UN climate refugee ruling, Australian fires, hailstones +  dust storms and  National denying the climate crisis curriculum: Why radical change is the only change 

ByMartyn Bradbury

Important ruling by the UN that climate refugees can’t be returned home without consideration of the impact being returned to a climate crisis zone has on the individual.

This as Australia, beset by catastrophic fires now succumbs to vast destructive hail storms, flash floods and huge dust storms provides a running commentary of how extreme weather events are now the norm.

In the middle of this, National are pulling political stunts like declaring they will stop climate change being taught in schools because it doesn’t allow climate denial to be part if the debate…

National might withdraw climate change teaching resource

National says it might make changes to a new resource being rolled out to schools to help with teaching climate change, or perhaps withdraw it altogether.

The resource, rolling out this year, presents data and information from scientific bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NIWA and Government departments like Statistics NZ and the Ministry for the Environment. It doesn’t change the current curriculum, but aims to make it easier for teachers to do their job.

The Opposition has expressed concern over some of its contents, particularly information on the meat industry’s environmental impacts and what to do with students who express scepticism about humans’ impact on global temperatures, which have been rising for decades.

…the current political spectrum does not have the capacity to force through the radical adaptation we will require to survive the next phase of the climate crisis.

When Aucklanders looked up at the Orange skies caused by the megafires of Australia, we had a glimpse of the future we are leaving our children.

All the while the oil companies who knew about climate change in the 1990s are continuing to fund denial lies…

Oil And Gas Giants Spend Millions Lobbying To Block Climate Change Policies

Every year, the world’s five largest publicly owned oil and gas companies spend approximately $200 million on lobbying designed to control, delay or block binding climate-motivated policy. This has caused problems for governments seeking to implement policies in the wake of the Paris Agreement which are vital in meeting climate change targets. Companies are generally reluctant to disclose such lobbying expenditure and late last week, a report from InfluenceMap used a methodology focusing on the best available records along with intensive research of corporate messaging to gauge their level of influence on initiatives to halt climate change.

…this is not getting better, the temperatures are only going up…

State of the climate: How the world warmed in 2019

All of the official climate data for 2019 is now in. In this article, Carbon Brief explains why last year proved to be so remarkable across the planet’s oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature.

A number of records for the Earth’s climate were set in 2019:

    • It was the second or third warmest year on record for surface temperature – depending on the dataset used – and the warmest year without a major El Niño event. Temperatures in the lower troposphere were also either the second or third warmest.
    • It was the warmest year on record for ocean heat content, which increased markedly between 2018 and 2019.
    • It saw record lows in sea ice extent and volume in the Arctic and Antarctic for much of the period between April and August. The minimum Arctic sea ice extent reached in September tied for the second lowest on record.
    • Global sea levels and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reached new record highs in 2019, while the world’s glaciers continued to melt.

…once the heat becomes a run away event radical solutions for adaptation will become the only solutions.

I know I keep writing this, and I will not stop writing it.

Fortress Aotearoa is ‬the only way forward. We can pretend the world will unite and join hands to combat what is rapidly unfolding or we can accept the doomed nature of the worst of human nature and rather than plan for a pretend world of co-operation that will never exist, prepare for one where the worst angels of our nature are unleashed.

The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement Fortress Aotearoa…

  • Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
  • Immediately ban all water exports.
  • Empower local communities to make local decisions and set up resilience programs.
  • 5 year Parliamentary term so Governments can actually plan for change.
  • Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
  • Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
  • Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
  • Mass limiting of tourism numbers with huge increased tourist taxes.
  • Only citizens can vote.
  • Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
  • Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
  • Increase refugee in take to 10 000 per year
  • Fully funded public services focused on real welfare of people.
  • Mass Green housing rebuild.
  • 100% renewable energy for entire country.
  • Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
  • Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
  • Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
  • Financial transaction tax
  • Wealth tax
  • Multinational tax
  • Inheritance tax
  • Capitalist monopolies in energy, transport and finance have to be brought into public ownership and control. They should be subject to democratic plans drawn up by the whole community. Workers should have much stronger decision making powers within them.
  • All economic sectors to be made take steps needed to decarbonise the economy as much as is needed to reach zero net emissions by 2030.
  • Free and frequent public transport on electric buses and/or trains in all main cities.
  • Health care and education for life should be free and universally accessible.
  • Welfare, pensions, child allowances, should be universal wherever possible.
  • Public housing at fixed and affordable rents should be a right of all not just the desperately poor.
  • All workers should have a right to a job and the workweek reduced with no loss of pay to make that possible.
  • Local communes should be supported for control and delivery of as many functions of the centralised state as possible – including housing, education, health care.
  • Local communes to support cooperative forms of production of food, solar and wind energy,  electric transport, and media.

