The south of the country is blanketed with heavy snow and cold chilly winds cast their veil over the North Island, hence this is causing many people to
doubt that we are heating the planet up by the burning of fossil fuels.
Regrettably scientists have done an exceptionally poor job of explaining what global warming and climate change is.
To put it simply our planet is having a fever ...
What is this fever? Well when a human has a fever we get hot and cold and we oscillate between these two extremes in an endeavour to improve our wellbeing.
Like scorching hot droughts, then shivering cold blizzards and sweat like floods to either have hot spells or cold spells oscillating adfinitum or
until a healing takes place.
Mother earth has a escalating fever, and what she is doing is attempting to balance these extremes that she is going through.
James Lovelock the instigator of Gaia theory (Greek for the Earth Mother/Goddess) that the earth is a colossal organism sees this very clearly.
However many scientists refuse to acknowledge that out planet is a super organism. They have huge difficulties with the mythical word mother earth.
To many of them, our planet is a piece of rock with water and life somehow clinging to it. They see it as some mechanical machine.
Regrettably many hard core scientists are either disdainful or frightened to see a planet with all its life as having some sort of sentience, they
fear it may bring religion into the equation, or spirituality, and words such as In my fathers house there are many mansions. This causes them consternation.
Yet, ask any mother if our planet is a living organism that goes through cycles and the majority will say YES, of course!
The same for indigenous peoples.
So this is the continuing challenge for science. To clearly state why we are going through these extremes of hot and cold. However, for those of you
who are reading this be assured, that due to our over population and the onslaught of mans industry, we are indeed putting far too much pressure on
our planet for it to keep itself in a balanced state. The result? Climate change is accelerating, and we have to act NOW to reverse it.
In this process we are hearing more and more of the word sustainable, which in simple terms states that we must not take away from the global commons
more resources than the planet can replace and recycle via natural processes.
Sustainability is the ability to provide for the needs of the world's current population without damaging the ability of future generations to provide
for themselves. When a process is sustainable, it can be carried out over and over without negative environmental effects or impossibly high costs
to anyone involved.
At present we are using up the earths carrying capacity, at a totally unsustainable rate. Friends of the Earth in England have calculated that if
China wishes to follow the same growth curve and have identical consumer patterns to that of the USA we will need 8 more planets. Well, this is beyond
comprehension. Regrettably for the aspirations of the Chinese people, we have to find another way ... and then there is India too.
Today in NZ, we have businesses slowly adhering to the ideal of sustainability, which comes up against share holder demands, which of course focusses
on continuous growth and profits year after year.
Because of the fear of financial losses, businesses have been in denial and are perceived as being far too slow in taking climate change and energy
use as serious.
However, sustainability is now becoming a 'moral' as well as a practical consideration, for every strata of society to embrace.
Here in NZ the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development (www.sbc.org.nz) as well as the Sustainable Business Network
(http://sustainable.org.nz) are putting the pressure on the Govt to act. (Though I intuitively feel that they are not really engaging that much
at all).Yet this is a good sign that business realises there is a limit to growth. We need more business people to act in the interests of generations
to come and be more persuasive in convincing our conservative Government to act.
Our servants that we elect in Parliament are waiting for our directive. They will act, if we the people instruct them on how to act. Both of the two
major parties need prompting to show that they have the needs of the electorate at heart.
With Al Gores recent release of An Inconvenient Truth he has done what very few people have managed to achieve ... single handedly he has bought his
environmental credentials onto the world stage.
He is back with a presentation that will no doubt cause the tipping point in favour of the planetary environment.
There is huge amount of work to be done. But Al has given us a very graphic message to enable us to act and act now.
The tide could be turning and though very late in the game plan, we may now finally see America kick in and show us its technological genius, however
there is much to do, the mobilisation of planetary consciousness is the imperative.