Michael Mayell and Mike Hoskings on Drinkable Rivers
Newstalk zb
This morning Michael had a yarn with Mike Hoskings on Newstalk ZB. The interview took a predictable line of questioning, and being relatively new to radio, Michael felt he could have offered better responses, so took the time after the call, to write this up...
Dear Mike,
Thanks for having me on your show this morning to discuss the Drinkable River meme I am endeavouring to establish in the conversation about our future New Zealand.
When you asked me 'do you know how you are going to create Drinkable Rivers' I said no. What I should have said was this: No, but I do have some ideas…
But firstly let's agree that Drinkable Rivers in New Zealand is a future that we would all love to experience. Then we will have a beautiful shared vision that is going to require huge change...
Secondly let’s remember that significant changes will be very very challenging for some people and companies - and that loving and supporting everyone through the transformation will be essential.
The biggest hurdle to Drinkable Rivers is the devastating environmental impact of animal agriculture on our air land and waterways. UNswimmable rivers are caused largely by animal agriculture, pastoral agriculture in particular, with Cows being the worst offenders. Farming animals for food is fundamentally flawed - environmentally, financially and ethically, and in a nutshell if we want Drinkable Rivers, some of the cows will need to go...
So we need a creative solution to this animal agriculture pollution problem - and it’s not one silver bullet, it’s many things… Here are 3 to start the conversation;
Create a global market for Plant-Nutrient powders - dehydrated freeze dried fruit vegetables seeds and nuts - sold to the rapidly growing global health conscious market… I have a new enterprise called NutrientRescue.nz that is doing this
Cannabis or Hemp food is being made legal for human consumption in NZ and Australia next year - Richard Branson suggested swapping Cows for Cannabis - hemp seeds make amazing hemp milk
Export Water instead of Milk Powder and Meat - animal products require massive quantities of water, what if we just exported the water?
You can’t have up without down, hot without cold, or a problem without a solution - poisoned rivers are a huge problem, there must therefore be a (huge) solution.
So let’s agree on what can agree on Drinkable Rivers - and then and only then can the solutions appear.
Michael M Mayell
Standing for Drinkable Rivers
www.drinkablerivers.nz