What with dirty dairying and fast-food wrappers littering the country, you think we've got environmental problems.
Spare a thought then for the citizens of St Valery en Caux in Normandy.
They are up in arms over an environmental outrage.
Fishing and aquaculture are dominant activities in those parts, and the region is renowned for oysters - whose growth rates are no doubt assisted by warm water released from the local nuclear power plant.
The villagers' concern has nothing to do with matters nuclear, but rather a proposal to desecrate the skyline by erecting hideous wind turbines on a local beauty spot along the cliff top.
Perhaps they have noticed while travelling on their electro-drive (nuclear-powered) bullet trains, that the main distinguishing feature of two out of three French wind turbines is that they are stationary.
France does not have New Zealand's spectacular wind and hydro resources, so being an intelligent country they have opted for a generation mix that makes the best carbon-free, technical sense.
As a nation good at seeing things in perspective, you've got to hand it to the French. Can you imagine a comparable reaction in donkey-dumb, nuclear-free New Zealand, (or California), where it seems that the only time a correct decision is reached, it is by blind, random chance?
In New Zealand, nuclear power makes economic nonsense, but that is not the reason we are aiming for 90% renewable.
No, in our arithmetical ignorance we whinge and whine about every harmless bogeyman under the sun - fluoride in town's water that really does stem juvenile tooth decay, fracking thousands of feet below any aquifers, or 1080 in the remote bush - where the alternative is total eco-system collapse.
Trying to get the right answer the wrong way is bound to backfire eventually, and a good example can be seen in the recent announcement for yet more motorway construction.
I thought Steven Joyce was a fairly smart operator, but no. If he can't get his head around the coming catastrophic consequences of peak oil, then surely he can read his own Ministry of Transport statistics that show car miles per person per year have stopped rising and are now falling.
Simply, this means that as the price of petrol continues its northwards climb, traffic density will fall, not rise, and with it the need for new motorways.
The failure to divert our limited finances into essential public transport infrastructure before the price of crude oil explodes is going to prove to be one of our worst planning disasters.
Trying to get the right answer the wrong way has a bosom companion - keeping your head stuck in the sand.
We're great at that too. The DPB was originally introduced with the worthy aim of supporting deserted women at a time when jobs for girls were few.
While the original need for the DPB is still with us, it has been clear for years that many teenage girls were subverting the intent of the DPB, and ripping off the taxpayer, by breeding a class of misfits, child abusers, and criminally prone malcontents.
Until the recent release of the initial findings of the Welfare Working Group, no politician has had the courage to try to plug this loophole.
As Michael Laws has repeatedly pointed out, the status quo has got to change - and if that means compulsory sterilisation for women who will not name or, probably quite honestly, cannot recall who was their inseminator, so be it.
But it's not all gloom and doom.
Taranaki finally got their grippers on the Ranfurly shield, and, despite the excesses of the International Rugby Board or All Black speed wobbles, the RWC will chirp-up the nation.
There's even good news for the Aussies, too. I never thought I'd live to see the day when Australian housewives could finally get decent Kiwi apples, even if Woolworths and Coles supermarkets refuse to stock them. Two can play that game. Until they come to their senses, I have instructed my housekeeper to boycott Woolworths.
About the only thing you can say for Aussie apples is that they are better than the French Golden "Delicious" that British housewives have little choice but to buy for much of the year.
These taste like mouldy Gib board, and I suspect that they are either GM, radioactive, or quite possibly both.
- John de Bueger is a New Plymouth writer and engineer.
