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Covering points of interest such as the 'Earth Files' that you as listeners can become involved in to facilitate positive options in reducing our ecological footprint, acting in truly sustainable ways and working towards becoming more carbon neutral.
December 2006 Posts
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I sent this piece into the New Zealand Herald today after their newly opened web site finally had a heading: ENVIRONMENT. For many years the collective editors have relegated news of ecological concerns to the small print or back pages, even though their sister company The Independent in London was printing masses of environmental information. The New Zealanders obviously continued with 'business as usual' and elected not to publish most of these articles. This in supposedly a FREE country. Letter to the Editor of the New Zealand Herald sent 24/12/2006 Thank you for finally waking up to environmental issues and having a dedicated subject headed: ENVIRONMENT. As a newspaper and user of trees that are vital as carbon sinks it is important that the NZ Herald be aware of the impact it has in the world. Fortunately your big sister, The Independent in London has been light years more advanced when it comes to planetary ecology. The online edition has been one of the most enlightened newspapers on the planet, whilst the NZ editors up until this year lacked the discernment to research for themselves that we are entering a global environmental crises. Shame on you for not thinking of our childrens future even though there were numerous articles being printed in The Independent which you chose to ignore and not publish. Had the NZ Herald lead with the ideals of integrity, all NZ political parties would be far more aware of the challenges that are coming to meet us today. The Government would be in a stronger position to lead the nation, offering our children a far more coherent vision of what we can do in the years ahead. Now with a more astute understanding I look forward to the New Zealand Herald leading in this area.
How can we help our Australian Mates? Australia is the climate change canary for global heating! I have had the privilege to have lived in Australia twice and what an enjoyable time I had. A superb place to live, and have good times. Having visited at least 500 times, when I used to fly as crew for Air NZ, I have a very warm relationship with our Aussie cousins. They are essentially a very good, friendly, fun loving people. Australia is known as the driest continent on earth, precluding Antarctica which is drier. I have fought bush fires there and they are terror inducing. The first thing you notice after exiting your cool air conditioned room or car is the sudden impact of hot air blasting you, then enveloping you. Whoommp! 40 degrees and higher and dry as! Your first breath of heated air shocks you. Just like opening up an oven in your kitchen, but instead this is surrounding you! Instantly you start sweating and you feel beads of sweat running down your face, inside your shirt/ blouse down through your underwear even down your legs. However, with the added stimulus of urgency and adrenaline, being surrounding flames, smoke all around, you don’t notice this. If you have goggles at least your eyes are protected, a wet scarf over your mouth and nose helps sightly but your breathing is laboured as hot air scorches your throat, but you are too occupied with the horror that surrounds you, the roar of flames, the crackle of trees and branches going up in flames, the explosion and whoosh and crackle of eucalyptus leaves igniting. And you are running, as the fire spreads towards you, moving so fast at times we have to sprint to our cars and utes and out-pace it as the scorch of tires on gravel road and tarmac - to get in front ,as kangaroos bound along trying to outrun the flames of a fire storm that can be up to 100 feet high! With helicopters whirling above us dropping water it’s a cacophony of noise and tumult ... Horror and terror that’s what an Australia bush fire is. Becoming a scorched earth covering 1000’s of hectares! A true nightmare. Where unheard of bravery goes unreported a hundred times a day as our Australian kin go in to beat out the flames, or if you are fortunate squirt them out with water. With global warming, climate change and weather patterns altering, I have a huge concern that Australia is going to dry from the inside out. This is a horrendous story in the making, unless we find a way to alleviate this. Regrettabl, there is another story that many will say has accelerated the drying out of the land within the farming community across Australia and that is this. If you go up onto http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/land clearing/Queensland/qldveg0007/ or do a search on Google, it used to be on the Queensland Greens web site, you will find that in Queensland alone 4,000 square kilometres of land have been cleared annually for the last 30 years plus. Admittedly a lot of these trees were arcacia, but trees protect the earth, stimulate bird and insect life and have a tendency to drawing precipitation. (rainfall.) 4000 sq kilometres a year and that is only in one Australian state! What's going on here? And when the farmers suffer from a drought, they then ask the city population to bail them out with loans? Unfortunately, the Howard National Government, have been basically blind to climate change, and never signed the Kyoto protocol, showing its ignorance of climate degredation. This is a reflection of the collective consciouness of Australians in general. Very sad for all biota in Australia. The land clearing practices, of many hard working and tenacious Australian farmers sadly defies logic. Especially in the era of climate change or in Dr James Lovelock’s new vernacular “Global heating”
