of Robie

Tropicalities

Letters

In defence of Robie

STEPHEN Henningham is entitled to his views (“Too much on Wea?” PIM August 1989), but there are several mis representations that need to be answered. Contrary to his claim, my arti cle (June 1989 cover story) in no way endorsed Wea or the tragic assassina tions in New Caledonia.

The murders were an abomination.

My article was a rather more balanced perspective on the circumstances that led to the assassinations than most other hys terical accounts. Part of the text was sub stantially shortened by the editors be cause of a limit on space. Unfortunately in the process much of the copy in the victims panel praising the dedication and vision of Tjibaou and Yeiwene was not actually printed. My statement which clearly read “embraced a development programme . . .” was somehow changed in the editing to “halted the implementa tion of a development plan”.

Henningham made a big issue of fac tual “errors” and then cited a number of literals in names any third-former would realise they were typographical errors.

I understood that a journalist in New Caledonia was filing a main article on the funeral and the political fallout from the assassinations. My understanding was that my article would be a supportive

backgrounder.

Henningham attacks an accompanying

article from Paris while giving the im pression it was part of my coverage. It was quite obvious that France had de cided to press ahead with the elections after the article was written and the deadline for the magazine had passed.

David Robie

Auckland, New Zealand

Snake problem

I CAN’T understand the authorities in Guam waiting all this time to do some thing about the snake problem. The snakes are thriving because they have no natural enemy there. May I suggest a simple solution: introduce “The Mon goose”. That is why Fiji does not have a snake problem.

Andrew Watson

Victoria, Australia

Greenhouse Effect

WE refer to your special report on the Greenhouse Effect, in the April/May 1989 issue of Pacific Islands Monthly.

You are absolutely right to draw atten tion to this very real and terrible threat to the existence of many hundreds of thousands of innocent victims and their islands.

The so-called ‘Greenhouse Effect’ is preventable. It is not inevitable. It is caused entirely by the accelerated burn ing of hydrocarbon fossil fuels worl dwide in high-flying aircraft, in ships, in power stations, in trains, buses, trucks, military vehicles, private cars, public buildings, hotels, hospitals, pri vate houses, in bulldozers, motorised farm equipment, big lorries, you name it.

Hydrogen is the only non-polluting

fuel. More than 200 years ago, the French and the British made hydrogen gas and used it in their balloons. The French made the first international ae rial voyage when Blanchard, the French aeronaut and his passenger, the American Doctor Jeffries in his leopard-skin hat, made their crossing of the English Channel to France in 1785, in their Hydrogen balloon.

In the early years of this century the whole of England cooked and was lit by practically pure hydrogen, made from coal and called coal-gas. It was replaced by electricity, made by burning coal to produce steam to run turbines, driving electric dynamos, and, later, big alter nators. Later the coal was sup plemented by oil. That is where the world went wrong. We should have stayed with Hydrogen. We had the

underground piping network. Hyd

rogen should have been pumped to in dustrial centres, and there used in tur bines, which were the forerunners of today’s internal combustion turbines, to make electricity thus saving the cost of overhead transmission cables and their power losses.

AH existing fossil fuel burning en gines can run on Hydrogen the only non-polluting fuel. As long ago as 1958 the Lockheed Aircraft Company flew a jet transport plane, fuelled entirely by Hydrogen gas, carried in insulated tanks, as liquid Hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel is lighter than high-polluting, oil based jet fuel, and take off runs could be shorter.

Hydrogen can be made from the sea.

Ships of all kinds: passenger-liner cruise ships, container ships, cargo ships and others, could make Hydrogen from the sea.

There is one problem. This world has a very powerful oil lobby. Many governments in the big industrial coun

tries are members, and have a big in vestment in perpetuating the use of oil fuel. If President Bush, Margaret I hatcher, President Mitterrand, Gor bachev, and the leaders of Canada, Au stralia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, all the South American states, and the Indian and Far Eastern nations and China. Get their scientists to discover how oil could be trans formed into Hydrogen, the oil lobby would be with us not against us.

J H Millar

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Not my line

I REFER to my article “Women who mean business” which appeared in June 1989. I did not write the article’s intro duction which states, “Pacific societies are male dominated bastions of chauvinism”.

Being careful not to use such radical feminist remarks in my article, I find it rather distressing that you have chosen to do so in a context which implies that I have little sympathy with Pacific tradition and culture. 1 disassociate myself from that state ment. The purpose of my article was to applaud women’s personal achievements and progress in a changing world. It was not meant as a scathing criticism of the existing order which has, in the past, served Pacific peoples adequately.

Diana Mcmanus

Funafuti, Tuvalu

Forest issue

YOU can’t have it both ways. Your April/May issue opens with the justifi able lament that whole countries are threatened with obliteration by the Greenhouse Effect (the result largely of industrialisation and the felling of forests). Yet later in the same issue there is the heading, “Wilderness destruction threatens development.” Should this not read the otherway around? There is a further irony in that the article (which in fact is a critique of environmental des truction) comes from the World Bank, one of the major sources for funding of

large-scale ecologically disastrous de

velopment projects,

Paul Sharrad

University of Woolongong, Australia.