Palmerston North revisited

Kristin and Jo talk to Freyberg High students: Kristin and Jo talk to Freyberg High students during the Be The Change visit to Palmerston NorthYesterday the Be The Change Climate Rescue Bus was in my home town of Palmerston North.

We began with a visit to Freyberg High School, where I was a student 8 years ago. Sally led the discussion around climate change, and why it’s important that we do our part, and the year nine students there had a pretty good understanding of it all. When I was there, we learnt about climate change, but it’s great to see students going one step further now, and investigating ‘what do we do now..?’, and fantastic to see so many of them keen to do their part - which makes perfect sense really – it’s their future after all!

A busy day in the square: The Palmerston Nth was busy with interested visitors all day longOnce we’d finished at Freyberg we raced down to the Square, where we unpacked the exhibition and set up for the open day. We were really quite pleased with the response, as most people were keen sign up to the website (‘welcome’ to the new P. Northers), and to talk about the solar panels that we have running our office, and keen to find out more.

Te Apiti wind farm: The wind farms of Te Apiti and Tararua have become iconic to the local areaI think that the people of the Manawatu are pretty switched on about climate and energy, and that’s for two reasons. Firstly, we’re the home of the windmills. These impressive structures stand on the Ranges around our city generating renewable energy, and have become quite iconic, in fact Woodville and Ashhurst on either side of the Te Apiti Windfarm both claim them as their icons.

The second reason that people in our area are so clued up is that we’ve already been affected by severe weather. The February floods of 2004 destroyed the homes and livelihoods of many of my neighbours. My family had our road washed out and our power cut off for three weeks, and we were among the lucky ones. We’ve already experienced it first hand, and so we’re more willing than ever to do out part to reduce our impact on the climate.

jojo