Monday, April 28, 2008

The New Zealand runs a regular column on their "green pages" called The Green Test where they quiz prominent NZ'ers on their carbon footprints.
This morning featured one of our great contemporary actors/directors, Michael Hurst.
I found the answer to his second question interesting.
Here is the column for your interest:

The Green Test: Michael Hurst
New Zealand Herald , Monday April 28, 2008

What are you doing to make a difference?
We recycle plastics, bottles and paper. You are mad if you don't. We re-use the kids' plastic lunch bags, shop with green bags at the supermarket and all of our vegetable waste goes into compost. Where I can, I will walk instead of using the car, or take a bus. I am a stickler for switching off lights, we are trying to have only four-minute showers, and we have decided that things need to be turned off at the wall because those little stand-by lights add up to quite a bit of power.

What more could you do?
Get rid of one of our two cars and buy a scooter, cut down on having baths (I love a bath), be better at turning things off at the wall and maybe change my attitude about books - after all electronic books such as the Kindle (which can hold 200 books in the one unit) are the way to go in that they don't cost trees. Not sure about that one.

What is your biggest environmental sin?
Flying to places, no question. But no other options, either.

Global warming - man or nature?
Man, of course. Trying to soften this is like saying that a woman in an abusive relationship somehow deserves to be colonised, exploited, and then beaten just to make sure. Ridiculous. Global warming and the self-centred, self-righteous attitude of the new fundamentalists (in any sphere) is surely a wake-up call for those of us who live by reason and can see that the future of the planet is in our own hands, no one else's.

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