Once again Nicola Patrick has used her position as an opinion writer for the Wanganui Chronicle to criticise fellow Horizons regional councillors when they do not enjoy the same generous space to reply.
She again harps on about reducing eating meat, eliminating oil and gas exploration and planting trees as the means of saving the planet, but not a single mention as to the key destroyers of our atmosphere — ever populating, polluting humans. Dirty coal also gets a let-off.
First, meat producing animals have been on Earth in their multi-millions long before man started multiplying. Their methane gas emissions last at most around a dozen years in the atmosphere, while fossil fuel emissions last up to hundreds of years. Choose sleeping in a closed shed with farting cows or a car running. The lentils Nicola has replaced meat with will unlikely be grown in NZ, either.
There are over 110,000 commercial aeroplane flights carrying 9 million passengers per day, before we even start to add up cargo transportation squirting deadly gases directly into the atmosphere. Seven per cent growth per annum — requiring an extra 600,000 pilots, we are told — in the next year or so.
Once the use of gas is eliminated, what will heat homes and cook meals? Barely enough electricity now, but no details given. Electric cars will leave god-forsaken mountains of waste batteries that have a limited lifespan up to 12 years and are unable to be recycled.
The Greens' great tree-planting plans will cause more problems, unless we see some sound management plans in place. Look at the shambles we have witnessed of late with flooding made worse by forestry waste.
Finally, Nicola, what jobs will there be for the thousands of workers who will lose out under this Green plan?
PHILSON SHERRIFF
Marton
New system
If your correspondent Angel Stratton (letters, June 12) thought it through she would see that the changes have resulted in a win-win situation for pedestrians and motorists.
Previously if a pedestrian just missed their phase they would have to wait for two traffic phases, now they can cross on each traffic phase without having to wait for long and only have to walk marginally further. Motorists no longer have to wait out a long pedestrian phase, often when nobody is crossing, when someone pushes the button then crosses on the traffic phase. The new system results in savings in both time and fuel.
F FOSTER
Durie Hill
Prison answer
Brilliant! Chris Bishop, National police spokesperson has come up with the solution to prison overpopulation.
When Labour proposed that they would put more police on the streets, Bishop said with more police there would be more arrests and more prisoners.
I was just surprised that he didn't propose the obvious solution if he extrapolated in the other direction.
If increasing police increases prison population, reducing police will begin to empty prisons.
Think of the money saved with no police and no prisons. The "hard-done-by taxpayers" will be thrilled.
JOHN MILNES
Wanganui
Claim disputed
Mary Byrne is wrong in her claim that the Schluter and Lee (2016) study showed no difference in the oral health of children due to fluoridation.
The paper says: "Significant and sustained differences were observed between Māori and non-Māori children, and between CWF and non-CWF exposed groups." (CWF = community water fluoridation).
Mary Byrne, leader of an anti-fluoride activist group, is referring to non-Māori children data alone, which has not been corrected for ethnic differences.
Schluter and Lee in their paper report the need for this correction because Pacifica children, who have notably poorer dental health, are concentrated in fluoridated areas and this distorts the raw data.
When the data is corrected for ethnic differences, the beneficial effects of CWF are clear for Pakeha and Asian children as well.
DR KEN PERROTT
Science adviser, Making Sense of Fluoride
Hamilton