. Whatever the problem, government must do something to fix it. Everybody has a right of every kind which the government must deliver upon. The bigger the problem, the more it must do. Higher taxes inevitably come into play.

Throw in a so-called crisis, such as the present economic difficulties, and the powers and influence, the spending and the taxes, the indebtedness and folly of government grows exponentially and rapidly. Neophyte Obama has become the biggest government spender in all human history. He calls it a bold vision. We call it a death wish.

It is possible that Obama will turn out to be the final nail in the coffin--or if not, that he will come to be understood as having hammered more than a good few. The days of Western dominance and hegemony are passing. The UK is close to being a basket case; Europe is progressively weighed down with the dead weight of Brussels imposition of human rights fanaticism; the United States is now rapidly following in their train.

All that the United States has left is unrivalled military power. But it is increasingly becoming obvious that being the global military policeman is a weight which cannot be sustained. Regardless of its aspirations, the US simply cannot afford its military any longer--it will need to downsize, shrink, and pull back.

So passes the folly and stupidity of trying to build a nation on the idolatrous sand of human rights. In the end it all devolves into taxing and spending. How tawdry and crass. The vaunting apogee of modern secular rationalist man has morphed into the shameful quivering paroxysm of the debt addict.

Ironic Indeed

The Largest Protest in US History

If this post is full of typos, it's only because we our keyboard skills are being discombobulated by laughter. It was billed as "the largest mass civil disobedience for climate in U.S. history". The whole idea was not to condemn or oppose the Obama administration's Canute-like intent to reduce carbon emissions. No, Obama is viewed as "one of us." Rather, the tactic was to demonstrate mass grass roots support for what the President is proposing to do. It was heavily promoted--this chic political event. The luminaries were all behind it.

The target was the

Capitol Power Plant, a 99-year-old coal-burning plant, situated blocks from Capitol Hill, which heats and cools the U.S. Capitol. (It hasn't generated electricity since 1952.) Organizers say the plant "symbolizes the stranglehold coal has over our government and future" and the nation’s wrong-headed climate policy. They also say:

"As with Ghandi’s walk for independence and Martin Luther King’s march for equal rights, history now calls on people of conscience to peacefully take a principled stand on global warming."

So we have Ghandi and Martin Luther King evoked. But wait--former assistant to King Ahab, Al Gore also threw his weight behind it. He had been musing while shaving with his carbon-friendly cutthroat razor, that he could not understand "why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." Well, when he-who-is-a-prophet says that, it is a clear challenge, and his faithful sought to deliver. They would organise the "the largest mass civil disobedience rally for the climate in U.S. history". That near-moribund symbolic coal station and all its kin and descendants would be unable to withstand the political maelstrom about descend from the climatically changed heavens.

But wait--there's more. They had the blessing of more patron saints. No lesser luminaries than Susan Sarandon and James Hansen were going to be there, whipping up the faithful to a frenzy of civil disobedience. Ninety different environmental groups endorsed the protest. Greenpeace--ah what would a global warming protest be without Greenpeace--said the protest was timely. The US needs, apparently, to take large steps in combating carbon in the atmosphere to build political momentum for the big UN Climate change conference in Copenhagen this December. It's urgent, folks. There is nothing like a bit of urgency to stir up the troops.

And the outcome? You have guessed it. Sadly, the globally warmed, carbon inundated climate refused to co-operated. Instead a huge blizzard dumped snow everywhere. Too cold for the protesters. It is estimated that only about 500 turned up. But local officials were deeply concerned that the coal fired power station--the object of the protesters' political ire--would be structurally compromised by the collective shivering of the protesters as they chained themselves to the gates of the plant.

But the danger passed. The protesters lost their ardour when they heard that Queen Jezebel could not make it. Nancy Pelosi had agreed to come and whip up the troops. But, alas, she did not appear. Why? Loss of zeal, you wonder. No, nothing so exotic.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com.

Brianna Cayo-Cotter, the spokesman for the Energy Action Coalition that held the rally, told a group of reporters that she had been in contact with Pelosi and that her flight had been delayed because of inclement weather.

A blizzard Sunday night and early Monday morning blanketed the nation’s capital with snow, causing events to be cancelled and delayed across the city.

