Mike Vine: Let's keep our land clean and green

COMMENT

"Go west, young man ... go all the way to California, that garden of Eden." Thus began a recent article in the Los Angeles Times.

"And if, someday," the newspaper went on, "that arcadia at land's end should become untenable, should the cities become unlivable and homes unaffordable ... should the ocean be soiled and the politics sullied - do not abandon hope!" The article's answer was "Go to New Zealand".

Well, I thought, having soiled their own nests, they want to move on and re-create their own Malibus here.

One "Las Vegas tycoon" said that New Zealanders lived well, but did not have any money. He, however, saw money in the coastline "that basically feeds animals. Well, those animals don't need to look at the ocean as they eat grass. If they" - people, I presumed, rather than animals "could put houses on those cliffs, there are fortunes to be made".

Visions of New Zealand's coast lined with Malibu gated-demesnes occupied by Las Vegas tycoons floated before my eyes, with the interior of the country occupied by peasants minding the stock.

My uneasiness was assuaged slightly, but only slightly, by the knowledge that I myself am an heir to forebears who migrated here. They came here voluntarily, hoping for better lives.

Presumably all these Californians who arrive here enthusing about our wines and waves, beaches and bistros - and our no-nuke policy, I noticed - also have hopes for better lives. Are their hopes any different from those of my ancestors?

In my case, those family members who came here three or four generations ago were struggling in England; carpenters, farm labourers, miners. They were not destitute but neither were they moneyed.

Most seem to have emigrated intending to create here something better than that which they left. And, in at least two cases, explicitly did so - one to create a religiously tolerant society, the other to agitate for universal suffrage and workers' rights. And, of course, their hopes trampled all over those of the tangata whenua who were already here.

But the hopes of the Californians profiled in the Los Angeles Times article seemed to be to re-create a California in the South Seas, albeit without the inconveniences of the existing one.

Do I really want the coast lined by gated mansions like one that has a pool, seven built-in plasma screen TVs, an elaborate multi-camera security system, "the whole California thing"?

Already I cannot afford a place on the coast for myself. Do I want my access further restricted and the experience diminished by having to stare at these buildings?

Then I remember those signs of Forever England that my forebears and their cohorts established here: rose gardens, houses out of London, and civilised fields. Were those developments less objectionable than the present crop?

My despair is not at migration, for that is part of the human story, or even at the Californians' cockiness. Rather, it is that we seem to never learn from the past.

My ancestors came here because of religious, economic and social exploitation in England, and earlier, for some of them, in France. According to the article, many Californians are coming here to escape an "untenable arcadia", "unlivable cities", "unaffordable homes", a "bankrupt state", a "soiled ocean", and "sullied politics".

Within New Zealand, we are no better. Witness our denuded forests, lost soils, polluted rivers, despoiled lakes, degraded seas, tacky apartments.

We sneer at cultures that practise shifting agriculture, where forests are burned and the area cultivated for a year or two before moving on. But we, Californians and New Zealanders, are no better. We exploit a valley's forest and move to the next, exhaust an area's elite cropping soil and sell it for housing to finance the purchase of more elsewhere, destroy a community's social structure to build leaking apartments.

We put our trust in economic and social patterns that emphasise personal gains at future and communal cost, thus avoiding responsibility. And when things get too bad, we cut our losses and move on.

Whether the move is to the next valley or to the next country, the effect is the same: the disadvantaged have no choice but to remain to cope with the pieces while the advantaged can escape to a new arcadia elsewhere.

It is depressing to think that our wanton shifting exploitation is being visited upon the coastline, and that we do not seem to have the guts to see our patterns of destruction or the wit to learn from them.

Is it too much, or too late, to hope we can learn to husband the coast, from the intimidating west coast beaches to the secret eastern estuaries, from northern sand dunes to the southern lonely bays?

Is it too much, or too late, to hope that we can curb our lust for private pretentious boxes of cringe architecture pretending to be what they are not: mock Tuscan, mock Malibu, mock Mediterranean?

And so I say to the Californians (and others) who come here: welcome. But please remember this is a different country and I do not really want my heirs to have to cope with re-creations of the messes you are escaping.

We haven't a good track record ourselves, so perhaps together we can learn to do things better. For when there is no elsewhere left to escape to, what then?

* Mike Vine, an Anglican priest and resource planner, lives in Thames.