On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.

As the climate crisis unfolds more and more people in fury will turn against the current political system too wedded to the economic profits margins of the polluters. It is just a matter of time before the NZ electorate rejects the limitations of the current political spectrum.

The only thing that makes the Carbon Zero Act ‘historic’ is the future generations who will look back in spite & anger that we thought this sophistry was a legitimate response to the climate crisis – if you think maybe acting in 30 years is a solution, you are the problem.

In 2023, for the first time in NZ history, Gen x + Gen Y + Millennials will be a larger voting block than the boomers.

2023 is our date for political revolution comrades.

 

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10 Comments

  1. The world is clearly governed/controlled by incompetent fools and self-serving liars, who continue to make matters worse.

    ‘Doomsday clock lurches to 100 seconds to midnight – closest to catastrophe yet’

    “The world needs to wake up. Our planet faces two simultaneous existential threats,” said Mary Robinson, chair of an independent group of global leaders called The Elders, and the former president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner of human rights.
    Robinson said that countries that don’t aim to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions heating the planet and instead exploit fossil fuels are issuing “a death sentence for humanity”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/23/doomsday-clock-100-seconds-to-midnight-nuclear-climate

  2. In December, the Beehive released a statement saying that Climate Change will now be “a standard part” of their decision making. beehive.govt.nz/release/climate-change-lens-major-government-decisions.

    A ‘climate impacts assessment’ will be mandatory for policy and legislative proposals that are designed to reduce emissions, or which are likely to have consequential impacts on greenhouse emissions greater than 250,000 tonnes a year.

    Well, unless they are prepared to step in and override certain decisions by local councils, that statement may be lacking some bite.

    For example, the Queenstown Lakes District Council and Queenstown Airport Corporation are implementing their plans for a second jet-capable airport in the Southern Lakes, in Wānaka, “less than an hour’s drive from Queenstown’s existing international airport. This airport will not be developed for the sake of residents or local businesses, it will cater overwhelmingly for tourists.” (Emph added) threat-of-over-tourism-seen-in-wanakas-proposed-second-airport”

    As well as the negative effects of air travel and tourism in mitigating climate change, there are also other basic reasons to stop and think before bringing in yet more tens of thousands of tourists. ..Including infrastructure, accommodation, ecological stresses, water, and sewerage.

    This decision to move ahead with a second airport is being made before they have cleaned up their own back yard. At this time their wastewater plan is… to let it run into the lake!

    Re-post from 4th Jan:
    The lakes seem set to become sewers, ultimately, unless there is some sort of intervention into the insanity of it all.

    This application made in June, to legitimise the flushing of all their mega crap into the waterways, ultimately into our lakes and rivers.

    Excerpts:
    “Some of New Zealand’s cleanest and most scenic lakes could be on the receiving end of wastewater overflows for several decades. Lake Wanaka and Queenstown’s Lake Wakatipu, as well as numerous rivers and streams, are included in a Queenstown Lakes District Council resource consent application to discharge wastewater – usually comprising raw faeces, food waste, heavy metals and industrial waste – to freshwater when pipes break or block.”

    “The overflows are partly a consequence of both population growth and rising tourism in the district, which is the fastest growing in the country. Queenstown Lakes has a relatively high number of overflows compared to other councils, Water NZ data shows.”

    “Such overflows already happen, but are outside any resource consent regime. The council has received multiple infringement notices for wastewater overflows and was in 2018 fined $37,500 for allowing wastewater to enter the Kawerau River.”

    “The council’s data shows around 200 overflows have happened over a three-year period. In 2018, the number of overflows was 50 per cent higher than each of the previous two years. A minority of the overflows ended up in freshwater.”

    “The resource consent application shows wastewater is likely to occasionally end up in some of the country’s most iconic lakes and rivers, over the course of several decades. It requested a consent duration of 35 years, the maximum allowed, meaning discharges could continue beyond 2050.”

    “Among the high-risk sites are bustling lakefront areas in central Queenstown and central Wanaka. In some cases, the source of a likely overflow is less than 30m from the water.” [more at the link]

  5. Is AO/ NZ about to put itself on the map as a military target? And if so, is this a route that we want to go down? We took a stand against nuclear weapons and that brought us a time of relative peace and freedom. Is that all about to change? Are we about to become participants in the weapons-in-space race?

