Leading Littlewood

A moral choice

Jim Tucker’s opinion piece (Daily News, 25 November) mocking Greenpeace for taking the moral high ground noted that our society is so reliant on fossil fuels, from the food we eat, clothes we wear, cars we drive, houses we live in, that it is pointless, indeed hypocritical, to challenge the status quo.

Such challenges will apparently have us all driving a horse and cart, wearing sackcloth and ashes and living outdoors.

That Mr Tucker’s opinion was published the same week that air temperatures in the Arctic were 20 degrees above average, no that’s not a typo, may have given readers pause for thought.

Perhaps Mr Tucker missed it, but the reality is that major climate feedbacks are now in train, including loss of polar albedo, expulsion of permafrost methane and ice gas clathrates from continental shelves.

With ocean acidification, these ‘smoking gun’ tipping points of previous mass extinctions are the stuff of climate scientists’ nightmares - an inconvenient truth of our fossil fuel addiction.

It’s not for lack of warning though.

We’ve known the truth for decades, despite well-funded lies from fossil fuel majors and cronies in media and government. We have wasted much precious time, when humanity faces the biggest challenge in our brief history.

Continuing support for fossil fuels, including perverse subsidies, is delaying the critical transition to viable alternatives – just google ‘clean disruption’.

And that includes electrification of transport Mr Tucker. A future based on intergenerational equity, or an increasingly inhospitable planet, is indeed a moral choice. Lyndon DeVantier Okato Wednesday’s ‘Taranaki in Profile’ articles make for interesting and inspiring reading. And Jeremy Wilkinson’s piece on TRC and Port Taranaki debutant director, Charlotte Littlewood (Nov 23) was one of the best yet.

There is something exciting about young people becoming leaders.

And 35-year-old Charlotte Littlewood seems to have the skills, life experience and vigour to make a difference when it comes to governance.

Furthermore, hailing from the UK, via Vanuatu also gives her an overseas perspective.

Having said that, she will have her work cut out on the board of Port Taranaki.

Because according to the latest Economist magazine (Nov 19) global shipping is facing the worst slump in three decades, so attracting container shipping to Port Taranaki will be a real challenge.

But Charlotte has already proven she can market herself, and this creative flair should prove invaluable. Bryan Vickery New Plymouth

A legitimate idea

Your very full report from America (Saturday, 26 November) that there is to be a recount of the votes cast for president in three marginal states raises breathtaking possibilities.

If the results (expected in a fortnight) show that the three states should have gone to Hillary Clinton, then she will be the next President of the USA.

This would do justice as she has already won the popular vote (63,600,447 votes to Donald Trump’s 61,934,411), and such a result would bring legitimacy to the American electoral process.

But suppose that, bypassing the recount, Trump and the Republicans were to recognise the unfairness in the overall election result and concede sufficient electoral votes to Clinton (who would be the next president), then the accord could provide that Trump would serve as her vice president for this coming term.

There would then be an end to the bitter division that is now blighting the United States.

The result of such a breathtaking move - for the good of America - would be that the country would be truly united; and as a result it would elevate the USA to the rank of the world’s greatest and most honourable working democracy, ushering in an era of unprecedented internal and international harmony. Robert Sorley New Plymouth