Airline’s green-wash campaign

Big spending announcements of an extension to Wellington Airport facilities and light rail to Auckland Airport would seem to defy the intent of the Zero Carbon Bill.

The current exclusion of international flights from any costs for emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) does not warrant the longterm confidence to make an investment of this size.

At the current price for CO2 of $25/t, foresters are able to outbid farmers on all classes of land except those under dairying, horticulture and cropping. There are 5.3m ha of this class of land that is not already in woody vegetation or in tussock. There is a constant supply of such farm land coming on the market due to the natural process of ageing farmers selling as they retire.

Air New Zealand realises that by purchasing land, it can limit its future costs of emitting CO2 to the cost of sequestering a tonne of carbon in a forest, irrespective of future rises in the price of carbon. Its costs will equate to about 6 cents per litre of fuel; certainly not enough to move to zero emissions.

Air New Zealand has no intention of reducing emissions: all it feels it need do is to secure control of a supply of carbon credits, and make token reductions in emissions to power a green-wash campaign.

Dave Read, Wairoa

Plant not up to it

Sludge washed up on the north end of Titahi Bay beach just before Labour Weekend. The smell was horrific, and not rotting seaweed. There was also a strange Fanta-coloured liquid I had never seen before.

Porirua City Council will soon be applying for a new resource consent to ramp up flow through the clapped-out sewage plant. The council will try to cast a veneer of efficiency to the community, who need to demand better.

The reality is the plant has not been complying with the very old resource consent conditions for years.

The sea-water testing is also negligible so the true extent of damage to the Titahi Bay coastal environment remains unknown. The operators of the plant also self-monitor which seems dodgy.

I agree with Extinction Rebellion that we need to step up. This requires a total change in attitude, responsibility and management to protect our environment

for future generations. Business as usual and blow the consciences is the epitome of corruption and destruction.

Tracey Waters, Titahi Bay

Midwives mucked around

In Wellington women struggle to find community midwives (Oct 27), Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter is quoted as saying the ``current model [of maternity care] doesn’t seem to serve either pregnant women or midwives as well as it should’’.

We assume she means the model isn’t serving the needs of women as it could due to workforce resourcing issues. There is considerable and growing evidence that continuity of midwifery care provides superior outcomes for women and babies. We assume politicians would want this model to continue to be available.

We agree with Genter’s further statement that more needs to be done to address working conditions for midwives. Years of neglect have led to inadequate resourcing and lack of structural support around community midwives.

What isn’t serving midwives and women well are the protracted negotiations over pay and working conditions which community midwives have been unwittingly stuck within for over four years. This, coupled with a major breach of trust and lack of transparency by the Ministry of Health, has eroded the trust and goodwill of many midwives.

Changes to the funding model are proposed, including the development of structural and organisational support for community midwives and fair and reasonable pay. Women want a maternity service that provides them with a known and trusted midwife. Midwives want to provide that care. It is up to politicians and policymakers to get on with it. Alison Eddy, chief executive,

NZ College of Midwives

While it is ideal to have one’s own midwife, there is nothing wrong with hospital-based midwives. It can be an advantage to have more than one highlytrained health professional looking after you because they will have different perspectives and more collective experience.

As long as a midwife is competent, confident and professional, women don’t need to fear that hospital-based care is in any way inferior to community-based midwifery services.

Helen Carver (retired midwife), Dannevirke

Suffer the little children

We should all be appalled that the gloating, morbid tone of Trump’s description of the ``suicide’’ death of the Isis leader seems to forget that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s children were innocent bystanders, executed due to the perilous games of adults with lots of firepower.

What also is bizarre is that the Kurds were in on that joint action yet not mentioned by Trump in his publicityseeking announcement.

Children are caught up everywhere in mindless wars, most of which are unholy, and all unwholesome, and run by deranged, narcissistic leaders who only have known privilege and education yet who lack a sense of history, geography and religion.

Rob Buchanan, Kerikeri

Actions and consequences

I have noticed a recent tendency in the media to seek opinion comment from Dr this and Prof that on almost everything. This concerns me. Whilst acknowledging the skills and knowledge they have, they see the world through the academic lens, where the issues of the world require the binocular vision of the worldly.

We have (Oct 29) a professor arguing that the risk posed by returned terrorists is low, which illustrated a lack of understanding of risk assessment. Risk is a combination of likelihood and consequences.

The likelihood of a returning terrorist doing something may be low but the consequences are potentially enormous (eg Christchurch).

We also have an ``emerging scientist’’ (ie, student) arguing that GE/GM will avert climate change and that New Zealand should promote GE development outside the laboratory (Oct 29).

The ``risk’’ from GE is that every GE product must be ``owned’’ by some organisation both morally and commercially. I think the risk of a commercial organisation having total control of the food chain meets the ``enormous consequences’’ category.

Thank goodness our politicians are reelected every three years. This makes them morally accountable (ie, afraid of consequences) for those decisions.

Bill Aitchison, Carterton

Now they’ve got my vote ...

With the local elections over and mayors and councillors in their new seats I find that they are not so keen to correspond with people any more.

Three of the candidates in Lower Hutt I corresponded with before the elections via email have decided that now they have been elected they no longer need to do so.

All said they would do something if elected – simple tasks like getting questions answered – but none has done so. One hasn’t even bothered to reply to my email now that he is elected.

These people had better remember that they can just as easily be voted out next time.

I wondered why people didn’t vote in local body elections. Now I know one of the reasons why.

Karl Oliver, Lower Hutt