Trees are only one problem though. A generation of children have grown up with the message that if they eat animal fats they will sicken and die, as they will if they go outside without protection from the sun. And now, not surprisingly, we have a call for the Government to fund intermediate and secondary schools to provide shade for their pupils.
Admittedly that call comes from a company that manufactures shade sails and the like, so might well have been inspired by the hope that of making hay while the sun shines, to coin a phrase. Such is the degree to which our lives are governed by the ridiculously risk-averse that it is not difficult to believe some will think it makes sense though, and some within the Ministry of Education and other Government departments will believe they are exposing themselves to prosecution.
It's extraordinary how quick some people are to bemoan the amount of tax they have to pay yet take every opportunity to exhort the Government to spend more. One suspects that this call for the funding of shade at schools will fall on fertile ground, however, given our status as the world's most vulnerable population to melanoma, a risk that many of us are apparently ignoring.
The big news last week was that the University of Otago had looked at staff and students at 10 Dunedin schools' sports days last summer, finding that only 3 per cent of college students, and less than 25 per cent of their adult supervisors, were wearing 'sun protective' hats. Primary school kids, and certainly pre-schoolers, who are much easier to manipulate, presumably did better, the problem being that as kids get older hats lose their sartorial appeal. Ergo, if they won't wear the hats that will save them from melanoma at some point down the track, the Government must provide schools with the money they need to erect shade, and so save the kids from themselves. Failing to do that raises the spectre of the Government falling foul of its own health and safety regulations.
Not altogether surprisingly, the shade sail manufacturer that came to this conclusion appeared ready, willing and able to be of service, providing whatever schools might need to protect their pupils from a death sentence. If the Ministry of Education doesn't take heed it will more likely be because it doesn't have the money rather than failure to accept the conclusion that sending kids to schools whose grounds are not shaded puts those kids in mortal peril.
It's time now to say enough is enough. Spending untold millions on school shade won't save anyone. For a start children only attend school for say 30 hours a week over 38 weeks of the year, which does not include eight or more of the sunniest weeks of the year, and even in this day and age the majority of that time will be spent indoors. The sun's death rays can only get them during their lunch and other breaks, a tiny fraction of the time they will likely spend outdoors during their childhood.
The threat of melanoma is very real, and those with pale skin in particular should avoid over-exposure to the sun. But remember, the message used to be to avoid severe sunburn, which is still good advice. Somehow we have gone beyond that, to the point where we are now being told, and some no doubt believe, that any exposure to the sun could be fatal.
If this goes on we will inevitably reach the point where children are not allowed to venture outdoors at any time between sunrise and sunset.
And let's remember that school is only a small part of a child's learning process. Just like those who see a school's responsibility as including the teaching of religion, moral values, how to open a bank account and much more that was once up to their parents and families, those who believe their offspring, or more likely the offspring of others, desperately need somewhere shady to play and eat their school day lunch if they are going to stand a chance of making old bones ignore the fact that by far the greatest risk is posed by what they do outside school hours.
Perhaps the day is coming when we will be told that our back lawns must be shaded, and beaches will be closed to those who don't have umbrellas and sunblock.
The fact is that our environment does damage to our bodies. That is a law of nature. If we are sensible we do what we can, without becoming obsessive about it, to minimise that damage, but however careful we might be we cannot avoid it entirely. (A nurse at Kaitaia Hospital once told the writer that just that week she had seen a farmer, not because of anything to do with exposure to the sun, whose skin was "just ruined. And he was only 68." The significance of that was not immediately apparent, but one assumes he was suitably chastened).
The degree to which we protect ourselves against the natural environment and our own behaviour is up to us, although parents should obviously take sensible precautions to protect their children from, among other things, dangerous exposure to the sun. That means teaching them to avoid severe sunburn, not that the sun is to be avoided at every opportunity. It is hardly coincidental that some health authorities are now warning that lack of exposure to the sun is depriving some children of the vitamin D they need to guard against, for example, rickets, a disease not seen for decades.
We should be encouraging our children to make the most of our wonderful part of the world instead of brainwashing them into seeing it as more dangerous than it actually is. But we can always take comfort from knowing that if a child falls out of a tree and injures himself he will at least be lying in the shade (assuming it is not a deciduous tree in the middle of winter) while he waits for the ambulance.
