The future of climate protest will only be more extreme actions – Climate Change protesters righteously use their privilege to shut down Wellington motorway
Two protesters arrested, highway reopens easing traffic delays for commuters
Traffic remains backed up on State Highway 1 in Wellington after the southbound lanes were blocked on Thursday morning by an incident involving the Restore Passenger Rail protest group.
As of 8.35am, all lanes had reopened, Waka Kotahi said, but “significant southbound delays remain with queues back to Johnsonville. Please be patient while delays ease”.
Three charged after huge traffic delays caused by rail protesters
Three people have been arrested and charged after a group behind a series of controversial demonstrations blocked a busy Wellington intersection during rush-hour traffic.
Waka Kotahi confirmed State Highway 1 in Kilbirnie, heading northbound at the intersection with Hamilton Rd, closed about 8am on Tuesday morning, causing “significant delays” in both directions. It reopened about an hour later.
If global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100, University of Western Ontario’s Joshua Pearce says it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century.
These 3 things are all connected.
The Climate Protestors blocking Wellington Motorways are legends and true heroes.
They are prepared to use their white privilege for real justice.
These are nice white middle class protesters who won’t get 14 years for blocking a motorway.
As the speed of climate change hits us, as the true cost of our denial is realised – protestors will get angrier and angrier at the inaction.
What we are seeing with the planet melting down thanks to human pollution created since the Industrial Revolution right now is unprecedented…
This winter has confirmed what scientists had feared — the sea ice around Antarctica is in sharp decline, with experts now concerned it may not recover.
Earlier this year, scientists observed an all-time low in the amount of sea ice around the icy continent, following all-time lows in 2016, 2017 and 2022.
Usually, the ice has been able to recover in winter, when Antarctica is reliably dark and cold.
But this year is different. For the first time, the sea ice extent has been unable to substantially recover this winter, leaving scientists baffled.
‘Five-sigma’ event unfolding
Physical oceanographer Edward Doddridge has been communicating with scientists and the community about the drastic changes happening around Antarctica.
He said vast regions of the Antarctic coastline were ice free for the first time in the observational record.
“To say unprecedented isn’t strong enough,” Dr Doddridge said.
“For those of you who are interested in statistics, this is a five-sigma event. So it’s five standard deviations beyond the mean. Which means that if nothing had changed, we’d expect to see a winter like this about once every 7.5 million years.
“It’s gobsmacking.”
…What is happening across the planet is a death shroud of heat, a burning furnace that is but a glimmer of things to come.
You understand, it just gets worse from here on in.
60 000 died in Europe last year from heat, expect those numbers to start jumping dramatically from here on in.
Climate change was a theoretical issue that might impact us at the end of the century, the last 12months has shown how wrong we were.
Extreme catastrophic climate events will hit faster than our ability to rebuild, this will interrupt the agricultural cycle and cause enormous climate refugee issues.
National and ACT have promised to roll back any environmental policies that constrict Business making money and will keep their Farmer mates out from having to do anything.
Both Parties will trash public transport, both parties intend to remove healthy home requirements, both parties will see methane unleashed.
If they win, it will mean the Agricultural industry have managed to avoid any restrictions for quarter of a century.
Labour and the Greens have done bugger all but the pittance they have done will all be stamped out and a National and ACT Government, and you can’t claim that Labour and the Greens haven’t made some progress…
We are bending the climate curve
A drop in greenhouse gas emissions due to Covid-19 measures was sustained well beyond the end of movement restrictions and lockdowns, new data shows.
In fact, climate pollution continued to fall through all of 2022, with the December 2022 quarter delivering the lowest figure in at least nine years barring the period covering the first lockdown, Statistics New Zealand reported on Thursday. While the pace of the decline isn’t yet sufficient to meet New Zealand’s climate goals, it suggests we have well and truly bent the emissions curve and are on our (slow but steady) way to a net-zero economy.
The figures from Stats NZ are provisional and calculated using a different methodology than New Zealand’s official emissions reporting. But they offer a much quicker and more regular look at the country’s decarbonisation progress than the official annual tallies, which are released on a two-year lag. They also don’t include the carbon-sucking impacts of forestry.
…those tiny steps will be eliminated by National and ACT if they become the Government.
We are living in denial, National and ACT are the Parties of climate denial, they are the Parties who have done all they can to pretend global warming caused by man made pollution isn’t happening and if they win in October, just as the planet plunges into a climate change doom spiral, they will be adding fuel to that fire rather than trying to stop it.
The good news is that the catastrophe speeding towards us from climate change will force us to work together whether we like each other or not.
Fortress Aotearoa is our only future. The inevitability of it by 2030 will demand co-operation amongst ourselves whether we want to or not.
