Time to act on climate change

Our planet is slowly getting hotter and something has to be done. A real solution.

WELL New Zealand has been given the hard word on climate change by Barack Obama during the G20 summit 2014.

Not before time either. This Government has to do something or our children and grandchildren will have no future on Earth.

Our planet is slowly getting hotter and something has to be done. A real solution.

A few years back, there was talk about flatulence tax on cows' gas emissions - which was down right ridiculous.

One central North Island farmer said he'd be teaching his cows to be polite by not letting off gas.

But jokes aside - something has to be done and somehow culling forests and turning them into farmland isn't going to be the answer and yet that's exactly what this Government is doing.

While on one hand it planned on taxing farmers, on the next the Government has culled thousands of hectares of forestry throughout the central North Island and turned the land into large Landcorp dairy farms.

The landscape has changed drastically and New Zealand's ability to meet the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change seems an impossibility for those of us looking ahead after seeing this. That agreement was set up nearly 17 years ago in 1997 and came into force on February 2005.

We don't seem to be doing that great at meeting our aims.

It seems on the way to make money we have walked away with the attitude "it's not my problem".

If we sit back and do nothing then we can be assured it will be a major problem before long.

Time is running out, the tide is on the rise and greenhouse emissions need to fall 70 per cent to avoid a 2C increase in global average temperature.

Is our Government really serious about meeting our targets?

This is a question we need to ensure isn't a negative because it is about the future of our planet for our grandchildren.

If we ignore it and take no action, then next century life won't be a reality on Earth.

Change must be in the wind now.