Sso Jezebel could not get into DC because it was too cold. Look, guys. Can't you get this right. Clearly Baal or Gaia, or whoever else you worship, is mad at you. Or maybe he/she/it was taking a "comfort stop" at the time. Or maybe they had been lulled to sleep by soporific carbon vapours. It's time to worship a bit harder, get a bit more frenzied, maybe something dramatic like dancing around in a circle, gashing yourself with sharp stones and razored flails. Your political credibility is now cryogenically frozen. At least your gods could have co-operated with sufficiently warm temperatures to enable you to protest against the warming of the globe. But no.

Our advice. Don't try another stunt like this until you are sure your gods are awake, are properly appeased, and paying attention. If you don't you may end up facing the wrath of those descended from Elijah.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

And Where Were You . . . ?

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”
Job 1: 20—21

Last year a number of students and a teacher from Elim Christian School were drowned in a tragedy on the Mangatepopo River. In the aftermath of mourning and burials a number of commentators saw fit to comment on the way the school community and the parents were dealing with the tragedy. It was different from the norm.

Job, in our text, had likewise just endured a terrible tragedy which had both taken the lives of all his children and destroyed virtually all he owned. Like the grieving parents at Elim School, his life had changed, radically and drastically. But, as with those parents and that school, Job's reaction was very different from the norm. Why?

In the first place, Job believed that what had happened to him was not due to extreme weather or to marauding bandits—they were merely second causes. The tragedy that had befallen him was due to God.
It was the Lord that had given to him in the first place, and it was the Lord that had taken away. Notice the active verbs. Thus, his affliction was the outcome of personal motives—in the sense that it had come about because of the deliberate plan, will, intent, and work of God Himself towards Job.

Job's understanding of God is not like many in our day. Many now want to blur the distinction between the Creator and the creature by putting human, creaturely limitations upon God. They urge us to believe that things can happen, terrible things, over which God has no control. They mistakenly imagine that by making God more “human” they can help themselves and others draw closer to God. But God is not honoured by the lies and deceits of men.

Job knows and professes the truth: he knows that there is not one hair which could fall from his head apart from the will and command of God. Therefore, when calamity struck, he knew that it was the will and work of God. Since God had given him children in the first place, it was God who had taken them away when they tragically died.

Secondly, Job holds to a “minimalist rights” position before God. Naked he came into the world; naked he shall leave it. He has nothing that he did not receive in the first place. He has no position or rights to argue before God that entitle him to be treated in a certain way or be given certain things. True, God has promised to care for His people, to provide for them. This is something to which He has bound Himself, not something that we could demand.

But, at the same time, for His own purpose and reasons, such promises can be suspended or removed—as Job has just experienced. The noble and faithful response of Job to this is not to stand on rights but to acknowledge that all he had was a gift in the first place, to which he had no intrinsic right or title. Naked he came forth; naked he would leave.

Thirdly, Job worshiped God: he bowed his knee.

That is the spiritual context of Job's sufferings. All else that follows occurs in that context. But what follows in the rest of the book is Job's struggle to come to terms with God. He desperately wants to come before God and argue his case. He wants to argue his case on the basis of God's faithfulness, promises, goodness, and greatness. He wants God to give account to him and explain why this has happened. What is the meaning and place and significance and intent and purpose of his suffering? But God is silent.

We learn from this that the Christian is not like the unfeeling stoic, who steels his heart so as to be removed from hurt. Rather, Job shows that he was deeply hurt and profoundly affected by what had happened to him. But his case was with God, not with man—it was God's face that he sought. In so doing, he showed his love for God and trust in God. “Though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him,” was his cry. His suffering was in the context of a deep faith in God and Who He is.

In the end God came to him (and so to all who believe). God does not answer Job's questions and his interrogatory. He, rather, changes the terms of the exchange. He changes the terms by reinforcing the distinction between the greatness of the Creator, and the consequent insignificance of Job. He simply asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” It is a question designed to put the hand on the mouth. It is one of the most humbling questions imaginable. In effect, He takes Job back to his original response in our text, and extends, deepens, and reinforces it.

Job has had his “day in court” as it were. God has spoken to him. And his response: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now my eyes see Thee;
Therefore, I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.”
Job 42: 5—6

This is the point to which God leads all His suffering children. It is the point of a deeper trust in Him, without understanding or knowing all the why's and the wherefore's of what has happened. God's purposes are just too great, and we cannot hope to comprehend them. We, after all, were not there when He laid the foundations of the earth.

This is what was evident, we believe, in those terrible days at Elim Christian School.