I've had an epiphany, actually, two of them (just recently)

Whether I am good at getting epiphanies, I am not sure, but the question is: are the epiphanies sensible or stupid? I shall leave it up to you to decide.

At the moment, my epiphanies are to do with climate change, and the future of the planet. Here, I must profess that I am a greenie – not radical, but green enough, though by the end of reading this article you may come to believe that I could be the most radical of all the ‘greenies!

I am pretty certain that the world is warming up and do believe that we are in a runaway situation which we are less and less likely to be able to stop. Actually, I don't have the faith that either myself or the rest of the population will start taking global warming seriously enough in time to make a difference.

So, what was my first epiphany? I realised that there are about twenty percent of the population of New Zealand that are either climate change deniers, haven't made up their minds, or are too lazy to think about the problem. We will never get most of them to change their minds in time until the rising seas are actually lapping around their ankles! We may as well forget them for the moment.

The epiphany is about most of the other eighty per cent that claim to be somewhat ‘green'; care for the planet and do believe that we are on the verge of runaway climate change – it is that eighty percent that really is the danger for the future of our world because of the sheer numbers, and it is they that must take action – take action fast, but they/we won't.

We could probably live with twenty percent of the population not changing their minds as long as the other eighty per cent really work hard at changing their lifestyles to take into account global warming. That 20 percent of ‘obstinates' will damage the world but if the rest of us do a perfect job, and quickly, the global warming will not be quite so fast, and will give my grandchildren (but not their children) a chance at having some form of decent life.

It is the eighty percent that is my epiphany – no matter what we believe, just about all of us will not change our destructive lifestyles until it is too late! And I am one of them!

I'll give you a few examples and start with perhaps the most in-your-face example. As we ‘80 percenters' all know, we have to cut down on the destruction of the atmosphere quickly and one of the worst culprits of climate change is gas-guzzling travel, especially tourism.

I live in Wanaka, a beautiful lake town somewhere down near Queenstown. For the last fifty years I have made my living from tourism, encouraging people to take holidays to our lovely region. I was a businessman, now I am not, I am happily retired.

When I started my tourist business in Wanaka, only 370,000 visitors came to New Zealand from overseas, not all by air, some came by ship; some were tourists, some were visiting friends and relatives, some were businesspeople, and I believe that number even included people transiting through Auckland to other countries!

As Auckland airport was the only international airport in New Zealand in the early 1970's, only 18 percent of the overseas travellers managed to get as far south as Queenstown via domestic flights and cars and coaches, and much fewer to Wanaka!

Now, or at least until the recent advent of Covid 19, our overseas visitors to New Zealand's many international airports numbered in the millions. Of course, loads of New Zealanders also travelled out of the country, also jet-burning through the skies.

Recently, just before Covid, the airport serving the Queenstown/Wanaka region was heading towards maximum capacity for flight movements and the airport authorities started to look at a potential site for a new airport for the region, located just outside the town of Wanaka. This concept airport was being financially backed by Auckland Airport – big business! Apart from some of the local businesspeople, most other locals objected to the imposition of an international airport in ‘our' delightful region. The locals fought the proposal and may just possibly have put a halt to it on legal grounds.

But guess what?! Along came Christchurch airport (big business) announcing that they too wanted to build an international airport, located near Tarras, a small community just thirty kilometres from Wanaka! Can you imagine it – our Queenstown Lakes district area potentially having THREE international airports in an area with a regional community of about fifty thousand permanent residents! Amazing, but I am sure it can't happen, it better not!

It is not these proposed airports that is the problem (well, it is if you live under the flightpath), it is the mindset behind the people who are proposing them – the airport directors who are paid massive salaries and bonuses to increase the company profit margin, no matter what damage their actions could cause. To justify their money, regardless of how much it damages the climate, their short-term policies look good for the shareholders but could be disastrous for the rest of society. Of course the directors don't have to worry about long-term policy (nor the planet) as by then they will have moved onto another company that also needs rejuvenating. It seems that business ‘growth' is still not a dirty word! Growth actually means expansion and usually more wasteful use of finite resources. Most businesses want MORE growth; the planet requires less.

