Page 3906 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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We would go down to the bus. Even when I was living at home, saving up my deposit for my first place, I would catch the bus with my dad and with my aunt as well. She would hop on the bus at the stop before us and then my dad and I would hop on. I am terrible in the mornings, and dad always made sure he was there 10 minutes before the bus came, because even though I said to him, “No, it will turn up at the same time every day,” he always insisted on being there 10 minutes early. I would come running down the hill, and he would always turn to me and say, “You need to get up earlier.” I would say, “Thank you for your feedback,” and then we would hop on the bus and off we would all go. The three of us on a bus is three cars off the road. From an emissions point of view, that makes sense.
This idea that people who live in the outer suburbs do not want to use forms of transport that are anything other than a car perhaps misses the point a bit. I think people will opt into other options if those options are there for them. My dad, even just in this very brief discussion we had, identified two: park and ride, and buses.
Putting aside any debate we might have on the bus system—and I am not looking to open up and re-prosecute that in this discussion—we are making huge investments in forms of transportation other than cars. That includes bicycles, active transport, walking and the light rail as well, which has been hugely popular. Where I live, in Franklin, you know it is popular because in peak hours you have got to do a bit of a shuffle and squeeze to get on. If people were not going to use it, they would not be on it. I also note that it is powered 100 per cent by re-usable electricity.
After this conversation with my dad I thought, “There is hope.” He pointed out to me that in a few years he will be 70. I took warmth from what my dad said, in that you can have this conversation. I think sometimes we whittle it down to a battle of generations, but I think our older generations, if my dad is anything to go by, are actually quite open to having these discussions.
He also talked about it from the point of view that he knows the climate is getting warmer. He grew up on a farm. He is very plugged into what is happening within the cycles of the land and within our environment and our climate. He always pointed out to me he does not like the heat in the summer. The heat and the extreme heatwaves that we have had the last few years have actually claimed more lives than a lot of other things. I think in the discourse we do not actually acknowledge quite as much as we should that excessive heat is actually very bad for our health, and there are a lot of people, particularly our elderly, who are quite vulnerable to the stress that comes from these heatwaves.
The next morning I was listening to Mr Coe on the radio talking about the climate strategy, and I kept having to check myself and listen to what he was saying. There was, for me, what I found to be a very weird rationale and discussion going on there with what he was putting forward, because it did not seem like it was real. It was going around in a lot of circles, a bit like my speech at the moment, but not really getting to a point. I was sitting there thinking, “I don’t even know how you would start to rebut some of this stuff,” because it just was not really clear what he was trying to say.
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