June Excursion Part 3

 

This is the final part of my trip last Tuesday. 

After lunch, I crossed Port Waikato to reach the ocean side of the village – a drive of about five minutes.

Port Waikato is known as a surfing beach and I expected to see mostly beach homes, so it was a pleasant surprise to see how many appeared to be permanent dwellings. 

Some of them had very quirky mailboxes!

This is the view from the carpark at Sunset Beach.  The cliff edge is right there and it was obvious that the carpark once extended much further than it does now.

The fine black sand is unstable and large storm swells regularly eat away at the coastline, mocking the efforts of mere humans who think they can build structures to withstand the elements of nature.

The drive back home was through lonely countryside, with human habitations spaced far apart.  The road was generally narrow, gravel, and frequently pitted with deep pot-holes.

But some of the scenery was quite spectacular, with the limestone outcrops adding a different dimension to the rugged farmland.

There were a few dust (and size!) hazards on the narrow gravel road, and I was glad to be parked off the road as this truck and trailer went past.

My little car did well on the country roads, but I think it was quite happy to finish heading home on the smooth surfaces of the Waikato Expressway.

Enjoy your day 😊

Margaret.

 

Reducing Carbon Emissions

 

Today the Government announced they were going to be spending $2.9 billion on an Emissions Reduction Plan to combat Climate Change. 

Perhaps I was being naïve or overly-optimistic, but I thought they were about to say they were going to do something really practical and helpful.  Instead, it seems most of the money will be going on various working groups to investigate how they can use either carrots or sticks on high-energy users like farming and the transport industry, to get them to reduce their carbon emissions.  A lot of this research has already been done overseas. 

What about spending $2.9 billion on something practical like establishing recycling centres for electronics and batteries, or creating more infrastructure to cope with the expected demand for electric vehicles, or maybe promoting more energy efficient housing, along with educating the public on how to reduce their environmental footprint, or even developing public transport so people don’t need to use their cars as much?

The stated hope is that by 2035 we will be less reliant on cars and will be travelling 20% less kilometres than we do now.  That is a great ideal, but is it practical? 

How much individual responsibility does the world expect us to shoulder?  I’m told that our current daily rate of carbon emission is equal to about one hour in China, so how much do we really need to do to be able to say we are doing our part?

Photo Credit:  New Zealand Embassy of Ireland

New Zealand is a reasonable sized country – our land mass is 10% greater than the United Kingdom – and yet our population is a tiny five million.  To put that into perspective, it is about the same as the population of Melbourne (Australia), a little more than half of the population of London (England), and a little less than half of the population of Los Angeles (United States of America).   

We don’t have enough people to support grandiose ideals and the re-invention of the wheel.  But we do have enough people who love their country and would be only too willing to make lifestyle adjustments if they were given a little incentive and some practical direction.

And now I will apologise and say, “Sorry.”  I normally try not to rant and rave on my blog, but I felt so disappointed this afternoon that I had to say something.

I must say, I feel better now that I have said my piece!

Margaret 😊

 

Electric Cars and So Forth

 

Are we becoming too reliant on electricity?  Most of New Zealand is currently in the grip of a major cold spell and last night our national electricity consumption reached an all-time high – with the result that several areas were shut down completely for several hours to “conserve” power.

The use of electric and hybrid cars is being actively promoted here (with cash incentives to purchase, and the penalisation of ‘bigger’ petrol-fuelled vehicles such as those that most farmers rely on for their work), and I have been wondering about the long-term effects of all this.

A friend of my son’s owns an electric car and, because he reckons there will be continual power outages over the next few years, he has purchased a diesel generator so he is always able to charge his car! 

So why own an electric car?

The manufacture of such vehicles involves the use of steel and other resources, the same as petrol and diesel vehicles.  Which leaves the only point of difference being the fuel used.  I watched a disturbing documentary recently about the effects of mining lithium for batteries, and I know from my experience with solar batteries that old used batteries are very difficult to dispose of, so are electric cars any more environmentally friendly than petroleum-fuelled cars?

In towns and cities I can see huge benefits in using these quieter, ultra-low-emission, vehicles, but most of our country is rural.  We are a widely scattered population and public transport is not all that efficient, if not non-existent, outside of the major urban centres.

If we all switched to using electric cars the results would be catastrophic.  Our electricity production is already at capacity – so much so, that the mothballed Huntly Power Station is now operating again and burning thousands of tons of imported coal to supply the national grid.

LPG Gas is soon to be banned, meaning no more domestic gas heaters can be used (oh, wait, I think they intend to replace it with highly flammable rock gas).  All rental properties must now have high-wattage heat pumps installed in them.  Many localities have banned home fires because of the smoke upsetting the air quality.  The only way people have to keep warm is using electricity.

An electrician friend informs us he has been busy lately upgrading house supply lines as too many homes are now using more electricity than the lines supplying them can cope with.  I didn’t even know they had a limit!

Benmore hydro-electric power station is the second largest in New Zealand

The over-reliance on electricity is becoming a major, yet still mostly hidden, dilemma.  We may not be jumping from the frying pan into the fire with all our politically-correct environmental awareness, but I sometimes think we are often jumping from one frying pan into another.

I cannot see any easy answer for the future.  Do you?

Wishing everyone a very happy week,

Margaret 😊

Polluting Our Environment

The Firth of Thames is about two hours drive away from us and often plays host to visiting migrant birds as well as several local species of seabird.   When we have warm water temperatures combining with an excess of phosphorus and nitrogen (from agricultural run-off and urban waste water) the end result is algal bloom, which is now being thought responsible for the death of several Red Knot, Godwit and Wrybill birds in this area. 

Godwits at Omokoroa

Years ago we would gather shellfish (tuatua, pipi, Pacific rock oysters) in Tauranga Harbour and along the coastline of the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel Peninsular.  Now nearly every summer these waters suffer algal bloom issues and it is no longer safe to eat the shellfish.  Part of the problem here is the huge growth of Tauranga Port with a constant stream of ships entering and leaving, resulting in a lot more waste being dropped into the surrounding ocean.

Pacific rock oysters, gathered off mudflat mangroves

Nature has a miraculous way of recovering if it is given a chance.  This was demonstrated after the Rena oil disaster off the coast of Papamoa in 2011.  The area was closed to fishermen for several years and many fish species were able to regenerate undisturbed in the vicinity of the wreck.  They thrived, and some species returned after years of absence.  When fishing was allowed again, the area was decimated within three months!  Really, what are we doing to the world we live in?

Oil washing ashore at Papamoa in 2011

At home here in Hamilton, all our drinking water is obtained from the Waikato River.  During the 1980s (so long ago!) I was able to visit a water treatment station and was frankly horrified to see how filthy this water was before it was treated. 

The Waikato River, near Arapuni

I believe the water quality has improved since then, through strict regulation, but it has not returned to the pristine quality it used to have – I spoke with an old Maori gentleman at Huntly (further down the river) many years ago and he told me how they used to swim across the river as children and you could see the bottom of it the whole way across.

Pollution is not new - this photo was taken in 1983

I guess it is a bit idealistic to expect our environment to be free of pollution.  We live in an industrial world after all, and mankind seems bent on destroying his world.  Even outer space is filling up with debris. 

It is all very well to say we should do our bit on a personal basis (and we should) but it is mostly a band-aid on a much deeper global problem that appears to have no easy answer.

Sorry if this is a bit of a dismal post, but these things are having a serious impact on the world we live in.  Happier things tomorrow :)

Margaret.