| Life Bill Ralston
Anything that deters people from keeping their homes warm over winter is dumb.
It is funny that at this time of year, every year, it gets cold, wet and windy. Personally, I blame it on a season called winter, but most of the mainstream media seem to be blaming the weather gods for some kind of icy apocalypse surprise.
One news organisation I looked at said the country was in for “a rare snow event”. Curiously, the Southern Alps and the mountains of the central North Island appear to experience a “rare snow event” for several months of every year, yet this is enough to spur media into a frenzy. Another outlet warned of a “brutal cold snap: ice warnings, heavy rain and snow for the next four days”. That this should occur in July apparently is astonishing.
I know we have passed the shortest day of the year and many people now expect a speedy arrival of spring, but that is unlikely for at least another eight weeks. In Auckland, you should expect it to happen the week before Christmas. July is the month in which we should be frantically feeding logs into wood burners and fireplaces, turning the heat pump up to thermonuclear maximum, wearing several layers of fleecy clothing and blessing our beloved merinos.
Thus, with impeccable timing, local bodies such as the Canterbury Regional Council are choosing to crack down on old log burners. According to
300 anxious souls complaining at a community meeting, council staff are driving around the streets of Timaru with torches trying to spot smoking chimneys. I would point out to the council that, strangely, chimneys are known to occasionally emit smoke because that is their function. What council snoops should be more worried about is the effect of black ice on the roads they are creeping about on.
Weather is the most dangerous thing in New Zealand aside, perhaps, from the terrain. It will kill you. Our flora and fauna are positively benign, but the climate can be murderous. I recently read a story about an American teenager who woke up one night in the wilds of Colorado to find a bear chomping on his head. Naturally he objected, and eventually the critter was scared away by other folk. This could not happen in New Zealand. You might be spooked in the dark by a foully grunting possum, a wild goat might nibble on your sleeping bag or you could find a friendly weta camping deep in one of your boots, but we have no animals that will treat you as fodder.
In New Zealand, most of us, apart from vegans and vegetarians, eat animals. They do not eat us. However, if you are out in the bush, a rapid change in the weather will bring on hypothermia and even death at any time of year – and especially now. If you are elderly, unwell or very young, you do not need to be outdoors. You can die in your own home because of the cold, which should make the council chimney spies in Timaru think twice before swooping on homes with smoke-belching wood burners.
Anything, such as a hefty council fine, that deters people from keeping their homes warm over winter, is dangerous and dumb.
I am as concerned as the next bloke about pollution and climate change, even if on frosty mornings I secretly yearn for just a little global warming as my bare feet hit the timber floor. Yet I am sure there are many worse sources of carbon emissions in Godzone than a 15-year-old noncompliant wood burner. Staring at an electric heat pump high on the wall just isn’t the same as gazing at leaping flames, whatever Stephen Fleming might tell us.
Council staff are driving around the streets of Timaru with torches trying to spot smoking chimneys.