The reasons I support this campaign are threefold:

Firstly, the science behind the need for a 40% reduction is clear and strong; anything less is not going to be enough.

Secondly, I don’t have the willpower myself to achieve a 40% reduction and I believe this is one of the roles governments perform; to constrain some of our harmful and selfish urges and to reward behaviour that is mutually beneficial.

And, finally, I see great technological opportunities for our civilisation should we find the motivation to innovate. I’m confident we’ll come up with energy, transport, agriculture and production technologies far superior to what we have now. We just need the will to do so. As I heard someone say, the bronze age didn’t come about because stones became scarce; bronze was a better technology. I think that there is another age waiting for us beyond the oil-and-deforestation age.

I also like the fact that the campaign is saying nothing about how we ought to go about achieving a 40% reduction. That can wait. First we need the will to make a commitment and then we can act on the best advice from our scientists, politicians and economists to see how we will best achieve this target.

So, if you share my opinions on this, head on over to the Sign Up website and add your name to their list of participants. And perhaps let your local MP know where you stand on the issue too. Hopefully enough people will step forward to let our prime minister know that we taking this seriously.

This video gives a reasonably good summary of the content of Peter Singer’s new book, The life you can save – Acting now to end world poverty.

See the book review below.

Singer is a philosopher and an ethicist and, as such, presents a robust case for the need for charity as well as the wrongness of withholding aid when it is within our means.

He sets the scene with a scenario where you are passing by a pond and notice a toddler drowning in it. Most of us would be prepared to ruin our new shoes and clothing as well as make ourselves late for work in order to save the toddler. This would indicate that we actually value the life of this child over the cost of our clothing and over the interruption to our everyday lives.

But why don’t we act with the same urgency when we know for a fact that for a similar cost and/or inconvenience we would be able to save the life of a real child in, say, Africa?

Here Singer addresses many of the psychological issues that surround immediacy, perceived unfairness when others don’t give, balancing our legitimate selfish urges, being more vocal about our charity to create a better culture of giving and much more.

Having established that if we are able to help and we have no good reasons not to he then goes on to examine how to invest your aid wisely and ensure that your money is being used for what you intended. (I’ve often chosen my charities based largely on how little is wasted on administration – he deals with this and shows that it is more complicated than that).

The last part of the book is dedicated to establishing how much it is reasonable to expect us to give without turning us all off. Singer holds himself to his own standards and admits that even he can’t live up to them (he doesn’t mention it in the book but according to a radio interview I listened to he gives around 30% of his income). Think of it; if you can afford to buy a coffee when you could have had tap water then you have diverted potential aid from those who clearly need it more than you. Instead, he suggests a more realistic scale of percentages which, for most reading this, would be between 1-5% of our incomes before tax.

And all is not lost as he points out: in 1981 there were 1.9 billion people below the poverty line whereas today there are only 1.4 billion. Those numbers may seem close but consider that the fact that the world population has increased in the time and what this amounts to is that we have almost halved the percentage of people living below the poverty line in 30 years. Ending world poverty is achievable.

I thoroughly recommend you read this book.

It’s relatively inexpensive, relaxing, safe and the perfect way to see some of the most beautiful countryside New Zealand has to offer.

Sal and I did the trail a couple of weeks ago. Read on if you’d like to know what we thought were the highlights, lowlights and, most importantly, how not to win at curling.

The cycle trail is a one-way trip (which means you can choose which end to start from), it is 150km long and typically takes four, comfortable days to complete. Most people (70% apparently) start at Clyde and end in Middlemarch. The highest point is on the Clyde side of Wedderburn which means that if you want to get the hardest part over and done with earlier, Clyde is the better end to start from. That said, we did it the opposite way, starting from Middlemarch and cycling from there through to Clyde. Perhaps the reason for the majority starting in Clyde is that the predominant wind is from that direction. We managed to avoid any wind but I could well imagine that the smile would come off your face pretty quickly if you had to contend with a head-wind for hours on end.

The average age of the people doing the trail, we are told, is 58. You don’t have to be particularly fit.

One of the many highlights of the trip was getting to Middlemarch itself which involved taking the Taieri Gorge Railway from Wingatui (although you can start from Dunedin). This journey itself is well worth it and costs $53 per person one way.

