Climate change in action by Susan Grimsdell
A survey of how kids get to school found that of the sample number of approximately 800,000 young people, about 580,000 get there by car, 450,000 of those driving themselves, which means they were unlikely to be able to take a passenger. About 100,000 took a public bus or train and just over 100,000 caught a school bus. Action not words I was interested in these numbers when I thought about the kids’ recent climate change march. “What do we want? Climate change action. When do we want it? NOW!” I’m all… Read More
The climate will change by Susan Grimsdell
By the time our children are grandparents, our world will be like nothing we can even imagine. The planet will have a climate not seen for hundreds of thousands of years. Oceans over a metre higher, flooding and rainfall like we’ve never experienced, together with severe drought and forest fires, and large numbers of migrants trying to get into New Zealand. These are the facts, this is what we are facing. But how many of us are taking climate change seriously? We give lip service to awareness that the climate is changing,… Read More
Get it together and get it right by Susan Grimsdell
Sometimes I think different parts of the NZ government live on different planets. One part is always warning of the risk to the economy of New Zealanders’ high level of indebtedness. We’re told we’re deeper in debt than almost anyone else in the world: Fitch Ratings (whoever that is) reports that this country has one of the world’s highest household debt levels, at 93% of GDP. Save or spend? By the same token, we’ve also been told time and again that we need to save more. Consumer advocates urge us not to… Read More
Leaders of the US of A by Susan Grimsdell
Next year the US will hold a presidential election and Trump is going to run, hoping for a second term. Discrimination I was thinking back to June 11, 1963 when another president was in office: John F Kennedy. He addressed the nation on that day about the issue of civil rights. At the time, in many parts of the USA, black people had to send their kids to separate (and inferior) schools, they had to use toilets and drinking fountains marked “blacks”, they were not allowed to have lunch in cafes marked… Read More
