There can be no more graphic illustration of what happens when the "bottom line" always takes precedence. When "turning a buck" or "making a profit" or "staying in business" or "increasing production" is always seen as a good enough reason and excuse to destroy our environment.
Are we proud of ourselves that - living as we do in the most beautiful country in the world, one of whose greatest treasures is its sparkling, clean waters - we have, within a few decades and by giving free rein to market forces, succeeded in transforming that treasure into dross?
We are told that, so bad is the damage, we will never be able to restore our aquifers and waterways to an acceptable condition, and that it will take decades before young Kiwis can swim safely in our rivers. Even our native fish can't survive in them.
Will we learn any lessons?
I doubt it. The drive to make more money and the conviction that the market must always prevail are now so deeply entrenched in our psyche that we will shrug our shoulders and carry on; to drive species to extinction, to exhaust our reserves and resources, to contaminate anything that gets in the way of "progress".
Will we even pause to consider what else we might be placing at risk? If we are prepared to sacrifice our environment for the sake of "getting ahead", what other sacrifices are we lining up?
With the environment, we can at least see what we have done before shrugging our shoulders and motoring on. But what of those other self-inflicted forms of damage that are more easily ignored?
The same lack of care, the same greed, the same drive for material goods, the same selfishness and short-sightedness are certainly doing us great damage, in this case, to the fabric of our society.
The analogy with our destructive treatment of the environment is, sadly, all too clear.
The health and integrity of New Zealand society was once, like our environment, the envy of the world.
But our concerns for our fellow citizens, for ensuring that everyone has "a fair go" in the sense of having proper access to good health, housing and education so as to face the challenges of life, have fallen away as we focus more on getting ahead, on the rat race, on that bigger and better house or car.
We have become a "me-first" society, indistinguishable from those in "less happier lands".
Our pride in the fact that we once led the world in terms of giving proper and equal value to every one of our citizens has faded away.
We have instead hastened to fall into line as adherents of the hard-nosed, Anglo-American version of capitalism, and we are undeterred by the widening inequality and the increasing prevalence of poverty that now mark the way we live.
The unacceptability of the damage we have done in this way, and continue to do, may not be so graphically demonstrated as it is in television pictures of the disgusting state of our rivers but it is no less real.
The rivers, and what we have done to them, matter hugely in their own right, but they should also be seen as a metaphor for what we have done to ourselves.
Bryan Gould is a former British MP and Waikato University Vice-Chancellor.
