We all feared that Labour’s climate ’emergency’ declaration would be hollow virtue signalling being rammed through to try and inoculate the new Government from progressive criticism that so far Labour have only offered us incremental tepid nothings, but did any of us think it would be THIS pathetic?
Folks, making the Government fleet of cars electric and removing coal powered boilers is something that should have been done 15 years ago! To implement them now and claim this is any use at all in confronting the existential crisis that is global warming is nothing but shallow sophistry.
Being carbon neutral by 2050 is like trying to put out your house fire by mowing your lawn.
By 2030, over 50% of the oceans will be collapsing as bio-habitats.
By 2030, East Coast cities in the U.S. can expect to see two to three-times as many flooding incidents.
By 2030, 122million will be driven into extreme poverty as direct result of climate change.
By 2030, 100million will die as a direct consequence of climate change.
By 2030, even if the Paris Agreement is actually implemented, we will see a planet warm to 3.4 degrees by the end of this century meaning there will effectively be no future civilisation capable of surviving on a planet that warm.
By 2030, the global annual cost of global warming will be $3trillion.
2030, the number of extremely hot days — classified as maximum temperatures of more than 35C — are tipped to climb in all capital cities.
But don’t fret.
By 2050 NZ might be carbon neutral.
Yay?
This. Is. Meaningless!
If you think being carbon neutral by 2050 is the solution, you are the fucking problem.
An actual declaration of an emergency triggers the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. It means the Government can close roads, can close any business and can take over all private assets and property to fight the emergency – THAT is the response the climate crisis requires not some incremental tepid nothingness.
If this climate emergency declaration is our generations, ‘nuclear moment’, then the US warships are already in Auckland harbour and David Lange has swallowed the uranium on his breath.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Labour and the Greens are hash tagging while the planet melts.
Meanwhile:
- Despite the pandemic lockdown, the CO2 in our atmosphere keeps going up.
- It has been 650 000 years since it was that high.
- 1 in 5 NZ Children live in poverty.
- Entire generations are being locked out of home ownership.
- Our Suicide rates continue to soar.
- In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
- By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
- In 2018, it was 42
- In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people
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Today on National Radio there was discussion that government departments will be purchasing carbon credits to offset their emissions out of their existing budgets.
This gave the impression that funds otherwise to help the community would be diverted to those who are capable of producing carbon credits.
Has there been any discussion of developing NZ sources for these offset purchases, or will funds otherwise intended for NZ’ers be re-directed to offshore carbon farmers?
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19042017/cabon-emissions-credits-paris-climate-agreement
Carbon emissions trading can only be a complementary solution as nearly all global experience with existing schemes show.
The vast majority of them likely fail to actually reduce emissions.
Climate emergency needs to move away from such neoliberal dogma.
Those children growing up in poverty will not care about a climate emergency as they see no future anyway . The poor are too busy trying to put food on the table than worrying if the chicken was free range or the food was packed in recycling material.
If this government is serious about the climate emergency then star by fixing the poverty problem . It would be far easier and then there would be more people with something to lose . This would be win win .
Words are cheap . When questioned on TV about child poverty Jacinda gave a big grin and said it is was under control . What would she be saying if it was z National in charge .
Bingo!
https://theconversation.com/climate-emergency-or-not-new-zealand-needs-to-start-doing-its-fair-share-of-climate-action-151083
Notes:
– The NDC mechanism in itself is a rather vague (self-) monitoring tool for emissions, it’s all about selected commitments.
– NZ further wiggled its way out of already weak commitments by insufficient inclusion of the agriculture/livestock and the transportation sectors.
– Both are absolutely determining for the actual performance (and eventual transformation) of the AONZ economy.
Industrialised countries that show an increase in net emissions:
Annex 1 countries
Growth in total emissions, 1990 to 2018
Turkey 160.63%
New Zealand 57.16%
Cyprus 53.76%
Canada 31.81%
Slovenia 24.54%
Spain 16.86%
Austria 10.97%
Ireland 8.02%
Iceland 6.05%
USA 5.72%
Kazakhstan 4.05%
Portugal 2.15%
To a great extent these figures do reflect the basic works done by any national climate ministry / institution in the world.
We also have to be aware that the physical reduction of emissions is only part of the equation. For an island country like AONZ more important are measures of disaster risk reduction and socio-economic adaptation to zero-carbon, circular production.
If those items above are not addressed by the ‘climate emergency’, it will remain an empty political marketing prose.
… but let us talk about ties instead, eh?
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