Change comes with challenges, even for the smallest of things. Photo / NZME
Change comes with challenges, even for the smallest of things. Photo / NZME
OPINION: I was trying to figure out how to write an editorial about the failure of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow when the bread I'd bought at the supermarket fell from my hand.
I looked down to find most of the slices splayed across my Hastings driveway, coatedin mud churned up by a recent thunderstorm. All that was left in my hand was a cardboard bread tag.
These new bread tags should be everything the world wants and needs right now.
No sea turtles can be harmed by them. Fewer unsustainable resources are needed to make them.
So when Kiwi bread giant Goodman Fielder announced last year it would get rid of plastic bread tags and switch to recyclable cardboard tags, it said it had the support of 76 per cent of New Zealanders it had surveyed.
It makes 100 million loaves of bread a year at least, and that's a lot of plastic tags to put straight into landfills, so it's no wonder the public was onside.
But a year on it's become pretty clear these cardboard tags are just not as robust as their plastic counterparts.
The tight grasp that the sharper plastic had on the bread bag is gone and as a result it can't seal the packet for long periods of time.
And I felt the full force of this change - no sandwiches for the kids' lunchboxes for a day.
The bread tag hack for broken jandals.
The reality of climate change is that it will require such a massive fundamental change to our collective being to stave it off.
Technological breakthroughs that have improved and enriched our lives – things like conventional cars, $2 Shops, and even plastic bread tags – simply have to go if we're to live a life that prevents the planet from warming by more than 1.5C around us.
As a species we're going to have to start rejecting the vast consumption and consumerism that got us to this point.
Many creature comforts will be lost, but you would hope humankind can see that it's better to lose those than lose actual creatures.
Climate Change minister James Shaw was at the COP26 talks in Glasgow. Photo / NZME
COP26 negotiators know meaningful change has to happen, but walked out of the talks with only vague promises that they've essentially set themselves up to fail on – "blah, blah, blah" as Greta Thunberg cuttingly surmised.
Convenience is hard to let go of.
When I'm off to the beach this summer I'll be thinking about how those politicians in Glasgow could have done more to shift the tide in favour of protecting us from rising sea levels.
But I might also be forced to walk there without jandals – they're broken and I'm struggling to find a plastic bread tag to fix them with. What a strange world we live in.
