The $40million Main Freight hub at Te Maunga (BOP Times headline 30 Dec 2019) is heralded as a boom for business and profits but is it really such a good thing? Profits won't buy another planet and banknotes cannot be a food substitute in an unliveable world.

The real picture is massively increased impacts and pollution. Big business and policies encouraged by government seem in direct conflict to reducing emissions. Politicians blindly boasting of four-laneing state highways reveals stuck-in-the-mud insanity continuing rapid climate destabilisation.

It is distressing to witness every day, irreversible damage to the atmosphere and environment increased by millions of road vehicles driven by citizens trapped within the present transport deficiency of an outmoded roading model with little other choice, eg, passenger rail delayed till 2050??

Nature's warnings dictate our thinking must change without delay and about which I have written numerous letters. Deflecting blame on agriculture and farmers who produce our food is unfair, essentially they must be part of the solution! Each and everyone of us collectively also has a responsibility. Smoke in the 2020 New Year from across the Tasman, signals the absolute urgency we in NZ must act to minimise climatic disaster.

Jos Nagels, Tauranga