Letters: NZ First should look into how the UK is harnessing tidal stream energy

Climate action

New Zealand’s Climate Change Commission has issued a damning report on our response to climate change.

We are at risk of missing all our climate targets, with time running out.

This when one of our Government’s coalition partners seems to be oblivious to the need to reduce our carbon emissions.

NZ First’s Shane Jones is proposing to spend billions on a LNG terminal to provide a continuing supply of gas, while Winston Peters is proposing to spend a similar sum on prospecting for oil and gas supplies.

For goodness sake, let’s wake up to the reality of climate change. Let’s put these available billions of dollars instead into solar panels and wind turbines.

If we do not move in the right direction now, future generations will pay the price.

Linda McGrogan, Taupō.

Solar solutions

Dr Murray Boardman (July 22) asks for greater thought and consideration when weighing the value of rooftop solar against solar farms.

Let’s consider then: Each kilowatt hour from rooftop solar costs about twice as much as from solar farms. There are two reasons: Fitting or retro-fitting 1000 homes with 10 panels each is far more labour intensive than installing 10,000 panels in one go, on even ground.

Orientation and angle are rarely optimal on a rooftop, while on a solar farm they are. This is precisely why rooftop solar needs a subsidy, while solar farms do not.

As for destroying productive land: When a farmer sells his land to a solar farm, he does so precisely because it is not productive enough. Also, New Zealand has no shortage of non-or low productive land, and we are not Singapore or Hong Kong where land is at a premium.

K.H. Peter Kammler, Warkworth.

US aggression

Retired Major-General John Howard’s article (July 22) focuses on problems for trade and economies with the Strait of Hormuz closed. He claims New Zealand has been “free-riding”, relying on the United States and allies’ navies to keep the world’s waterways open.

The Strait of Hormuz, open for decades before the US and ally Israel illegally bombed Iran this year, would be open now if the US had implemented the Memorandum of Understanding to end the war.

Howard seems to show no awareness of the illegality and inhumanity of the war on Iran, including the killing of around 150 schoolgirls on February 28 which United Nations experts have condemned.

The UN reported that those experts “stressed the unprovoked attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, carried out while negotiations were still ongoing, is entirely illegal under international law and constitutes an act of aggression”.

It quoted the experts as saying, “The US and Israel should stop waging and expanding wars, and considering themselves as above international legality”.

The US also illegally bombed Venezuela this year, imprisoning its leader Maduro and his wife in America.

New Zealand should speak out against US aggressions.

Kay Weir, Wellington.

Could Vance be worse?

I would like to applaud Hugh Blomfield on his letter to the editor (July 21). I agree entirely with the comments Mr Blomfield made regarding the parallels in Germany in the 1930s, the same sort of exclusions of certain groups of people according to their beliefs and, in that example, religion.

Also, I can’t help but hope that MAGA supporters who have been adversely affected by Trump’s policies come to their senses and ensure he and his sycophantic followers are voted out.

My only hesitation on this is that JD Vance, the obvious “successor”, could in fact prove to be an even worse “leader of the free world”.

Graeme Leary, Clevedon.

Naming rights

It’s a pity that there was no public competition to name the two new Cook Strait ferries that are said to be delivered in 2029.

One of my suggestions would have been Winston McWokeface. As both the man himself and his loud deputy appear to be obsessed with the term, I thought that this would have been a fitting tribute.

E. Bax, One Tree Hill.