Letters: Can our city take the strain of a population explosion?

Just commenting on Mark Ward's comment on Whanganui (Chronicle, December 31). He praises our economic growth and making it a place where people want to live.

I, and I know of countless others, can't see the benefit of our population exploding as we don't have the infrastructure to cope with this. It has caused traffic woes and gridlock around town, housing shortages and skyrocketing rents (that's if you can get a rental).

Our health services are struggling.

Our town is not the laid-back, enjoyable place it used to be.

He says we have maintained our affordable lifestyle. Is he for real? How have we maintained our affordable lifestyle when fewer and fewer young couples can afford to buy a house? More and more families are having to rely on food banks and welfare to survive.
People are living in cars, people are renting tiny sheds that are parked in friends or relatives' gardens.

I think the wealthy live in a bubble and have absolutely no idea what it's like to struggle on a benefit or low wage, and that includes our politicians.

It would have been nice to have a community family event at Cooks Gardens on New Year's Eve to maybe give hope to the new year. It would help to bring the community together in a positive way.

Anyway, here's to a new decade, and I'm grateful to still have my family, my health and my faculties still in one piece. May 2020 be a good year with no more tragedies, drama, and horrendous weather events that change countless lives.

P. RODGERS
Castlecliff

Climate change clarity

So, councillor Alan Taylor wants the WDC to declare a "climate emergency". In councillor Taylor's opinion piece (Chronicle, February 5) he does not actually state what impact that declaration would have, apart from "making people think" and that it would mean "climate would sit at the top of council thought processes and decisions".

Can he explain in detail the subsequent impact such decisions would have on the citizens of Whanganui? For example, will this generate additional bureaucracy, compliance and further costs? What effect will that declaration have on Whanganui's climate or for that matter the global situation when New Zealand produces just 0.17per cent of all man-made global warming emissions.

To declare in his article that "we are all going to die" is both irrational and irresponsible.

As a leader in the community, Taylor has a responsibility to ensure his statements are both reasoned and legitimate without the need to resort to dramatic scaremongering.

The ideology and hysteria surrounding climate change is capable of being every bit as dogmatic and authoritarian as religious indoctrination. Anyone who dares to question, or challenges any point, is automatically labelled a climate change denier.

So, just for the record, I'm not denying climate change; there always has been and always will be climate change. Just how much is attributed to human activity is and should be questioned and debated.

Perhaps councillor Taylor could concentrate on core council activities and do something to really make a constructive and positive impact for our city and our environment, by focusing his energies on enterprises such as kerbside recycling.

DAVE HILL
Whanganui

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