Quite honestly, we climate-change believers should realise that holiday travel, especially international holiday travel has to be a thing of the past, but I am willing to bet once we start to open up borders after the worst of the Covid scare, international travel will boom with many of we 80 percenters feeling that we deserve a good overseas holiday! We will burn-up the skies.

We 80 percenters will still tow our caravans around with our gas-guzzling diesel SUV's. Many of us will travel long distances to our second homes, flats, apartments, time-shares in our favourite holiday destinations. We won't give that up. We have a feeling of entitlement.

Some people with lots of money will pay to travel as a tourist into space burning up more fuel in a few hours than many poor people around the world will use in a lifetime.

My wife and I are somewhat green and have decided that we can't justify flying back to England again to see my brother and sister, though we will no doubt stretch and adapt our beliefs so that we can visit our other siblings and children in somewhat nearer Australia.

That's tourism dealt with. Let's get into more examples of our affluent lifestyles, how else can we save the planet, that is, if we really want to?

How about your house? Is that light-coloured carpet slightly discoloured by people walking on it over the years, but still has plenty of life in it? For many of us, the next thought is that it is time to change it for a new one, which means throwing the old one into a finite size rubbish tip. How about the furniture – it is not quite the modern thing now, and we want to replace it with something new. Maybe that's more perfectly usable furniture heading to the rubbish tip or re-cycle shop. What about a new car – after all, the old car doesn't have all the wings-and-bells that a new one would have. Get a new one! To hell with the health of the planet.

A person seriously worried for the future of the planet would not consider doing any of the above, but WE will!

The fact is that we ALL should be cutting back to the maximum purchases of all sorts to reduce wasteful manufacturing of every sort.

If we don't manage to reduce our wasteful expenditure considerably, the seas will rise, submerging cities, flooding most of the best farmland on earth, which will also cause near extinction of most animals, including human beings.

It is interesting to compare our reaction to climate warming to the Covid 19 epidemic that is giving us a big scare at the moment. Which of the two is the most dangerous for the future of the planet? I'm betting that most people will say it is Global Warming, yet with the warming we are prepared to change little and then so slowly because the danger is not imminent, whereas we are accepting as necessary immediate draconian restrictions for Covid. It does not figure, does it?!

Take another example of this. During the week before the start of the second world war in Britain, when people became certain that war was imminent, far-more than 100,000 pet dogs were voluntarily destroyed (it was not the dogs that did it voluntarily, it was done by the dog owners), probably in anticipation of strict food rationing and lack of meat for dogs!

Maybe it is now that we should be destroying most of our family pets to save the food they require which the growing of must add so much to climate change? I suppose we could include horses and cats too (but what about old people of whom I am one?!). I am willing to bet not one reader of this article will destroy their pet(s), (or their grandparents). So what is the difference between the second world war and now? Perhaps it is just that the start of the war was instant, whereas no matter what we believe about global warming, we actually think others should be doing the life-changes so that we can continue as usual?

Some of the people that resist changes justify it by saying that New Zealand's population is just a tiny fraction of the world population, so what good will our little bit do? The answer, of course is that if nobody does anything, then we cannot blame anyone else when our coastal homes become little islands above the rising sea. Anyhow, each one of us New Zealanders consume far more materials and food than most other people in the world and have done so for the last hundred years – we've had far more than our fair-share of world resources. We New Zealanders can and should cut back on consumption. After all, for many people in the world today, they can't cut back anymore because they have nothing in the first place!

That's one epiphany covered – it will be impossible to change the living habits of most of us who believe in global warming.

The second epiphany came to me a few months ago when my wife and I were driving through the stark but rather gorgeous McKenzie country near Mount Cook (I am happily old-fashioned – I still call it Mount Cook, and I will continue to call Auckland – Auckland!)

As I have said, my wife and I are rather green, but not excessively so. We love New Zealand, we love the New Zealand countryside, and we applaud people who set up reserves trying to preserve New Zealand's nature. Anyhow, my epiphany occurred when we were driving near Twizel, and we noticed the incredible spread of wilding pines. Both my wife and I discussed it whilst travelling along and agreed that whoever is responsible should be eradicating the pines NOW rather than wait for the spread to get even more out of control. It was destroying the lovely but stark countryside that we so love.

