GBHS students strike for climate

Chanting as they strode from Golden Bay High School (GBHS) into Tākaka township last Friday afternoon, a group of students holding placards protested climate change.

Gathering at the Village Green, they sat to listen to organiser Molly O’Connor.

Molly thanked all attendees for striking and standing up for Papatūānuku, the earth. She spoke of the potential impact extreme weather events may have on our wildlife and land.

“This may be especially challenging for us, due to our already prone-to-flooding rivers.”

Guest speaker Miriam Sherratt spoke about not giving up and embracing “this amazing place where we live”.

Having left school and Golden Bay to travel, Miriam said she came to realise “we are really lucky to live here” and advised the gathered students to “get into it”.

“My path was just loving the environment – and I managed to get a dream job. So, if you are really passionate, go for it.”

That dream job is general manager for Papa Taiao Earthcare. Miriam oversees environmental educational programmes across New Zealand. And she can do that from her home in Central Tākaka.

Although the gathering was small, Molly was upbeat. “As long as we show people that we are passionate about climate change, it gets the message across.”

She had designed posters, spoken with students and parents, and organised the reusing of placards for the protest. The protestors had received “lots of honks of support – so that’s good”.

Meanwhile, the students were scribing strong messages in

Load control allows Network Tasman to remotely shut off electrical hot water cylinders for a short time during the periods of highest demand. As a result, Network Tasman can keep costs down and pass those savings on to our consumers. Cheaper prices for water heating are shown on your electricity bill as a line called ‘controlled’ or ‘economy’.

Controlling the load in this way doesn’t impact the way you use hot water e.g. to wash dishes, do laundry or have showers. Our aim is to ensure that you don’t even notice that load control is being used.

Load control helps save consumers money because Network Tasman doesn’t have to invest as much money upgrading the capacity of its local network to cope with ever-increasing peaks during the network’s busy hours.

Network Tasman’s Regulatory and Commercial Manager, Daniel Vincent says “If we didn’t have load control, we would have needed to make a significant investment in the network to keep up with the ever-increasing demand some years ago, and consumers would already be paying for that investment in their power bill. Deferring investment keeps our network at a level that’s in line with what the community actually needs and, in turn, keeps electricity prices down”.

“Management of peak load through hot water load control by Network Tasman saves the company and its consumers a significant amount of money every year.” chalk on the concrete stage and path, before reassembling for the hike back to school.

“Please help the world”, “Clean up after yourself”, “How long left?”, “Please save the earth. It is our home”, and “The earth needs your love”, left for pedestrians to ponder as they passed.