Category: Environmentalism
National Radio reported a few days ago that Energy Minister David Parker was taken aback by the public backlash against the Government’s decision to phase out incandescent light bulbs. Associate Justice Minister Lianne Dalziel is known to be concerned about a similar adverse reaction against her proposal to ban liquor sales in suburban dairies. Last month, we witnessed the unusual spectacle of city streets being blocked by truckies protesting at an increase in road user charges – and the even more remarkable spectacle of the public and the media cheering them on, despite the inconvenience caused.
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector. FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology, and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.
So, I have made it at last! There have been two previous occasions in my life when I was close to a Nobel Prize (thereby hangs a tale), now it has arrived. I expect the cheque in the post any time, plus an invitation to the awards ceremony.
During late January the ex-Act MP, Gerry Eckhoff, was leading some Otago farmers’ charge against DoC’s demands to enter their properties to survey some “endangered” trees.
“Rust never sleeps” nor does the movement opposed to genetic modification. Despite setbacks at the Royal Commission, in the courts and at the polls anti-GM groups continue to chip away searching for that weak link. They have had more than ten years to mount a credible scientific argument against the use of genetic modification yet sadly for them they have not managed it.
In April 1994 my wife and I opened the 20-hectare Kowhai Vale Predator Proof reserve on Banks Peninsula. This was the largest predator proof reserve on mainland New Zealand. Around the reserve is a 2.2km long, 2 metre high predator-proof fence.
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