It’s Time To Face The Truth
We have been in denial for 170 years.
White gold has lost its lustre as farmers’ faces droop even lower than Daisy’s udder, and the world has so much oil you can buy it by the barrel. Faced with the frightening prospect of slipping out of the rich kids club, New Zealand is turning to tourism to provide us with needy cash. As an earner, the great thing about tourism is that you don’t have to do any work. None of this waking up at 4am to milk bloody cows. Tourists just wander about giving us money. All we have to do is place a couple of ads in a Shanghai Daily and wait for the planes to roll in like bloated wood pigeons.
Which brings me to issue of our advertisements.
To lure the rich to pick us for their holiday, we use advertisements filled with images of glorious scenery. This includes peaky mountains and golden beaches filled with pert bottomed young people jumping off things. Frolicking has never looked so good. While the overt images speak of natural splendour and the absence of anyone ugly, there are subliminal messages too. Firstly, if you look closely, it never seems to rain. Waterfalls abound like frothing giants, and the lakes are bluer than Sinatra’s eyes. Where does this water come from?
Secondly, none of our tourists look cold. Everybody looks positively toasty as they jump of cliffs, boats, jetties and aeroplanes. This second point is interesting and requires some scrutiny. There does seem to be this general all pervasive idea that New Zealand is warm. Foreigners seem to think that NZ and Australia are similar. A bit like two curries, one is just extra hot. Consequently, when travelling down under, our visitors arrive in jandels and a halter top, proceeding straight up the nearest mountain. Needless to say, they descend in a thermal blanket and helicopter.
Sadly, this notion that New Zealand is hot is a myth. New Zealand is not even warm, and therefore it’s time we admitted the painful truth. For 170 years Pakeha have been walking about in stubbies and living in corrugated iron sheds – deluded in the belief that we are part of an antipodean world that includes Fiji and Australia.
It is only now that houses install heat pumps and we have replaced our oil skin parkers with puffer jackets. Not too long along ago double glazing was as rare as a worm’s armpit, regarded as unnecessary and frivolous. It has only been in recent times (since we sold our electricity networks) that we have noticed ice on the inside of the windows and Fido’s frozen corpse in the laundry. Like an electric blanket, we are slowly warming to the idea that the inside of our house should not be the same as the outside. While’s its kind of interesting to wake up and instantly know what the outside temperature is, it does make for a pretty chilly naked run to the bathroom.
For the sake of keeping tourists arriving like ducks on a pond, we should probably stick to south pacific themed advertisements that celebrate sunbaked babes and barbecues where everyone’s invited. Privately however, its time that we admitted the truth. New Zealand could do with being a bit warmer.
Which of course brings me to global warming. Let’s just say this, sliced bread changed our lives. But global warming is even better.
Richard Alexander Bain
self confessed climate embracer