We’ve all done it. You’re driving along and this hideous booming bass beat in the distance draws closer, then peaks and fades as the car whose stereo is on high passes by. What a dreadful noise, you say.
But then you’re at home, warbling along to your much-loved tunes as you do the housework. Or you’re listening, and singing quietly you think, to music on your ear buds or headphones. Suddenly, you’re being told to turn it down because you are making so much noise.
When it comes to the inarguable physics of it, all noise is sound but not all sound is noise. But where sound becomes noise can be highly subjective.
The noise problem is not just a spatial one but also temporal. What may be acceptable during the day might very quickly become a major irritant at night.
Dunedin has been working hard in recent years to support and strengthen its live music community. Musicians of all kinds add to the city’s artistic and cultural character, and build on the enviable reputation it has as a home for alternative music and creative endeavours.
Aware of inner-city noise complaints, the Dunedin City Council has worked with advocacy group Save Dunedin Live Music to develop a flexible plan to protect a vibrant live music scene in the city.
However, last Sunday, a noise complaint against a late-afternoon performance at The Cellar set back such progress and comes as a worrying precedent for live music in Dunedin, showing how tenuous the current situation is. "Everyone is at the mercy of one person deciding something is bothering them," promoter Natasha Griffiths said.
Unfortunately, as more people move to the central city, it cannot help but increase the chance of noise complaints.
There has to be middle ground acceptable to both sides if we want an exciting CBD.
Talking about cons
Takes one to know one, as the old schoolyard saying goes.
Of the many outrageous statements and lies expressed by United States President Donald Trump during his rambling 58-minute tirade at the United Nations General Assembly this week, the one which evoked a perceptible gasp from those gathered was his view of global climate change.
"It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes."
He went on, calling climate change a "green scam" and warning that nations who tried to mitigate it were "going to fail".
None of this should come as a surprise from a man obsessed with fossil fuels and the mantra of "drill, baby, drill", and someone who detests renewable energy such as wind and solar power. What was surprising, perhaps, was the length and breadth of his climate-change denial rant.
While Mr Trump was busy showing he couldn’t care less about the plight of all those innocent people living on islands around which the sea is already lapping dangerously higher every year, a group of scientists gathering in Austria were working out what might be done to save those societies.
The Overshoot Conference was considering what to do now it is clear the world is likely to exceed the "acceptable" 1.5°C of global warming this century, set as a target in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
There is plenty to worry about, in terms of societal and environmental destruction, should that edge closer to 2°C in coming decades. But the scientists say it is still possible to keep it below that level and are charting how to do that to minimise the effects on millions of people.
This is the kind of leadership we need as the world grapples with its biggest-ever existential threat. Not the random, vituperative meanderings of an ignorant and dangerous man.
