Mike McRoberts, vegan
‘The school strike protests made me feel ashamed of what we hadn’t done as a generation,’ says the broadcaster. Mikaela Wilkes reports.
Newshub had to do some tactful filming of the School Strike 4 Climate protests in 2019 when one of their anchors abruptly – and against work policy – hopped into the front line with his thenteenage daughter, who was one of the coorganisers.
It was around this time in his journalism career that Mike McRoberts reckons climate change really popped on to the concern radar of the general New Zealand public.
‘‘The sight of thousands of kids passionately demonstrating made a lot of us sit up and think, it certainly grabbed my attention,’’ he says. ‘‘I actually felt quite ashamed of what we hadn’t done as a generation, over the last 20 or 30 years.
‘‘My daughter was front and centre holding a banner, and stuck me next to her. I thought about how it would not play well with work for about five seconds. And then I looked at her and thought, why the hell not? I support her and I support what she is doing.’’
Journalists have an obligation to be impartial but this subject is one of those things that McRoberts says is hard to keep quiet about.
‘‘If it is happening, it is happening. I got sick of climate change sceptics being interviewed for stories because there is really no need to hear their opinion.’’
The first step in his journey to a greener personal life was entirely inadvertent. He used to do a lot of running and endurance sports that left him with a debilitating knee injury.
He had undergone a number of ineffectual procedures but happened to be in Japan for a story and realised that his knee was feeling really good, the best it had done in a long time.
He was not eating a lot of meat before then but had been on a diet of standard Japanese fare like noodles, miso and seafood.
‘‘I worked out it was probably because I wasn’t having dairy. I thought, well, I will give this vegan thing a go and have not looked back.’’
One in 10 New Zealanders are vegetarian and more of us than ever are embracing entirely plant-based diets, for myriad reasons such as price, preference and moral beliefs.
That means plant-based food options are becoming more widely available and understood. But they almost always pale in comparison to the meaty canape´ s served at events or restaurants, McRoberts says, and are underwhelming or non-existent at petrol stations and rural roadside stops.
On the road to Whakata¯ ne to report on the Whakaari White Island tragedy, he recalls going into a couple of restaurants and asking if they had anything vegan: ‘‘I was met with stares of uh, no – almost like I was accusing them of something,’’ he jokes.
‘‘And then I said, well have you got avocado? Yeah.