A welcome reprieve

Our Mayor, Neil Holdom, is reported in last week’s paper as saying that the announcement by Jacinda Ardern of a halt to the further exploration for oil and gas is a ‘‘kick ion the guts for the region’’.

For a start, she is not announcing termination of the extractive industry itself, only not looking for more! We need what we have found to carry us through until we can function without such an abject dependence on fossil fuels.

It is high time we made the first serious moves in the right direction, and diverted the scientific, engineering and financial resources into developing the alternatives - sun, wind and water, all of which we have in abundance here in the ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’.

Our oil and gas reserve will come to no harm where it is, safely in the ground and available when it is really needed.

We need to leave something for our children and their descendants and we do not have to risk our precious unique ecological resource unnecessarily. Bear in mind that the previous National government seemed hell bent on drilling in the Tasman! Remember what happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sooner or later that could and almost certainly will happen here. Here we have a welcome reprieve!

So this is a logical, sensible and realistic first step in the right direction. ‘The hand on the tiller’ turning the ship around and putting it back on the right course.

Congratulations, Jacinda, for such a courageous and sensible move! (Abridged)

Fridtjof Hanson

New Plymouth