From Middlemarch we picked up our bicycles which we’d hired through Trail Journeys for around $40 per bike per day. The cycles were new Giant Sedonas in excellent condition and came with great quality panniers and were also equipped with a cycle computer (which appealed to the inner geek in me).

The trail starts where the train stops and we headed off at around 2pm across the plains toward the foothills of the Rock and Pillar Range which you follow and almost imperceptibly climb to Hyde. This leg of the journey was the shortest at around 28km and we found it easy to dawdle along at a mere 10-15km/h.

Hyde is a small but pleasant place made all the more so by the recent revitalisation of the hotel and some of the surrounding accommodation and businesses. I had a personal interest in Hyde having very recently lost my Grandma who was raised here and finding that pretty much half the town and its cemetery bears her maiden name, Kinney.

We stayed in the Cook’s House which is not quite as romantic as it sounds being a modern prefab affair but which was good quality all the same. We had a cafe-style dinner at the Hyde Hotel although they do offer a $40 per head buffet.

The trip between Hyde and Ranfurly is about 33km and follows a gorge which makes for interesting tunnels and spectacular views. After Waipiata it’s a seemingly endless trek across the plains and into Ranfurly.

Ranfurly was not the highlight of our trip. This was largely due to the accommodation we booked and our hosts. Without wanting to taint this too much I’ll just strongly say that we would never stay at the Moyola art deco guest house again. Not even if you paid us. Instead, we heard very good things about Hawkdunlodge so check them out if you are looking for accommodation.

Naseby however! Naseby is perhaps 15km off the trail from Ranfurly and is New Zealand’s spiritual centre for all things curling as well as a genuinely interesting historic spot in its own right.

In the photo below you will see my lovely wife handing me my arse on a platter in what was quite a humiliating experience. Thankfully, curling is not really an Auckland sport and so, if I pick my sports carefully in the future, I will gradually regain my ego again.

From Ranfurly we trekked across long, gently rising plains up to Wedderburn and, very shortly afterwards, a brief but relatively steep (by railway standards of course) climb to the highest point of the trip. From here we encounter wild apple trees, viaducts, tunnels and yet more, stunning scenery.

The leg from Ranfurly to Lauder is 48km; the longest day but made easy by the fact that the majority of the trip was downhill.

We arrived in Lauder and settled down on the grass outside the Lauder pub with a well-deserved shandy (and then, beer) while we waited for our host to pick us up. We were taken to Lauderdale Estate which was to be, by far, the highlight of our trip as far as hospitality and accommodation goes. We stayed in the Chaff House which is a converted – you guessed it – old stone chaff shed. Whilst you are technically a captive audience having to buy your dinner restaurant-style from them, their prices are reasonable, the food is excellent and the hospitality second-to-none.

The last leg of our trip was from Lauder to Clyde is almost all downhill (gently, of course) and is 44km. Just 7km out from Lauder and slightly off the trail is the historic town of Ophir which we neglected to go to and later regretted having heard various other people raving about it.

The section between Omakau/Tiger Hill and Chatto Creek is possibly the steepest and we had the good fortune to be rolling down it much to the annoyance of those heading in the opposite direction. It seemed we were coasting for hours.

Heading toward Alexandra we were told to look out for the wild thyme growing on the hillsides. In our eagerness we were raising the alarm at random shrubs here and there only to find that on the approach to Alexandra there is absolutely no mistaking the literal endless hillsides that stretch for miles covered in thyme.

We stopped in Alex (now we are locals we feel as though we can use the familiar abbreviation) for a late lunch at the Shaky Bridge Cafe where the food was excellent (my salad was superb and ‘superb’ is not normally a word I use in conjunction with ‘salad’) and we were introduced to Shaky Bridge Rose. There is a hard way and an easy way to get to the cafe. We went the hard way. If you find yourself on a very steep hill you, also, have gone the hard way.

From Alex we departed from the official trail and, instead, took the Anniversary Walkway on the other side of the Clyde River which is more scenic but about 4km longer than the remaining section of the rail trail. The following day we cycled halfway back down the rail trail toward Alex again to visit the William Hill winery, home of the Shaky Bridge Rose we’d enjoyed the day before, and ended up encumbered with six bottles of Pinot Noir, Rose and Pinot Gris.

