A really interesting day had by all. Lots of visitors, some too busy to take a pic, a day that started out damp and cold quickly became warming and sunny.
Early on we had a visit from two Quaker ladies, one from N Carolina who are members of World beyond War. Liz Remmerswaal, the director of the International Coordinating Committee in Aotearoa and her friend Jan from the States. Good chat about the devastating effects of climate change and war. She wished us well.
Surprisingly David Parker came and introduced himself and spent ten minutes with us and we questioned him on some of his upcoming policy and legislation. He gave quite a lot of information in a short time, but the gist of it was on farming and the implementation of national policy on water quality. Really good to see him. Did not question him on declaration of climate emergency as he abruptly left.
Next we had a quick visit and good wishes from Johnathon Boston, professor of policy studies at Victoria Uni, Wellington and formally director of the institute for governance and policy studies. The question was posed ‘what is the biggest roadblock to action on climate change?’ Very simply, for him, political will. About then, a young, politically motivated man named Robert came and spent the remainder of the afternoon with us, debating many social issues, weighted, it seemed with an honest curiosity of religion and conspiracy. He is looking for a place in the Outdoors party and was looking for a meeting with a local leader. He was, however, well in tune with regenerative farming, small sustainable communities and protections for our native flora and fauna, but was very against 1080.
John Blincoe came past again, with a query of my health and I assured him all was good. He repeated his hapiness to be working with Eugenie Sage and James Shaw. There was an interesting exchange between John and Robert about New Zealands oil trade and the implementation of green hydrogen fuel, derived, as Mick recalled from a previous conversation with Molly Melhuish, from electrolysis, an electrical powered process, splitting the hydrogen from the oxygen, called green hydrogen, but only if it is a process using electricity supplied from a carbon neutral source. (hydro, in our case, forgetting the make up of the infrastructure).
We were visited later by 3 lads on a road trip to *maybe* the South Island, from Taranaki, all involved in one type of farming or another who were quite concerned about the state of our environment and the global environment. They have seen it first hand, as I have and their concern was real and justified. Keegan, whose family farm is very against the corporate expansion of industrial farming and left us with a quote……. ‘Farming is a practice that shouldn’t be wholly centered on profit. Period.’
Yes. A very interesting day. We packed up feeling some kind of accomplishment.
