David Cormack
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The peculiar ambivalence of Labour's environmentalism
🕑 Added 2022-10-16 20:21:50 +0000 UTCI'm a fairly staunch advocate of the environment. I was the Green Party's head of communications and policy (for like five minutes, but still...). I have written several times about the plight of the climate and how successive governments from all around the world have willingly chose immediate-economic-benefit over leaving-behind-a-world-our-children-can-live-on.
Jacinda Ardern said that climate change was our generation's nuclear free moment. Famously. Except she's gone on to turn down several opportunities to take true action.
Yes the oil and gas ban was good. Yes the plastic bag ban was good. But these happened at the behest of the Green Party.
Another thing Jacinda Ardern said in her speech from the throne in 2017 was a promise of no new mines on conservation land.
Labour has done absolutely nothing on that front. Oh no that's not quite true. They've begun the slowest process imaginable of asking DOC to reclassify some land so that it ends up that we won't allow mines on it.
Except that has moved at a glacial pace.
Recently Eugenie Sage from the Green Party had a member's bill pulled that would put a halt to any new mines on conservation land. It would also ban any new coal mines from 2025.
Both of these things are objectively good because they are good for the environment.
Except Labour has decided not to support Eugenie's bill. Not even at first reading, which would allow it go to Select Committee and have NZers submit their reckons. Labour doesn't want to hear people's reckons on this.
Declaration time: My PR firm is working (pro-bono) with an anti-mines group: Ours Not Mines. It's a group made up of musicians, comedians, artists and others. It's singular focus is preventing a new mine being opened in Coromandel by OceanaGold.
OceanaGold is an Australian company with mining interests all over the world. OceanaGold love sending in police to violently disburse indigenous people protesting their mine (like they did in the Phillipines). If OceanaGold don't get their way in a country, they like to sue the Government of that country for lost profits (like they did in El Salvador).
OceanaGold has engaged a PR firm to greenwash their activities in NZ. The new mine that OceanaGold wants to open will involve a tunnel being dug under Wharekirauponga which is in Conservation Land. OceanaGold argue that because their digging a tunnel, they aren't actually mining on conservation land. Cool and good.
The part of New Zealand that OceanaGold wants to mine in is home to one of the world's rarest frogs - the Archeys Frog. This little bugger is deaf. It uses sense and vibrations to figure out how to get around. How do you reckon mining going on right underneath its feet is going to jive with this wee fella figuring itself out?
At the moment, Ours Not Mines is fundraising. We're trying to raise money to wage a campaign against the evil overseas mining company. We want to do a billboard campaign, take ads out in the paper, and pay for lawyers to fight this. We're doing this because Labour doesn't seem to care.
If you want to contribute, we're selling some Stanley Palmer prints that are hand signed by the man himself! You can go here: https://www.oursnotmines.nz/shop
Artist's impression of the billboards we want to run:
We genuinely don't understand why Labour don't seem to care about conservation. We are baffled.
We know there are people in the party who do care. But they seem to be in the minority, particularly around the cabinet table.
We'd love to see them pivot now and suddenly become the environmentalists that we think the left should be, but we're not holding our breath.
So if you want to see real climate action, if you want to see real conservation action, then it looks like we're going to have to do it ourselves fam.
