Don’t forget Clive

Congratulations to the residents of Okahu Road on the proposed sealing of their road, as an exresident who lived there for eight years in the 1980s, with it unsealed, quite happily, as it had a really good smooth surface, apart from the very beginning going up the hill where it was full of corrugations, which they did seal after I had been there a couple of years — thankfully.

Do invite Clive Patterson to your party, as he showed a big interest in the said road, despite living in Cooper’s Beach. But I wouldn’t know if the letter he wrote to Jackie Robson, FNDC, made any difference as she seemed to dismiss it rather casually at the time.

Do enjoy your ‘do,’ and one day when I’m up that way, I’ll go and try it out, and maybe visit Don Lilly. And I’d really like to catch up with Mate Radich, who I used to play cricket with back them.

TIM GLASSON

Kaikohe

PS: And I’d like to commend Mrs Faye

Irwin-Erceg for her efforts and precise targeting to the road. I didn’t know that the sealed portion of the road was northeast. I would have thought it was somewhere west.

We also need to consider the shared cost of moving from highcarbon industries and should not preclude any ideas ahead of time. Fresh thinking means using the best of everything.

Right now we have a waste mountain, rejected by the traditional recycling nations of China and Malaysia. They don’t want our rubbish any more, and the processes used to ‘recycle’ it are phenomenal polluters.

Waste to Energy (W2E) recycling has a part to play, and I will ignore the screams I can hear from the zero waste proponents and persist. One plant in the South Island, two in the North Island, no waste to landfill, everything by rail to the W2E plants to generate low-cost electricity to help power the shift from carbon-intense industries.

Placed on the rail network, this alternative to trucks and landfill could subsidise rail and

get more trucks off the road and more people into carriages. It could be phased out once the waste mountain is dealt with and alternative production has taken root.

W2E was attacked and derided in this country and others throughout the years while our ‘recycled’ rubbish was sent to filthy, out-of-sight recycling plants.

The recent French riots showed those in high-carbon sectors will protect jobs first in the absence of tangible offers of transition to low-carbon economies. And well they might. The transition must be shared. The burden of climate action needs to drive sustainable economic growth and social progress.

The Just Transition tabled recently by European unions looks for a shift to low-carbon economies that are sustainable

and fair on those who stand to lose out, especially workers in high-carbon industries.

Just Transition must carry clear evidence of lifestyle and prosperity for ordinary people. They have to see what they can get out of it. In New Zealand this could include cheap electricity generated while we return the waste mountain to the carbon cycle itself.

Marginalising W2E is hypocritical in the context of the hideous waste creation today. That single laptop the zero-waste proponent uses to peck out their dreamland treatise left behind 30 tonnes of waste, the iPhone their life is lived on left even more. GEOFF VAUSE

Wellington