Too easy to buy your way out of polluting

SO the Otago Rally Club donated $8000 for a native bush planting programme on Harbour Cone (ODT, 25.8.22).

Is this the polluter trying to atone for bad behaviour with charity?

Motor vehicles are major contributors to the carbonisation of the atmosphere and at least partly responsible for climate change. Commendable as it is, the emissions trading scheme (based on the idea of paying for pollution) does nothing to eliminate the problem per se and can encourage forestry over farming.

Polluters, instead of modifying behaviour or desisting from damaging activities altogether, or working on technology changes, are encouraged to buy their way out of it.

The Otago Rally Club, through the MotorSport New Zealand Sustainability Fund, is simply throwing charity money around.

Is this the best way of building ‘‘a more sustainable New Zealand’’, as the report claims? The recipient of the donation, the Hereweka Harbour Cone Trust, is doing the environment no favours in taking the club’s money, even if it seems to serve a good cause.

It is this mindlessness that allows climate change to take its full course. E. Kolig Portobello

Truancy’s beginnings

ONE News ran a story about New Zealand's appalling school attendance rate (22.8.22).

The Government’s response is to have an expensive advertising campaign to make it attractive for students to attend school.

In the same item, a school principal made the amazing statement there was no truancy before colonialism.

With this leftwing, woke stuff being pushed here, it is no wonder kids don't want to go to school.

I would suggest this principal leaves history to those who stick to facts rather than promote his version of anticolonialism.

Maybe he could give us the school attendance figures precolonialism? Barrie Leslie

Owaka