But I thought about it, and thought more, and thought about it even more. One has plenty of time to think when driving long distances. I thought about it from a ‘greenie' perspective and what is best for the future of our endangered world. Curiously, most ‘greenies' would want to eradicate the intrusive wilding pines – after all, they are not natural to New Zealand and alters the precious character and we should especially keep our National Parks sacrosanct.

Within about half an hour, I had a radical change of mind about those trees, AN EPIPHANY! I think we all know that the best, and probably only way to slow down global warming is to immediately lock up the carbon in trees, trees, and more trees to give us a little breathing space for a few more decades while we work on other methods of reducing carbon emissions and locking the carbon away.

It occurred to me that we have millions of acres of beautiful New Zealand countryside standing almost empty, where instead of cutting down wilding pines, we should be flying plane loads of pine seeds to be scattered all over these millions of acres of land, seeds of non-New Zealand trees that will grow into tall trees very fast and absorb massive amounts of carbon. Just an hour before, I would have said we should be planting massive amounts of native trees to absorb the carbon, but native trees grow so slowly, and we just don't have the time to wait for them to grow; we need fast growing trees, now, and everywhere, including in some of the national parks, at least, the empty looking parks like Mount Cook! Radical, eh?

While we travelled, I discussed the ‘wilding' tree problem with my wife who also is quite ‘green' and would wish to protect our wonderful unique countryside, and she did understand the point I was making! Would you?

I can now imagine the uproar from most New Zealand readers to what I have just said – we can't do that to our National Parks, and New Zealand! Sacrilege! But somebody has to do something.

Travel through the magnificent rugged baren countryside all around Alexandra in Central Otago and on the hillside you will see the occasional wilding pine. Many a time we have driven through the region, and I have stated to my wife that it is criminal how the local authorities allow the few pines to remain, lone pines that will soon become uncontrollable millions. Now I am thinking that the wilding pines are actually a good start.

Will we make changes to these wonderful character hills, valleys, and often some very unproductive farmland that tourists love so much, just to save the planet, and humanity?

I will give you three choices to ponder upon.

1. Remove the wildings and hope that scientists will one day come up with another way out of the pending catastrophe before it is too late.
2. Decide that the lives and welfare of our children and grandchildren are more important than keeping the traditional countryside that most of us love so much.
3. Ignore it and hope that global warming goes away.

I think a lot of you will understand what I am saying, but is it too extreme for you to consider? It's just that no matter how much we are informed about the extreme danger, in reality, is it that deep-down we don't think it could happen to us?

Just think about this: little more than ten thousand years ago, the seas of the world were hundreds of feet lower than they are today, so-much water was locked up in ice and snow. The snows and ice are melting. The sea levels are rapidly rising. Most New Zealanders are now living in houses along the coastal plains that sooner or later will be deep down in the sea! Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, and a host of other coastal cities and towns will be partly or mostly submerged. Millions of New Zealand coastal refugees will be fleeing to high up mountain regions such-as Wanaka! Possibly other overcrowded nations will invade New Zealand and Wanaka to transfer some of their population.

At three hundred metres above sea level, my wife and I will be safe from rising seas; well, actually WE won't, we will be dead, but our children and grandchildren maybe!

> # Skeptics Conference

> ### 21th-21st November, Online

>

> This year's conference is a joint effort with the Australian Skeptics, and we will be live-streaming the event with many interesting and thought-provoking speakers. The conference talks will also be available to watch after the event.

> We've set a low ticket price of AUD $40, which amounts to around NZD $42 - a lot less than it would have cost to attend an in-person event.

> Now is the time to get your tickets booked. It's on the Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st November. **[Please go here to book](https://www.skepticon.org.au/product/2021-tickets/)**.

> Part of the fun of a conference is being able to connect with like-minded folk. We're still hopeful of being in a situation where local groups could gather for a Saturday evening dinner after the livestream has concluded for the day. Watch this space and hopefully we can make this happen.