Insidious corruption

A recent television news report stated that China has concerns over the political stance of Aotearoa. Our nation is New Zealand. Not Aotearoa New Zealand, and certainly not just Aotearoa.

When will this insidious corruption of our nationality cease? When will this be seen by government as grossly unacceptable?

At the signing of the Treaty, Maori used Niu Tirani as the country’s name. BRYAN JOHNSON

Omokoroa on a nationwide internet system that is meant to provide superfast access, although with cut backs that is unlikely. They are also spending another $50 billion on submarines that will finally be delivered by about 2050. Any other country will surely be able to provide their own examples.

This wastage sounds silly or just another government stuff-up due to lack of proper checking and double checking.

How could this money be better spenta few diseases cured, homeless people housed, hungry people fed, maybe that one teacher’s dream toy?

DENNIS FITZGERALD

Melbourne

have experienced for many millennia.

Niwa, the Office of the Prime Minister’s Science Advisory Committee and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, all agree that, based on several lines of evidence, the current warming trend is of human origin and is associated with increased production of greenhouse gases as a result of fossil fuel use, agriculture and deforestation.

New Zealand climate scientist Dr James Renwick says that there are just two ways to change the climate - either change the brightness of the sun, or change the amount of greenhouse gas in the air, and that human activity, mostly burning fossil fuels, is the only explanation for the way the atmosphere is changing and how that is changing climate. He says, “It lines up exactly with that ever-thicker duvet we’re draping over the globe.”

On the global warming controversy, Wikipedia states that no scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with these views, though a few organisations with members in extractive industries hold non-committal positions.

Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now report that, including 2018, the past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record, and, as Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director, Gavin Schmidt, says, this warming has been driven in large part by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities.

What more does the WCRC want as evidence?

As a region with an economic history of extractive industries in pounamu, gold, coal and timber, it is understandable that the WCRC wishes to defend its territory, but that should not be done on the basis of a false premise.

New Zealand, as a signatory to the Paris climate agreement, has an obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. This target is equivalent to 11 per cent below 1990 levels. The West Coast must play a contributory part.

China, also a signatory to the agreement, has obligations to reduce greenhouse gases, but it is reported that there was a surge in new coal projects approved at provincial level in China between 2014 and 2016 because of a decentralisation programme that shifted authority over coal plant construction approvals to local authorities. A study says government attempts to cancel many plants have failed.

Also abjectly failing are energy policies in the United States, and it is appalling that in President Trump’s over 5000-word 2019 State of the Union address he can say, “We have unleashed a revolution in American energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a nett exporter of energy”, but not utter the word ‘climate’ once. ROSS FORBES

Kerikeri