David Cormack
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Yes it's a climate emergency, it always has been
🕑 Added 2020-11-29 02:52:26 +0000 UTCThis Wednesday the Government is going to declare a climate emergency.
Good.
But if all its doing is declaring an emergency with nothing accompanying it then what's the point?
I am told that there is action accompanying it, and that's being worked through Cabinet.
I could only speculate on what that might be but so long as it is something that goes towards reducing our emissions then that's a good start. Or at the very least a plan to reduce them.
A good start is just a start though. Already there are reports New Zealand is going to be left out of a climate leaders' forum because we are not climate leaders. And fair enough too.
Newsroom's Marc Daalder has been doing excellent reporting on this, but of the 45 Annex I countries (industrialised nations which have the greatest obligation to reduce emissions), just 12 have seen emissions increase since 1990. We are one of those. in fact, we are the second worst, with Turkey the only country worse than us.
It is of course slightly trickier for us to reduce emissions because we already have such a high proportion of renewable energy supply, but still holy shit New Zealand, not good enough.
I'm on record as arguing that capitalism provides an incentive to pollute, given that polluting companies have a higher return to shareholders and capitalism drives that behaviour, so I do not believe that a real solution can be found within the confines of an ideology that concentrates wealth in the hands of the few and the immoral.
The heads of those 100 companies that are responsible for 70 per cent of harmful emissions, politicians who refuse to do anything meaningful to combat climate change, and media outlets who knowingly spread dangerous lies and misinformation about it need to be stopped. These ecocidal maniacs need to face consequences for their actions in getting us to the point we are at now, and they need to be stopped from doing more damage.
We can look to indigenous peoples from all over the world who seemed to have respected and treated their land far better than the way colonisation has exploited it.
This is not a free speech issue, it is not a political partisan issue, this is a safety of our children issue. Yes, our economy may suffer from decarbonisation, but our planet and its lifeforms face a worse outcome. Would you rather we had a temporary downturn in money or a permanent downturn in life? Actually I'm sure that a lot of those who deny climate change's severity would be okay with a loss of life, because it's usually the poorest people who will suffer the most, and it seems the richest folk are those with biggest interest in seeing no climate change action.
So far, the Government hasn't had a strong start in progressing left-wing ideals. A lot of things keep being "ruled out". If this week's announcement of a climate emergency is just lip service and has no plan or action with it then frankly politicians can get in the bin. We'll have to take action into our own hands.
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