Catastrophic Climate Change is coming whether you believe in it or not!
We are now in the age of consequences, and those consequences don’t give a fuck about your feelings.
Sometimes the machine is so hateful and evil you have to throw yourself onto the gears to stop it.
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The truly extreme actions will be carried out by Governments, not citizens. Prepare for the storm.
The point of these protests, not that these protesters most likely realize this, is to denigrate the protest movement itself. This type of protest is a worldwide phenomenon, and this level of reach does not come from little ole you and me. Just like protest movements can be infiltrated by bad actors, then as far as I’m concerned, this type of protest comes out of the billionaire playbook of weakening any type of push back against billionaire class actions/initiatives.
As for climate change, I wish that things were so good with the world that climate change is all we had to worry about, but alas with new variants floating in the wind, a tanking global economy, a war in Europe and threats of a war breaking out in our neck of the woods, then well, we’ve all got other issues to worry about. Pity, because we need to be aware of potential polices coming down the pike in the name of climate change. Don’t the ruling class just love calamity huh!
“The Climate Protestors blocking Wellington Motorways are legends and true heroes.”
I would like to defer.
And I should know I have led a powerful protest campaign to shut down a coal mine and won.
Without taking the public with them these protesters will achieve nothing, except hurt the protest movement.
https://aucklandclimateaction.org/2013/08/26/we-will-stop-your-mine/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/9127196/Protest-signs-stay-put-as-mine-opponents-challenge-council-order
Adventurist actions that piss off working people going about their daily business are not going to win over anyone. The only result will be to give the state more excuse to crackdowns on the legitimate protest movement.
Well said Pat the problem will not be solved by piss ing people off . It will be no good working in isolation and we need to follow the big polutors they will not follow us .
@Pat do we need to acknowledge the class prejudice in this?
No one in this country wants to talk about class but so much of our protest and culture wars are breaking down along class lines: What you’re describing is middle class people protesting in way that pisses off the working class and gives the establishment the opportunity to drive a wedge between the two groups and prevent progress on climate change.
Is it true that the middle class have so internalised the need to protect the owner class above them that they can’t even see the problem with their actions here?
Imagine if they joined with the working class and blocked the roads around parliament – nothing would scare the powers-that-be more than the middle class and working class joining together on this issue.
NZs contribution to global induced climate change is less than 1 percent.
If you want to make meaningful change glueing yourself to roads and stopping traffic is not going to cut it.
Transport is 14 percent of the less than our 1 percent.
Anything we do will have no impact.
It is the very meaning of virtue signalling.
Large populous developing countries which produce the lions share should be financed and encourage to adopt green/nuclear technology.
Do you want to actually solve the problem or just feel virtuous?
“NZs contribution to global induced climate change is less than 1 percent.”
– So? Are you going to make an argument based upon that statement?
Or, are you going to leave it there like a turd hoping that you can engender some sort of innuendo from it and/or encourage a logical fallacy.
“Large populous developing countries which produce the lions share should be financed and encourage to adopt green/nuclear technology.”
– Agreed, as also should small low population countries. A single passenger isn’t entitled to a free ride on the bus just because the bus is full and he/she is outnumbered.
Look the reality is no NZ politician or citizen can stop climate change. If NZ sank into the ocean tomorrow climate change would continue without us because the vast bulk of emissions are generated off shore, not in this country.
Akin to closing a window when the roof is missing, anything we do will have no effect.
If we are to survive this it will be because we adapt not ruin our economy by trying to tilt at windmills.
Martyn you really should keep taking the tablets
Methane has 25% of the effect of CO2, food producers are specifically exempted from the Paris Agreement, and new IPCC data has reduced the possible temperature rises to less than 2 degrees.
Why not worry about real problems of uneducated children, rising crime, child poverty and inflation that we can do something about rather than watch the China, India and Indonesia making the sensible decision to feed, shelter, provide power for their own people and ignore our pear clutching
Disappointing. I was hoping the actions in Kilbirnie might have resulted in more “removal by the hair” action like that seen in Europe not so long ago. Never mind, I’m sure continued protests of this type will wind up the general public enough that my wishes will be granted.
Removal by hair. Are you a National party supporter because Luxon has no hair? He wouldn’t be protesting about such things and in that way anyway.
The trouble with pure minded protesters is that they find they have to wear blinkers to keep their minds unpolluted by the uncaring and the troubles increasingly ballooning partly by climate change, for many poorer people. They may be willing to suffer harm to themselves but cut into the system
Love thy neighbour, even if you don’t love yourself. We must try or we are all a waste of time and resources and the earth will deal with us and we won’t have a helpful or comforting hand as it happens.