Eighty-three per cent of Amazon reviewers gave This Changes Everything a 4- or 5-star rating. Perhaps the book resonates with readers because it expresses what many intuitively recognise from their own experience.
As New Zealand has become integrated into the global economy, we have become more corporatised and privatised. We have lost local industry, local skills, local self-sufficiency and local resourcefulness, we are more a country of consumers and spectators.
Manufacturing of cars, textiles, and machinery have been out-sourced or out-competed by global corporates.
Even our woollen industry now sends wool to China to be made into clothing that comes back to be sold cheaper than we can make it here. We have a thriving export in logs, but import most of our furniture. We have a world-lead in dairy production, but it is mostly sold in bulk as butter and milk powder rather than pharmaceuticals and value-added milk products.
Unemployment is chronic; social welfare services have been pruned to the minimum; public housing is in chaos; specialised support services have gone or been made user-pays (so that victims pay twice for their misfortune); the prisons, some now privatised, are full to overflowing; tertiary education fees mean only the rich can afford higher education; even primary and secondary education are no longer free.
An example of mean-spirited withdrawal of public spending is the Government's decision to cut mental health services in Canterbury from $1.6 million to $200,000 because the population of that region has dropped, and funding is allocated on a per head basis.
So, yes, Naomi Klein's book resonated with me.
Despite this pessimistic analysis, Klein views climate change as a chance to re-fashion our way of life. We either allow climate disruption to change everything about our world or change everything about our way of life to avoid that fate.
In her view, responding to climate change requires "rebuilding and reinventing the idea of the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil and the civic". She gives examples of how this is happening from the bottom-up all over the world.
In this respect, I think Whanganui has something special to offer New Zealand; a lesson on how to manage "de-growth".
For most people, it is a happy place to live. People who come here from other towns (myself for one) find it a kindly place. Houses are affordable; there are excellent health and educational facilities; it has retained its arts, culture, and sports activities, its libraries, newspapers and social networks.
Paid employment is scarce but there are hundreds of clubs and interest groups and dozens of support services, many run by volunteers. Economic hardship is countered by recycling outlets and a general attitude of economy which keeps prices low compared with other centres.
I see Whanganui as an ideal showcase for how to cope with future change. It has held together and shown great resilience in the face of many knock-backs. For example, the loss of the railway workshop yards in the 1970s, the government computer, successive down-sizing of government departments.
Despite these difficulties, the River Traders market demonstrates a vibrance and resourcefulness that I find exciting and hopeful.
I agree with Naomi Klein that the present economic system is destroying the planet and creating great human misery and injustice.
I think in New Zealand the necessary changes will come as much from local people acting to prepare for climate change events as policies or regulations at national level and towns like Whanganui can lead the way.
-A retired senior lecturer with a PhD in environmental planning, Mairi Jay was formerly a regional planner in Wellington and the Waikato, and former member of the NZ Planning Institute. She has lived in Whanganui since 2010.
