From young urban dwellers telling us rurals what we can and can't do, along with Maori activists worried about drilling holes miles offshore but seemingly not concerned about over-fishing and stripping of paua beds.
Everybody loves the environment, they tell me all the time, especially young urban dwellers telling us rurals what we can and mostly can’t do, along with Maori activists worried about drilling holes miles offshore but seemingly not concerned at all about over-fishing and stripping of paua beds.
Hypocrisy rules, OK!
Universities churn out graduates in environmental studies who seemingly have never seen the Periodic Table, which lists all the elements that are already here.
Earnest young environmentalists at the regional council test the mud where we used to clean the muck off our boats and discovered a few parts per million of copper. That leads to the banning of boat cleaning!
Any mining geologist could point out that the hill beside the boat harbour has copper that is nearly mining grade in the subsoil and that is the source of the copper. Too bad, doesn’t fit the nasty polluter model!
Iwis’ attitude to fishing is outrageous.
They gain quota on the historic basis of old fishing rights but do they then use this quota to provide employment for today’s young unemployed Maori fishermen?
Er, no! They rent the quota to slave labour employing Asian fishing boats that land every fish they can with virtually no supervision.
Contract fishermen raid inshore snapper grounds to make a paltry dollar or two a kilogram for fish that are better caught by tourists.
Big trawlers regularly land 500-tonne loads and you have to wonder how that could be sustainable.
Yet these cheeky ocean raiders dare to oppose offshore miners such as Chatham Rock Phosphate, which would replace the need to raid Pacific Island guano deposits.
Our harbours are full of phosphates and nitrates from run-off so removing some from the sea seems balanced to me.
Regional council staff would much prefer stopping well-off boat owners from cleaning their boat bottoms than preventing fertiliser run-off and soil erosion, which are the two biggest sea pollutants.
Fly over any of our harbours after a heavy rainstorm, look at the brown water and see for yourself.
It’s not much better ashore where anti-mining protesters have prevented the mining (and hence removal from the environment) of cinnabar (mercury ore) deposits. So the mercury stays in the environment, leaching into the rivers and harbours.
Readers will know how stupid the Hazardous Activities and Industries List (HAIL) tests are for any building on rural soils.
Yet no action is taken by these know-it-all recent environment graduates and their masters when we already know that harbours have higher concentrations of most of the elements we are forced to test for on the land.
We need to have a balanced discussion on the real issues with the environment; not the ill-informed, celebrity-driven newsbite discussion we have now.
Wayne Brown has an engineering degree and is a fellow of the Institute of Professional Engineers and a former Far North Mayor.
Tune into NBR Radio on Monday to hear Wayne discussing this column.
