Jim Hopkins: Quakes show what we can't control... and what we can

When our world turns upside down, sometimes all we can do is laugh to keep from crying. Photo / Mark Mitchell

There's no one you can write to. That's the problem. You can't put pen to paper and dash off an indignant missive:

To whom it may concern

Dear Sir or Madam,

Enough is enough. This has gone too far. It's time your toothless organisation got off its chuff and did something! No more namby pamby, airy fairy argy bargy. Issue a "cease and desist" notice immediately. You've been sitting on your hands and twiddling your thumbs, looking the other way and turning a blind eye for too long. Get off your butts, you dithering blitherers. Put a stop to it. Pass a law. Introduce a liquefaction ban, whatever it takes. Just get cracking. We demand action forthwith.

Yrs sincerely,

Indignant of Outer Roa

Alas, there is no local body, parliamentary commissioner, agency of state or multilateral force that can make a blind bit of difference. No power on earth can regulate the power of earth. The planet wins. It always does. And has for 4 billion years.

Some 3.5 billion years ago, the first edition of the majestic Harold carried on its front page the shock headline OUTRAGE IN OOZE - MASS EXTINCTIONS ALL ROUND

"It's not fair," said Mr A. Moeba today. "One minute, there we were, minding our own business, quietly dividing and doing our best to evolve in an orderly fashion, then, suddenly, 'Poof', we're all down the gurgler. Mitotically extinquished! For no good reason. Now I'm the only one left. Who am I going to mate with? That's what I want to know. I may have to invent asexual reproduction."

Fatalism does not sit well with Kiwis. We're a DIY, GSI (Get Stuck In) bunch, wedded to the optimistic idea that there's nothing a bit of No. 8 wire can't fix or recreate. And we've done a lot of recreating in our time. Ask the moas. If there were any around today, they'd have a few scores to settle.

It's always been that way. Give us a swamp and we'll drain it. Give us a bush and we'll clear it. Everybody who's ever come here has taken to the place with a vengeance, slashing and burning, chopping and changing - for the better and the worse. If there's difference in effect, it's down to numbers, not intentions. Because our intentions have always been the same - "Let's change this place however we can, so that it works the way we want it."

'Twas ever thus, and ever will be. If you were at Enex, the big oil and gas conference in New Plymouth last week, you'd have heard a boffin chappy say we're sitting on a gold mine here. Admittedly, it's a salty gold mine, but a gold mine nonetheless. The seas around our shores are the North Sea of the southern hemisphere, the boffin said, chock full of dinkum oil.

This did not sit well with a group of protesters who arrived, clearly unhappy we weren't becoming a Third World country quickly enough, to demand an immediate end to exploration, no ifs, buts, or Mobils.

That won't happen, of course. Sooner or later, if it's out there, we'll happily pour oil from troubled waters. Because we like our flat screen tellies and bypass ops too much and, besides, we can't live on the kindness of milk forever. So we will get this oil. We will use all our ingenuity and all our technology, every bit of kit we can muster, all the complex, wonderful things we have made to suit our purposes and better our odds, and we'll get it. That's what we do.

We humans are a mad, marvellous, murderous, magnificent bunch, with a weapon between our ears that's given us every advantage we enjoy and allowed us to manage the world more boldly than any other animal.

But sometimes, even our best weapon won't work. We can't bolt the plates together and still the earth. When the fault lines fracture and the ground shakes, we are entirely at its mercy. And there's no one to stop it, no protest worth making, no power that can mute the immutable.

We didn't make our seabed, but we do have to lie on it. And since New Zealand is the geological equivalent of a head-on collision, two plates meeting at full speed, we will always lie uneasy in our beds on the seabed.

There was a debate in Hamilton on Wednesday night, organised by AgResearch which has apparently just created a transgenic male goat capable of producing human milk. This is a weird and wonderful thing, proof beyond doubt of how we can master nature - most of the time. When the debate was done and we were relaxing, a scientist and a comedienne started talking about the latest earthquakes in Christchurch. Intelligent women, both of them, wise and witty. Their conclusion (slightly expurgated): "Stuff happens. We've just got to deal with it." And we do. And we will. Because we can. That much we do control. The best time to laugh is when you want to cry.