A note about the wine and beer. I’m a big fan of Otago wines and an even bigger fan of Emerson’s beer (in fact, I’m supping on an Emerson’s Taieri George Seasonal Ale even as we speak… err type… err blog) but it seems that this part of Otago hasn’t quite caught up with the fact and they provide only Speight’s and fumble through the red wines section when asked what they have in the way of Pinot Gris (I’m referring to experiences in pubs here, not the one winery we visited; they were superb). Otago’s got quality winemaking and brewing in spades but the hospitality along the trail doesn’t seem to realise this yet. Give it time.

In Clyde we stayed at the Post Masters [sic] Accommodation, and enjoyed a relaxing day off before leaving for Queenstown the following afternoon. Clyde’s a nice place and somewhere we could see ourselves living someday. Possibly.

As an aside, I’ve been looking for a good-quality pair of pig-skin slippers for years now and I finally managed to find the perfect pair (well, they’re calf-skin but that’s all much of a muchness to me) in Clyde and am greatly looking forward to winter. Perhaps another reason for my rosy view of Clyde.

And that’s about it. Pretty lengthy for a blog post but I hope this is of use for anyone thinking of doing the trail. I thoroughly recommend giving it a go!

Nihil est agricultura melius nihil uberius
Nihil dulcius nihil homine libero dignius.

“Nothing is better, more fruitful, more pleasant
and more worthy of a free man, than agriculture”.

- Cicero (106BCE-43BCE)

(Today I completed my new vegetable garden. I’m exhausted but happier and more fulfilled than I’ve been in a long time.)

Less than a week ago, Act leader Rodney Hide sent an “open letter” to John Key outlining his stance on the Emissions Trading Scheme. In it he says:

So I’m not as worried about the future of the planet as I used to be. Even the UN now admits the globe stopped warming in 1998. [emphasis mine]

Take a look at the graph above and see what he’s done here. Technically 1998 was a very warm year and we’ve not had temperatures to match it since. Up until now people who have had an axe to grind have been misleading the public by phrasing this in ways to make it appear as if global warming has miraculously stopped somehow but Hide goes a step further and turns misdirection into an outright lie.

The UN have never, to my knowledge, said that global warming has stopped. The figures, even when taken selectively, don’t lend support to this concept.

Now, I like Hide as a person but we can’t afford to have people in his postition of influence spreading outright lies like this to the general public and for policy to be made based on these lies.

(sources: Open Parachute, Hot Topic, UK Met Office, Scoop)

I have to say it’s quite liberating getting over that initial hurdle of becoming fit enough to run continuously (within limits!) and was surprised at how little time it took.

The secret to my couch potato success was to invest in good running gear and to follow a training regime (note: this book is by the same author and mine seemed to cater for a more diverse number of styles) specifically designed for someone of my fitness to get up to speed.

The regime essentially consists of running three days a week with fairly easy runs on Tuesday and Thursday followed by a more challenging one on Sunday. It starts you off easy and gradually builds you up in waves in order to give your muscles time to repair in between runs.

So, if you are a bit of a couch potato like me, I fully recommend signing up for an event like this as it gives you the motivation to get off your arse on a regular basis. And get yourself a good training regime as well as some good running gear! It is well worth it.

[edit: also, if you are a chap, I recommend tape on your nipples for runs over one hour.]

In 1973 the BBC released a TV documentary series in 13 episodes by mathematician Jacob Bronowski called The Ascent Of Man. 35 years later I purchased it as a DVD box set on the recommendation of a fellow science documentary aficionado.

It’s extremely good! And I’m not just saying that in the context of the era in which it was produced. Sure, some of the music grates on the nerves and some of the graphics don’t compare to what we are capable of these days but overall it’s got a depth that is often missing from the kind of documentaries found on the Discovery Channel. Actually, I take back my comment about the music; it features music from Meddle – my second-favourite Pink Floyd album – which, for me, redeems a multitude of musical sins.

Bronowski is thoughtful, poetic and very deliberate in every sentence. He gives you the feeling that he is treating you, the viewer, as an equal throughout and he conveys a sense of awe that is impossible to resist.

Most moving for me was a scene where Bronowski is visiting a Nazi concentration camp where many of his relatives were murdered. According to the interview with Attenborough in the bonus material the entire scene was spontaneous and filmed in a single take:

Bronowski died a year later of a heart attack at the age of 66.

For my last post I was scavenging around for photos of apes and came across this and thought it worthy of a post of its own: