Robyn Malcolm
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 1 » Good start » Robyn MalcolmShe is New Zealand’s best-loved actress but Robyn Malcolm has many more talents to offer. Passionate about the environment, Robyn not only knows her stuff but she walks the talk. Just don’t try to impress her with the size of your engine …
Change is a tricky business, for anyone. Who wants their comfort levels to drop or their material pleasures to diminish? Who wants some self-righteous pious do-gooder telling me I can’t have a plasma telly and a Toyota Hi-Lux for my six jet-skis because I’m ruining the world?
For me the key for any change is information. My green journey has been as much about gathering information as reducing my energy consumption or buying locally. One feeds the other and I’m motivated to change by the information I gather.
Coming from the privileged West I’m part of the biggest group of consumers in the world. I have the money to use valuable resources ad infinitum and I don’t have to think twice about it. In the initial stages of global warming it won’t be me who suffers, it will be the less privileged in the poorer countries, as we are already starting to see.
If I’m interested in community and any sense of civic responsibility then I have to change the way I live. I have to inconvenience my life. It’s about compassion, I think.
For me it’s two-fold: how I live my life and how politically informed I am, so that I make good choices about how I live and vote.
At home I do all the usuals regarding energy efficiency. I find it’s an ongoing journey where a good idea is mitigated by practicality and where comfort and inconvenience challenge each other all the time. If I could micro-generate my own electricity and use the grid as a battery bank I’d be bloody laughing. Attempts, mistakes, successes and hypocrisies are rife, but I’m getting there.
As far as I can see, our two big contributors are the farting cows and our vehicle emissions. I can’t do much about the farting cows other than single-handedly plugging up their bums, but I can look at the car I drive. To use Auckland’s public transport system to get to work everyday means a five-hour return journey, so I have to drive. Thank you, City Fathers.
“I want to slow my life down, it’s already too fast. We all seem to be racing to some unfathomable finish line. I met a man with a donkey last year, he was very happy. There’s a lesson in that!”
I just totalled my wee Pulsar so I’m looking at getting a new car — one with a small engine or a hybrid.
We don’t need big engines. The only reason you have a big engine is because you have a small penis and you want to get somewhere faster than everybody else. I want to slow my life down, it’s already too fast. We all seem to be racing to some unfathomable finish line. I met a man with a donkey last year, he was very happy. There’s a lesson in that!
The minute you open your eyes there’s a tidal wave of debate and information every day. Food shortages, peak oil, biofuels, the emissions trading scheme, carbon credits, how we generate our energy and whether renewable is in fact totally green, economic growth verses environmental damage. Who pays? Who’s responsible? What will it cost? What do I have to give up? The only thing we can rely on is that these questions and challenges are here to stay.
We are at the beginning of a series of big paradigm shifts and it is a challenge.
One simple rule I try to follow is to just use less. Green or not, a lot of it is still junk. Who needs it? I didn’t yesterday, why do I suddenly today? Marketing, eh?
When I go whale watching in Kaikoura or stand out in a hailstorm what else can I feel but awe and love for this rock we are so lucky to inhabit? I want to know I was part of an era in humanity that contributed to maintaining it so our kids can love it too. Some would say it’s a ridiculous journey from saving a few kilowatts to keeping the North and South Poles in place but the dots join up if you take the time to look.
To me the things that are really important – love, family, chocolate, shoes and conversation — needn’t suffer in the slightest. Its not about piety, it’s just about life. I reckon that by giving it a go I’m just being loyal to what it is to be Kiwi.
It’s a privilege to be part of Good magazine’s inaugural issue. I wish them a damn good future on our country’s mag shelves.
