Letter of the week: Graham Dunster, Grey Lynn
I applaud and support Jacinda Ardern and Labour's concentration on addressing the Covid situation, but the irrefutable outcome of continuing to ignore the changing climate condemns us all, and future generations, to an existence that is still mostly avoidable.
Labour has a majority
in Parliament and does not need to get permission to act, so, now is the time to take back control of electricity from the private sector, ban the importation of fossil-fuelled vehicles from January 1, 2022 (yes, the start of next year), and set an example that will help inspire the world to follow suit.
We have done this with Covid, with Christchurch, with so many things, now is the time to do the same with climate change.
Guarding the gate
In Canvas (Weekend Herald, August 21), Diana Wichtel refers to a letter entitled "In defence of science" by myself and six colleagues, and published in the Listener on July 31.
She seems to suggest that there was no need for us to "guard the gate" against the infiltration of indigenous knowledge. The main point of our letter was to draw attention to an NCEA proposal to include in the Māori school curriculum a discussion "on the ways in which science has been used to support the dominance of Eurocentric views (among which, its use as a rationale for colonisation of Māori and the suppression of Māori)."
Mātauranga Māori is already well entrenched in educational and scientific policy and funding. We questioned, though, whether indigenous knowledge is the equivalent of science.
There still seems to be respect for science, evident in the ways we have responded to the Covid-19 threat, and much of the public (and private) response to our letter seems to verify that respect. We are less sure it is appreciated by science administrators.
Michael Corballis, Emeritus Professor, School of Psychology, University of Auckland.
Covid future
Level 4 lockdowns are an effective technique to reduce the rate of spread of infectious
diseases, but to sell them as elimination strategies sets up false expectations which are doomed to be disappointed.
Even when we reach our achievable population vaccination level, the evolving virus will continue to present. Aotearoa has taken slow pathways to choosing, ordering, and approving the most expensive vaccine, with some emerging evidence that it may also have the briefest efficacy.
Our team of five million needs to be told both to commit to the preservation of good community vaccination levels and that our future includes Covid infections with brief illnesses, some hospitalisations and relatively uncommon deaths.
Graham Mellsop, Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland.
Supply lines
Following H Anderson's letter (Weekend Herald, August 21) about undervalued supermarket workers, it is unbelievable that it is taking so long for these workers to receive a mass vaccination programme. They are the front line in our food chain, exposed to large numbers of the public each day but have remained unprotected.
Nevertheless, they have cheerfully kept us supplied with the necessities of life and more. They deserve better.
James Taylor, Ōrewa
