Ashburton Courier: November 11, 2021

www.ashburtoncourier.co.nz
Hypocrisy of
climate politics
RURAL
Ashburton Courier, November 11, 2021
17
Ihave watched with disdain the
circus of the climate
conference COP26 recently
held in Glasgow. All manner of
world leaders and elites made
their way to Glasgow to
collectively agonise over the
Climate Emergency and the
urgent need for us all to change
our ways.
Well, what they actually
mean is us change our ways, not
them.
President Biden arrived in a
747 with asecond 747 as adecoy
and afleet of Globemaster
heavy transport planes carrying
the 80 odd vehicles and
helicopters that make up his
motorcade.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon arrived
by private jet, as did many of
the other elites. Prince Charles
even made an appearance,
because keeping up
appearances at things like
climate conferences are everso
important.They all spoke of
the urgent need to reduce our
impact. No argument from me
on that at all.
What Ididn’t see was any
Ford Festivas, Ididn’t see any
of them sitting down the back in
cattle class like the rest of us
when we occasionally fly. Even
our very own James Shaw was
in on the act, just unfortunately
he turned up with his
entourage aweek late, but
schedules can be such fiddly
things to get right.
The thing that gets me is this,
if we are faced with aclimate
emergency, and let’s not debate
that here, and if it is as dire as
predicted, then action is
required from all of us.
The lifestyle we know will
and must change.
Therewill be no flitting up to
Christchurch for the weekend,
our clothes will need to go back
to being natural fibres and worn
for years, or passed down
families likewhen we were kids
so will need to be made of a
durable quality to last.
Consumer goods,cars, TVs
will need to become luxury
items purchased sparingly and
expected to last.
Our borders may needto
remainclosedtoall but the most
essentialbusiness travel. Our
generation will be the last of the
great travellers.
That is of course if we are
serious.
Let’s be honest, buying an
electric car and thinking your
contributionisdone, is utterly
meaningless if our additional
electricity is being generated by
importing 1.4mtonnesofcoal
from Indonesia annually to burn
in power stations.
Any political proclamations
claiming these new EVs are
virtuous is just fairy dust.
If we are serious about EVs,
then we need to be building
hydrogeneration, windfarms
and solar generation capacity
with haste.But we are not, are
we?
If we are serious, we would be
ensuring our manufactured
goods are being made with
renewable energy sources, but if
we are just moving our
manufacturing capacity or
outsourcing our goods to
countries that have not pledged
to reduce emissions, we are just
being NIMBYsonacountry
wide scale. (Not In Our Back
Yard).
If we are serious, we wouldn’t
just be creating amoney­goround.
We willnot make any progress
until we reduce the amount of
fossilfuel burnttopower the
modernhumanlifestyle.
New Zealandfarmers are
working on aplan to accelerate
the reduction of methane from
our livestock, called He Waka
Eke Noa, the primarysector
climate partnership;and
through technologies as they
becomeavailable. In fact, we
are the only sector of New
Zealandsocietyworkingona
plan for actual reductions
ratherthan offsets.
As for the elites, Joe, Jeff,
James,Charles,etal, comesit
down the back in cattle withme
beforeyou start lecturing me on
my impact.
Attendees listen to apresentation during apast FAR event at Chertsey.
Arable event with atwist
Nitrogen use in ryegrass seed
crops, and technology for
managing bird damage are
among the topics being covered
at FAR’s annual field day at
Chertsey.
TheArable Research In
Action event, to run on
November 24,has been scaledback
duetocovidtoahalf­day
format with six speakers,
instead of theusual 12.
Organiser Anna Heslop said
FAR staff were determined to
proceed under Level 2
restrictions and had worked
out acolour coded ‘bubble
zone’ to allow up to 300 people
on site.
‘‘We havehad to reduce the
DAIRYLANE MAINTENANCE
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number of talks from 12 down
to six, and instead of attendees
picking and choosing which
presentations they wish to
hear, they’ll be escorted, in
their bubble groups, from talk
site to talk site,’’ she said.
All attendeeswillhear all six
talks and have opportunity to
see all trials as theymoved
around thesite.
“It will be abit different,but
we’reall getting used to doing
things differentlynow; the
recent, very well­run Ellesmere
and Ashburton A&P Shows
haveprovedthat with abit of
innovation, the rural
worthwhile events canstill go
ahead forthe rural
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community,’’ she said.
ARIA 2021 topicsand
speakers: nitrogen use in
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FAR), deliberate decisions for
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Diana Mathers, FAR; Mike
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knowing wheretostart (Jo
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FAR), managing grassweeds in
cereals(Ben Harvey &Phil
Rolston, FAR), technologyfor
managing bird damage (Owen
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