    Rocket Lab announced yesterday it would be launching a small satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office, a US agency which provides satellite imagery for military and intelligence use.
    The launch will take place at Rocket Lab’s Mahia launch site near Napier.     Stuff 22-1-2020

    1. Turbulence and more.

      Yes, Kheala, these are very, very relevant questions and your referenced STUFF article should indeed make alarm bells ringing loud and clear.

      In the light of – probably extensive – foreseeable turbulence stimulated by consequences of climate change the function of military, security, defense and self-defense, has to be re-thought and new models are to be explored.

      Focus on community engagement and on disaster management.

      This discussion cannot only belong to the beneficiaries of the presently existing system.

      In this context the related suggestions of Martyn Bradbury have to be further checked and refined, most probably, this also should include finding a more appropriate title/theme for such initial platform.

      Historically these discussions are a difficult subject for the Left, with the effect that most security strategies are framed as replications of classical warfare approaches.

  6. A symposium of science and communities of New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

    A wider symposium of scientists and community leaders, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral sorting of information, and breaking down Climate Change facts and responses to the local level is the need of the hour.

    Such is a relatively small task to organize and a parliamentary group like the Greens – supported by the other executive government partners – should be able to find funding for such elementary organizational step towards climate resilience.

    By no means is waiting for 2023 a justified option.

    ….. the beloved queen has to be protected in a different way.

    System Change. Now.

    1. re “System Change. Now” …the source of the problem:

      ‘ “I Don’t See Her In Beijing Or Delhi” – Niall Ferguson Slams Davos’ “Virtue Signaling” Greta Fanboys’

      https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/i-dont-see-her-beijing-or-delhi-neil-ferguson-slams-davos-virtue-signaling-greta

      ‘Visualizing Every Coal Power Plant In The World (1927-2019)’

      https://www.zerohedge.com/health/visualizing-every-coal-power-plant-world-1927-2019

      “If you live in a developed country, it’s been clear that the appetite for coal power is falling.

      Not only has coal been singled out as a primary source of carbon emissions and air pollution, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins details below, it’s also been getting phased out in favor of cheap natural gas in some regions around the world.

      In the U.S., electricity generation from coal has been dropping since the late 2000s, and in Europe the departure from coal has accelerated even quicker. In fact, it’s estimated that European coal power output could fall 23% in 2019 alone.

      A Different Global Story

      However, despite a growing consensus around the use of thermal coal in the West, the global story is actually quite different.

      Today’s animation from SVT Nyheter details every coal power plant in the world from 1927 to 2019, and it shows that coal power — especially in South Asia — has continued to ramp up…

      1. Hello Red Buzzard. Thanks for feedback.

        Not everything close is as it looks from the distance….

        So far I trust that Greta Thunberg is not blind toward GHG emissions, pollution and ecological destruction in Asia. Future will show, not only on Fridays.

        Anyway, she is a media icon standing for a most important issue, and in this regard her contributions are certainly remarkable.

        But there are millions thinking like her, just less visible. Ask your kids….

        The still ongoing construction of coal power plants is indeed terrible, thanks for emphasizing this.

        The famous BUT:

        Bringing the past Western industrialization process on the same baseline as the present Eastern industrialization process would need to consider the following:

        – the very different status of economic development and the associated poverty levels of the populations in the second half of the 20th century,
        – the relocation of industrial production from the West to the East, especially coal and steel related processes; in the 70ies/80ies complete plants were dismantled in Europe, the US and other parts of the world and fully re-constructed in Asia / China (this is actually a main reason for the rapid Chinese economic growth rates over the past decades), effectively contributing to a global transfer and re-distribution of the GHG emission rates,
        – the continued push by neoliberal dogma for foreign direct investment (FDI) in most Asian countries driving an excessive demand for energy (still heavily pursued and favoured by international development banks), as well as deregulated production based on cheap labour and exploitation of natural resources, and destruction of family-based smallholder agriculture,
        – the ‘free market / business model’ ideology that has been successfully implanted in many present Asian leaders belonging to the same generation educated in the same or similar Western institutions 30-40 years ago.

        Naturally I would agree that such explanation cannot forever serve as an excuse for non-action in Asia.

        For NZ a technical dialogue with China, India, ASEAN, etc. on these matters would be most beneficial.

        System Change. Now.

  7. Pull the benefit said she doesn’t trust Winstone. Well she is the one that breached peoples privacy and abused her powers. So for her to talk about trust what a bloody joke and what a bloody hypocrite. She has no shame and spins regularly so why would national admit to climate change when they don’t admit to anything else even when they have been caught out.

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