Being ‘woke’ for the environment

VERANDA TALK: Dr Airdre Grant discusses being woke and being on the bees’ side of the debate

LOVE BEES: If you have flowering native trees, bees will find them to pollinate. Photo: Noel Sawtell

THE weather lurches between flood and fire and drought and we all cope as best we can. I have friends who are hooked on intriguingly coloured weather apps.

They spend a lot of time tracking the weather.

Another friend is devoted to the storm chaser site. He checks it obsessively.

Weather concerns us all and in these changeable times the weather is a high focus for everyone.

But where are our political leaders on this?

Please don’t tell they are still arguing whether or not the climate is changing and whether it is human caused.

Can’t we move on from that squabbling and just get on with the difficult business of changing our damaging ways?

Many do, they recycle and reduce plastic and adopt earth friendly practices but, according to the leader of the National party Michael McCormack, people who express concern about the environment are ‘pure, enlightened, latte sipping and woke capital-city greenies.”

I guess that means me, apart from the fact I don’t live in the city, or drink lattes, am neither pure or enlightened and my politics are somewhat muddied.

But I could be woke, if that means I care about the environment and the future.

I’ll wear that.

A healthy planet is critical to our wellbeing on every single level you can think of.

There is the physical where we hike and swim and have picnics and there’s the spiritual where we sit in nature and absorb the healing balm and nourish our spirits.

The environment is much, much more than something than something to be exploited for economic growth and it is not the enemy either.

Even our little green back yards provide solace.

Remember the doctors who wrote “green prescriptions’ and advised people to get out into nature as a way of helping them heal and grow strong after various trauma and upsets?

Being in nature makes us feel better. Heals us. Keeps us sane.

But do our politicians know this?

Or are they solely focused on ‘the mantra of growth and employment?

They can’t be that thick. Surely.

Call me woke if you like but if the environment is wrecked, the having a job won’t be the issue. Survival will.

Take bees, tiny little pollinating bees.

A third of all insect species is in decline and if bees go we really are in trouble.

If bees became extinct, global food supplies would be threatened.

So, I’m on the side of the bees and I am a worried as well as woke (ridiculous word – can we lose it?).

Originally published as