OPINION

So what dispiriting news.

Turns out the emissions of households in New Zealand have risen by 20% in a decade.

We’re using more cars.  Our households consume and dispose more stuff.  We fly everywhere more often because it’s never been cheaper. 

Meanwhile down on the farms emission from sheep, beef, deer and poultry are down very slightly on 10 years ago.  Well done lads. But dear old dairy is up contributing more emissions than the manufacturing and electricity and gas supply industries combined, rising 27 per cent over a decade.

This is the reality.  Despite all the awareness and all the well meaning changes we’ve had a crack at we’re worse than ever. That includes all the greenies who hector us.  That includes all the striking school children who say nobody’s listening or acting and then pop off with Mum and Dad in the July school holidays for a carbon belching  road trip or Pacific Island holiday. Talk is cheap and walking the walk is hard. 

That said, we would have been even dirtier if we hadn’t made the changes I know many of us have made.  It would be easy to take this disappointing news and give up.  But one thing I’ve realised as time goes by is that the best change is achieved through evolution and not revolution.  The people who claim they can turn the supertanker that is society are dreamers.  You know the ones.  The ones who bellow about transformation.  We’re always transforming, the important thing is to transform the right way.  

There’s a Japanese word for that.  Kaizen.  Basically it means improvement but it’s improvement that is continuous.  A constant process of getting better and better. And in business the Japnese use Kaizen to say that the continuous improvement of functions extend from the CEO to the assembly line workers. That’s what we need to do as a community in all things. Every day

In this job I see too many people finding a chink in any argument and then using that chink to dismiss the whole idea.  That’s the recipe for standing still and everyone and everything that stands still is in fact falling behind.

I guess what I’m saying is that for a better country.  A better planet.  A better family.  A better job.  A better everything.  Then you have to keep making yourself better every day

Leighton always used to worry that little by little, bit by bit, our society was getting worse.  But the opposite is also true.  Little by little, bit by bit we can be better.