Chickens coming home

Almost daily now we are being reminded that as the planet warms, nature becomes more powerful.

We were lucky here that this latest rain event happened in the middle of winter.

The Europeans not quite so. Add another 5 degrees to the air temperature and a similar storm may well have done more than wet a few carpets.

It could easily have shifted much of Westport into the Tasman Sea.

Reports of 300, 500 or 800mm of rain in the space of a day or two are becoming increasingly common, and to put it bluntly, there are not many drainage systems that can cope with that.

Those near the seashore watching the tides for any signs of danger had better learn to watch the rivers behind them.

Climate change is not coming any more.

It is essentially here and any attempts to mitigate its effects by 2035 or so will ultimately be futile.

Inflation, with its sibling, rising interest rates, has a foot in the door.

Ridiculously low interest rates haven’t stimulated anything except a raft of malinvestments, as anybody that has taken out a million-dollar mortgage to buy a 40-year-old home in a nice part of town is about to find out.

Not only are we generating our own inflation but we are importing it from those countries that are awash with cash but don’t have anything to spend it on.

We are price takers here and the local cost of goods that we also export is determined by our export customers. Not us.

Our inane responses to Covid have weakened our food supply chain while nature seems determined to have a say as well as it chips away at our arable land with what seems to be regular 100-year floods. Heaven help us if the Bombays, already under pressure from housing, got hit by a storm or two like the ones we have just witnessed.

And finally, get off your chuff Mr Parker and do something about the scallops before you turn around and find there aren’t any.