ENVIRONMENT

Tasman is world renown for our stunning landscapes, but we need to encourage smarter use of our environment for a sustainable future so that generations to come can also enjoy the Tasman experience. We all need to step up including Farming, Business, Tourism, and Residential households in the products we use, the way we treat our natural resources, and the flora and fauna we share the planet with.

Are you ready to see change in Tasman?

Would you like to see us protect our rapidly disappearing variety of life? Tasman is home to a number of species on the endangered, and critically endangered species list. We can act now save them or we let them slide into extinction.

It sounds like an obvious choice, but it may require taking action that restricts our “rights” as Kiwis. We may have to give up our right to racing along beaches in vehicles or taking our dogs to beaches and letting them roam free. We may have to give up our right to camp anywhere we like whenever we like.

What are the benefits, apart from saving a few birds and bugs or some plants we don’t know the name of anyway?

Tasman is one of the few regions in New Zealand with significant environments of interest that does not capitalize on this opportunity. We have national parks and we have freedom campers. We do not promote Kiwis (the bird) like Rotorua, or Whales like Kaikoura, or Penguins like Oamaru, or the Gannets of Cape Kidnappers. But why don’t we?

Eco-tourism is far more lucrative than allowing freedom camping. The money generated from eco-tourism not only creates work opportunities, it also allows for more work to be done to protect and enhance our endangered species. Is that worth a conversation about maybe giving up some of our “rights”? 

STATE OF CLIMATE EMERGENCY

I do not believe making declarations of emergency is as effective as implementing a strategy of improving how we live. We can do better and we need to do better. Let’s just work together and get it done.

Why, I don’t support a state of emergency.

1. I absolutely support spending money to reduce our waste to landfill and to protect our endangered flora and fauna. I do not support the generation of endless reports costing huge amounts of money that would be better spent making an actual difference in building a sustainable future.
2. I do not support the use of emergency in this context. In 2006 Al Gore said we would reach “the point of no return” by 2016 labelling it a “true planetary emergency.”  We have missed the boat according to Al.
   If we keep calling labelling things an emergency that are decades away then what do we call an imminent emergency? It is like all the hi-viz and orange cones on a work site nowadays it all becomes background noise, or like the little boy who cried wolf.
3. There is also the fact that a “state of emergency” gives the Government of the ability to step in and take control. They may exercise full military lockdown or evacuation (like Wakefield during the recent fire state of emergency) and sequestration of whatever resources and supplies they deem necessary. Be careful what you wish for.
4. We have soaring rates of youth suicide and one of the reasons quoted is this feeling of despair that we are all doomed. I do not support treating our youth as political pawns to the point they are taking their own lives in despair. When I was a teenager there was the threat of peak oil and then the imminent threat of nuclear holocaust being thrust upon us, fortunately, there wasn’t the internet compounding the issue back then.

What can we do then?

While it is easy to blame agriculture, forestry and other land use for greenhouse gas emissions. And they may be responsible for 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the recent IPCC survey.

But food waste is also a major culprit, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

From 2010-2016, global food loss and waste contributed 8-10 percent of total anthropogenic GHG emissions and currently 25-30 percent of total food produced is lost or wasted, says the  IPCC report on climate change and land. 

This is something that we all can do to immediately affect the amount of emissions adding to climate change. It doesn’t require more reports and endless debates at huge expense. Don’t reinvent wheel just take action.

Join other voters for a practical response to Climate Change and Environmental Issues this election.