We can take heart on a slow news Sunday, a cold and wet one at that, that our glitterati are taking an interest in our future.And it was if a ray of sunshine had brightened an otherwise dreary Sunday morn when I read of a barbecue held at the home of Lucy Lawless on Friday.
This was no mere social gathering you understand - indeed not, the planet needs saving and who better to do it than the gaggle of New Zealand celebrities who have signed on to Greenpeace's "sign on" campaign and who gathered there to celebrate.
It turns out that the warrior princess has teamed up with some health professionals from Shortland street, amongst others to save the planet,
And guess who the enemy is folks - it is you and I! The hoi poli who spew the deadly toxin CO2 into the atmosphere as we go about our everyday business, feeding, clothing and housing our own and, dare I say it, using the occasional plastic shopping bag along the way.
And speaking of plastic bags another of the glitterati involved in this effort is none other than Stephen Tindall of "The Warehouse" fame. Now the last time I patronized one of his stores I was charged 10c for a plastic bag to contain my purchases, a great planet saving gesture I'm sure. My contribution to saving the planet for that day was to improve The Warehouse' balance sheet by paying a surcharge on a plastic bag. I felt a satisfying warm glow of gratitude from the inhabitants of low lying Pacific atolls come over me as I forked over the additional money. It lasted all of a microsecond.
So as the planet saving gets underway the humble, such as myself, will continue to do our bit by paying extra for plastic shopping bags while the elite will do their thing, hectoring the rest of us on the errors of our profligate ways from their Mission Bay mansions.
There's a big article in the SST on this as well. My first reaction was, is that Lucy Lawless? I had to look carefully at the picture and still wasn't sure it was her. Your picture is much better.
ReplyDeleteI think I skim read some of the article before deciding it was a waste of time and turned the page ignoring most of the continuing saga on the next page. Though, now I think about it I did glance at the pictures and thought the actors looked a little ridiculous in front of graffiti type renditions of their names on the walls behind them. I only recognised one of them.
Shortland Street is far more of a menace to society than global warming from what I've accidentally seen of the ads. What irony that their actors are trying to save the planet when their best course of action would be to quit their jobs and do something more productive that isn't aimed at destroying the minds and morals of NZ's youngsters.
"I felt a satisfying warm glow of gratitude from the inhabitants of low lying Pacific atolls come over me as I forked over the additional money."
ReplyDeleteThe extra charge imposed for taking a plastic bag is not meant to be a recompense. It simply comes down to the fact that if someone is asked to pay even a token amount for something, it's more likely that they will use an alternative.
I like plastic bags and polystyrene packaging and plastic milk bottles--they make great fire-starters. :-)
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ReplyDeleteShortland Street is far more of a menace to society than global warming from what I've accidentally seen of the ads. What irony that their actors are trying to save the planet when their best course of action would be to quit their jobs and do something more productive that isn't aimed at destroying the minds and morals of NZ's youngsters.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree; which is why I can't get over the piece by Susan Fogarty in the latest NZ Catholic (May 17-30) basically praising the show. I just don't get it. The show is filled with dodgy storylines and characters.
It would be nice to have a TV show actually reviewed from the point-of-view of Catholic morals (which is what you would expect from a Catholic newspaper).
The extra charge imposed for taking a plastic bag is not meant to be a recompense.nbsp:
ReplyDeleteBut to whom exactly does that 10c go, David?
You know the old saying "follow the money don't you?
That saying is usually used when there's a conspiracy to uncover, there's no conspiracy here. 10c isn't a lot.. it's just there to make you think twice about using plastic bags, it's not that difficult to understand.
ReplyDeleteAaah who am I kidding, apparently some(all?) of you guys think Shortland Street is a bigger threat to society than Global Warming. It's pretty amusing really.
Hell, my lawn beetles are a bigger threat than global warming.
ReplyDeleteWhat's amusing is naive fools who don't take the trouble to follow the science and simply parrot the Gore line.
Did I mention Gore? Did I mention a "Gore line"? Do you really think that global warming has only become an issue since Gore released his film?
ReplyDeleteThere are aspects of GW that have been settled for long time. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, no one is disputing this. The debate now exists around the sensitivity of the atmosphere to increases in CO2, and even if you're at the optimistic end of the argument, the idea that a TV program represents a bigger threat than the possibility of that sensitivity being of a degree to cause problems really is quite ridiculous.
"Do you really think that global warming has only become an issue since Gore released his film?"
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's an issue at all, except in the minds of gullible fools.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, no one is disputing this.
ReplyDeleteSo is water vapour and no one is disputing that either or that water vapour has a far greater but not as yet fully determined effect on climate than CO2.
Hell no one has solved the mystery of the vanishing 10c yet which seems a far more tractable problem than interplay of a non homogeneous atmosphere of planetary extent with solar radiation, geo-physical and biological processes
"So is water vapour and no one is disputing that either or that water vapour has a far greater but not as yet fully determined effect on climate than CO2."
ReplyDeleteThis is true, in fact it's one of the main reasons the climate's sensitivity to CO2 was dismissed up until the early 70's. In the late 60's and early 70's the US military funded research on the upper regions of the atmosphere in the hopes of finding ways to increase the effectiveness of their long range bombers. The scientists they employed found out that the higher you go, the less water vapour there is, in fact the amount of vapour varies greatly with temperature. This realisation is what put AGW back into the spotlight, and it amuses me somewhat that the US military is indirectly responsible for that.