Andrew von Dadelszen Former Regional Councillor

In my June 6 column I commented on the bad habit that environmental activists have at knocking New Zealand's environmental track record.

It is very easy to find a report that sheds a poor light on our performance, and yet there is also a huge amount of evidence that we still live at one of the more environmentally pristine places on this earth. For example, the recently released BERL 2011Regional Rankings Report rated the Bay of Plenty second out of the 14 New Zealand regions in overall performance evaluating the environment to encourage regional development and growth. Contrast this with the ASB/Main Report Regional Economic Scoreboard which shows that the Bay of Plenty has slipped to last in the regional rankings. The bottom line is that these report writers use whatever data suits their argument, and as readers we need to think carefully before we believe everything we read.

Only last week one of SunLive's contributors criticised New Zealand's environmental track record (based on Yale Universities desk-top analysis comparing 132 countries). In my opinion this data just wasn't statistically robust, based on ‘desk-top modelling', and neither was the explanation of why we are falling behind.

An example of this was criticism that New Zealand has fallen from being 90 per cent using renewable energy resources in 1975 to just 76 per cent in 2012. In itself this is correct, but the writer failed to include the fact that electricity generation has more than doubled over this same period (20,120 GWh produced in 1975 to 43,138 GWh in 2011). During that period there was a lack of new renewable generation consents granted, as can be seen (see table below), with a reliance, under the nine years of a Labour-led Government, on coal and gas to meet the supply gap.

It is important to look behind the raw data, and not just accept it at face value. The bottom line is that we need to celebrate our successes, rather than continually knocking down ‘tall poppies' who are doing their best to be ambitious for all New Zealanders.

If you have a view on these or any other local government issues, I invite you to email me at andrew@vond.co.nz or visit www.vond.co.nz