Switching off for greater good
By VIRGINIA WINDER
THE man in charge of weather in New Zealand is switching off for the greater good.
Climate Change Minister David Parker, whose title instantly conjures images of a weather wizard from a Harry Potter novel, is doing his bit to stop global warming.
“In the flat I’m in I make sure I turn off the heated towel rail when I’m not there,” the list MP says, of his Wellington digs.
“I buy energy efficient light bulbs, unless it’s one (light fitting) that doesn’t take one.”
Talking to reporters at a climate change conference in the capital, Parker goes way beyond his own bathroom.
“There’s no doubt that climate change is happening,” he says.
The impact of melting polar caps and rising sea levels hit home when he attended an international conference on the heated subject earlier this year.
For two days, talking heads from around the globe talked about storms, escalating temperatures and the alarming increase of C02, which acts like a thermal drape preventing heat from the sun leaving Earth’s atmosphere.
While the topic was tossed about like a softball, a leader from Bangladesh sat patiently listening to the exchanges.
Parker says the man finally made his pitch. “He said ‘if the sea was to rise by one metre, we would have to move 30 million people’.”
That one comment stunned the father of three, who goes on to talk about the home-blown effects. “For New Zealand the results are less extreme but nevertheless serious. It will be wetter in the west and drier in the east.”
Parker also says there will be more storms and describes why in domestic terms: “It’s just like boiling a kettle – as it heats up it lets off more steam.”
Just like the sceptics, who Parker fobs off with facts and figures. “The scientists are more than 90% sure they are right.”
And with a warning: “The world only has a decade or two to get their emissions under control. The governments of the world are united on this subject.”
Apart from, he says earlier, the United States, Kazakhstan, and Australia, who are not among the 163 countries who have signed the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming.
1 comment:
This post underscores the simple idea that we can each do our part. My husband and I made a list of all the things we could do to live out our responsibility to the environment and have begun to make the same kind of changes as David Parker has: lightbulbs, unplugging electronics, a Hybrid car, cloth shopping bags, changing the thermostat, etc. There is more to do, of course, like solar panels and avoidance of plastics. I think, though, that the key for global progress on the environment is to make science "cool" again. For the past two decades, we have been enthralled with entertainment technology but not science for science's sake. I like the idea of scientific consilience--that all knowledge (physics, math, geography, genetics, chemistry, sociology, biology) is worthwhile, that it teaches us about our world (even our God) and can lead us to the Greater Good. Thanks for this blog. See more of my ideas on consilience and the Greater Good at www.inspiritry.com.
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