EDITORIAL: Wise heads needed on warming -


The unfounded criticism in Britain's Guardian newspaper of Hawke's Bay-produced olive oil as "a small crime against the planet" could be brushed aside as a columnist striving for effect without being troubled by the need for accuracy.
Village Press oil is shipped, not airfreighted to Europe. Should we worry? By now the writer will have moved on to vilify some other non-green alien because of the energy taken to get it to market. However, the virtue of a New Zealand export remains sullied by the accusation. Mud sticks, no more so than when environmental issues are at stake.







While healthy scepticism pervades every other domain, the environment - more specifically global warning - induces a suspension of critical analysis so that every worst-case scenario is not only possible but is a certainty.
That dystopian vision makes criminals of anyone perceived to be contributing to (or not preventing) global warming, a cause so vast - and the reasons (and treatment) of which are expressed with such certitude - that mere errors of detail in its defence are neither here nor there. Like Michael Moore's delinquent documentarying and Al Gore's apocalyptic "An inconvenient truth" (which claimed Pacific Islanders found refuge in New Zealand from rising oceans that swamped their lands) it matters little that the facts are distorted; the need for accuracy is subservient to the message.
Anyone unconvinced by the evidence global warming is man-made, or questions the wisdom of trying to reverse because of the enormous cost - money that might be better spent on technology to compensate for, or take advantage of, the temperature change - is either mocked as a feckless flat-earther or condemned as a heretic. Al Gore himself has redefined sustainable environmentalism as a choice between good and evil.
Climate change advocacy is similar to the wager of the 17th-century father of the precautionary principle, Blaise Pascal. He argued it was a better "bet" to believe God existed, because the value to be gained from believing was always greater than the expected value resulting from non-belief. The environment has become the rationalist's religion. When its defence against climate change becomes an article of faith any challenge to the new orthodoxy is apostasy.
Our politicians have seen the value of global warming becoming mainstream. The previously sceptical National Party now promotes its so-called "bluegreen" vision. And the Government, doubtless glad of the diversion from its domestic woes, has grasped the cause, impeccably timed with the release of high-profile announcements about the looming ruination from climate change if immediate action is not taken.
Prime Minister Helen Clark has announced the goal of making New Zealand an "environmentally sustainable nation". It is a praiseworthy aim and no one can deny the soundness of the principle of sustainability.
Miss Clark also said she wanted to make New Zealand "carbon neutral", a goal even more ambitious than that set by the Kyoto Protocol.
However, the government's ambitions (turning, from trying to change human behaviour, to altering the weather) need more to fuel them than political gesture-making. Its previous responses to global warming - the carbon credits fiasco and proposed fart tax - have not been encouraging.
Neither is the failure to address urgent demands for efficient power generation, which no number of windmills will be able to satisfy.
Though highly efficient, New Zealand remains a vulnerable and small agricultural economy, remote from its key markets. Action on climate change will be led by others. And in the vanguard of those movers will be the trade protectionists, masquerading as friends of the planet.
This nation's own response therefore needs more wisdom than well-intended cheerleading. If we fail to appreciate that, then we risk becoming hostages of the jeremiahs, and forced by necessity, not choice, to adopt the frugal values of the crofter.