Wyn Drabble: Never did us any harm, or did it?

If the heavy seas continue the Buller district is facing an environment disaster similar to the Fox River. Photo / File

As I write, there is quite unsettling news out of the Buller district. If the heavy seas continue, there will be a landfill washout worse than the earlier Fox one.

By the time you read this, it may have already happened.

What could make it worse than the Fox event is the fact that this landfill contains 50s and 60s industrial waste staples such as asbestos and lead paint. Tasman sea creatures are going to love that.

Mother Crayfish: Eat up your kina or there'll be no pudding.
Baby: But it tastes overwhelmingly of asbestos and lead.
Mother: If you don't eat it, I'll tell your father when he gets home. And stop using big words like overwhelmingly.
Baby: What's for pudding anyway?
Mother: Plastic.

The frightening thing is that those waste products were the stuff of my childhood. In schools, we were surrounded by lead paint while asbestos looked on from above – probably fell on to our very persons.

Mrs D says that if they were good in science they were allowed to play with the mercury!
Yet, look how we turned out.
Okay, please don't comment on that.

It's strange, however, that grown people utter the escape clause, "It didn't do us any harm."

Maybe, maybe not.

Wyn Drabble

People say the same about getting the strap or the cane. "Made me what I am!" a bloke might say.

Well, let me tell you here and now that getting the strap sent me into emotional turmoil. I could never remember which exercise book was the thickest. You needed the thickness because an exercise book was what you shoved down the back of your shorts to protect you from the blow.

If you couldn't remember which exercise book afforded most protection, I suppose you could always have added a layer of asbestos.

Or permanently worn asbestos underpants.

In the Fox and Buller situations, there wasn't a lot of forward thinking. Could the same problems reoccur with electric cars, for example? I went through a phase of wanting one but then wondered what would become of all the old batteries.

Maybe that has all been sorted but I wouldn't want them to end up in Fox or Buller landfills, contaminating the lead, asbestos and plastic.

The same goes for the food and drink we consume. How could we have thought ahead when so many studies were going to confirm then deny what we believe.

One week you shouldn't drink coffee, the next – according to a real study – you can have up to six before any negative impact. I have three strong ones before I leave home in the morning so, on current thinking, I'm safe. Next week, who knows?

Alcohol consumption studies tend to flip-flop as well. In this matter, I tend to go with the gut-feeling.

Forward thinking might also have prevented so many people living right on the coastline.

Yes, I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but currently there is no denying that the sea is winning the coastal erosion battle, that the polar caps are melting and that the climate is changing,

I'll be long gone but, in the foreseeable future, Dunedin could become a favourite tropical getaway, though – if we stop and think ahead for a moment – it will probably all be under water. Larnach Castle might be left peeping out from the briny.

Sorry if I'm coming across as very bleak today but I'm just trying to do a bit of forward thinking before I too end up in the landfill. Given enough notice before the event, I will remove all plastics from about my person before my demise.

Well, at least the ones I know about.

It's the least I can do.

Mending the planet is looking increasingly unachievable. I want to help but it's becoming more difficult by the day.