They effectively disregard the No1 challenge of climate change (promising new highways rather than alternatives, like passenger rail and cycleways); shut their eyes (even Labour) to New Zealand’s low tax rate, unconscionably skewed against the poor and favouring the rich (some parties promising tax cuts for middle and high-earners, to be funded from illusionary sources); and only nibble at the edges of the problems resulting from chronic underfunding, for decades, of essential services such as health and education.
So let’s think about something else: spring, perhaps.
The first daffodil at home (Civis’ marker for spring) opened in early August, and, despite canine depredations, many still bloom at the edge of the lawn.
Rhododendrons and camellias add colour, though they aren’t a reliable marker of spring — the locally bred R. ‘Lovelock’ has been flowering, as usual, since June, and one of Civis’ chance rhododendron seedlings, which normally blooms in September, did so in July.
Several maples are in leaf, their fresh green testifying to new growth, and symbolising the hope traditionally associated with spring.
Tennyson wrote "In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love". Why "lightly" (apart from the rhythm) and what about young women, and the not quite young?
Birds, at least, do it seriously, together.
For some weeks, while Civis and spouse have coffee in bed, listening to RNZ Concert or National, from about 7.00am, they’ve seen a kereru pair, perched side by side on a small branch of an English beech, indulging in what looks to be courting behaviour.
A couple of waxeyes, for a fortnight or so, have been spending the late afternoons exploring the profusion of flowers in an open hedge of white japonica near the house.
So birds are pairing off, and will be building nests.
When an old horse lived in the paddock, now occupied by alpacas, by the lawn, a thrush was often seen standing on his back in spring, pulling out hairs, presumably as material for a nest.
The horse has died, but Civis recently noticed loose tufts of white wool on the lawn and drive.
Are birds adapting, rationally, to changed circumstances, and using alpaca wool rather than horsehair for their nests?
Why do so many politicians (sadly, one can’t escape politics) seem unable to emulate the birds, and adapt to changed reality — global warming (correction: global scorching!) for example?
Nobody knows when Earth will tip over the edge to final disaster, when irrevocable, self-perpetuating global heating will remove the choice of preventing final catastrophe for the planet.
It’s possible that, as Geoff Mann, a writer on uncertainty, muses, it’s too late — that humanity is already "treading thin air like Wile E Coyote before the fall." He goes on to say, "Today’s politicians don’t like uncertainty: it introduces doubt."
"Yet we are in desperate need of a politics that looks catastrophic uncertainty square in the face.
"That would mean taking much bigger and more transformative steps: all but eliminating fossil fuels, for a start, and prioritising democratic institutions over markets.
"The burden of this effort must fall almost entirely on the richest people and richest parts of the world, because it is they who continue to gamble with everyone else’s fate."
Comparison of party policies suggests that, despite pious platitudes, only the Greens, The Opportunities Party and Te Pati Maori are really determined to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (or realistic about tax reform, for that matter).
Spring implies hope.
Will electors accept the need to act urgently to reduce emissions, vote accordingly and give their mokopuna hope?
