Tuesday, July 28, 2009

NZ 2030

Announcing our first publication. NZ 2030, the world’s lifeboat is a 110-page short book by John Robinson. Printed by Instabook, copies will be available for $10. We expect they will be soon available from Instabook for $12 (with $2 for postage). We have started publicizing this, and any help there would be welcome. We could do with review comment for our blog and other advertising.

Here is the introduction from the back cover.

YES WE CAN

The challenges of this 21st century are awesome. We head into a perfect storm in 2030, because so many disastrous trends are operating on the same time frame - overpopulation, water and food shortages, climate change, depleted oil resources, economic depression, social breakdown and war. Millions of refugees will be fleeing to the few remaining lifeboat nations. Like New Zealand.

Yet a good society is beckoning. This is the conserver society of lazy socialism, the very opposite of today’s selfish capitalism with its mania for an impossible infinite growth.

Shakespeare once described society as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. The phrase is apt today; the sound and fury is all around us today and idiots rule. The parliamentary coup of 1984 wrecked a successful mixed economy and led to the destruction of invaluable institutional memory. One task ahead is to rebuild the nation and regain lost wisdom.

Scientists saw the coming storm 40 and more years ago but those warnings were stifled. We must take the straightjacket off and allow a hundred flowers to blossom, a hundred schools of thought to contend.