Father and son highlight climate change choices

Father and son highlight climate change choices

Marlborough man Bill McEwan and his son Robbie are going without food in a band rotunda in central Blenheim this week, to raise awareness of climate change.

Their aim is to raise awareness that people in Marlborough and throughout the world face a choice between carbon and children.

“The burning of coal, oil, petrol, diesel, kerosene and gas as well as methane gas from cows is heating the earth and changing our climate,” says McEwan. “If we don’t do something we’ll see fast changes which won’t be good for us, or especially our children.”

The 70-year-old recognises that most people are too busy dealing with family and jobs to absorb the long-term threat of climate change. Recently retired, he felt he had time to research the science then raise an issue which must be urgently addressed.

The pair set up camp on Sunday night. Mark and Ann Randall were among supporters who called at the rotunda on Monday to say, “well done, thanks for doing this”.

McEwan, who has degrees in agricultural science and theology, does not claim to have all the answers on how to turn around climate change. However, he aimed to trigger a sharing of ideas on what could be done to secure a good life for future generations.

The burning of fossil fuels had brought wonderful benefits for the people of Marlborough, he said. However, credible science showed the carbon released was also causing a rapid rise in greenhouse gases and warming of the planet never seen before.

Most of this heat went into the sea and as ocean temperature increased, climate became more unstable with more extreme weather from droughts to storms.

“It seems certain these changes will feed on themselves and be very fast and unstoppable,” McEwan says.

In the next decade Marlborough would see more frequent and severe drought, he said. Already, the district was seeing more “100-year floods” affecting farming, forestry, fishing, aquaculture and recreation.

The salmon and mussel-farming industries could collapse and kaimoana resources disappear, as sea temperature and acidity increased. Water wars would be fought as industries and individuals competed for increasingly scarce and polluted water from aquifers and rivers.

Resulting loss of jobs and recreational opportunities would hit quality of life for people living in Marlborough, McEwan said.

He has given up on top-down political solutions, evidenced at failed international climate change conferences most recently at Copenhagen where parties all waited for others to make the first move. Hope lay with ordinary people in communities like Marlborough, acting with courage and creativity, McEwan said.

Follow Bill and Robbie on their facebook page, Climate Karanga

ENDS

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