Take a stand against damage of Rena

At the time of writing this article, I am listening to the devastating news as tonnes of fuel oil from the Rena reaches Bay of Plenty beaches.

Our family spent quite a few years living along that coastline. Every weekend was spent playing in the sand, swimming in the sea and walking around or up the Mount or Mauao, as it is known by local iwi.

The biodiversity is rich and diverse and we would spend whole afternoons exploring the rocky shores of Mauao, discovering all sorts of amazing lifeforms such as brightly coloured starfish, and octopuses, to name just a couple.

This is the environment where my own children discovered their love for and awe of nature. It is so rich in life and beauty that it is the norm for the young people of the region to be outside among it, rather than vegetating behind a screen all day.

Now they stand helplessly on the shore unable to do anything but watch as the oil and wrecked Rena containers spew their contents onto the beaches of this very special part of New Zealand.

"People are now looking at the Government's proposals for deepsea oil drilling with fresh eyes. They can see the obvious - that if we can't deal with a leak of thousands of litres in 100m of water just offshore, how could we possibly hope to deal with a leak of millions of litres at depths of thousands of metres?" - Phil Goff 12/10/11.

"As New Zealanders, we love our pristine beaches ... but they are under serious threat from a combination of reckless Government policy and the global oil industry's pursuit of extreme oil.

The world is running out of cheap oil. The oil industry is chasing the hard-to-reach stuff, and is looking for countries with an eye for a fast buck - and a relaxed attitude to environmental protection - to get access to that oil.

Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee is promoting Aotearoa as just such a place, a frontier in the search for "new oil". The Government is auctioning off the rights to drill off some of the country's most spectacular pieces of coast, such as Northland's West Coast, the East Cape, and Foveaux Strait.

"The water in some of these areas is up to 3000m deep - far deeper than the water the Deepwater Horizon was working in when it lost control of its test well, spilling 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico." - Greenpeace "Save our beaches from Oil" fact sheet, 2011.

If you love our beaches, stand up and have your voice counted to protect them. Over 90,000 Kiwis have already signed the petition to stop deepsea oil exploration in NZ.

Go to www.greenpeace.org.nz/oil to sign the petition yourself. Prevention is better than in ineffective clean-up.

Lisa Talbot is a mother, gardener and environmental educator.