Climate crisis ‘won’t take a summer break’
Unlike MPs, the greenhouse gas heating our atmosphere won’t take a vacation this summer, a group of climate activists aged between 13 and 73 is warning.
The Intergenerational Climate Ambassadors group met Climate Change Minister James Shaw at the Beehive yesterday, the last day Parliament will be sitting for the year.
The youngest member of the group at 13, Mäia Wijohn told the minister she wished to one day tell her grandchildren we had done everything possible to heal the planet. Wijohn asked the Government to introduce carboncutting policies immediately.
“Your inaction is why young people are anxious,” she said.
“How can you sit by and watch as this happens?”
Actress and eco-activist Lucy Lawless warned MPs, “as they enjoy a Christmas holiday in the sun”, the pressure for action would increase next year.
“We’re going to come back with increasing frequency and intensity, just like the climate disasters.”
School Strike 4 Climate NZ founder Sophie Handford stressed that the window in which the world could avoid the worst effects of
climate change was closing rapidly. ‘‘It’s closing day by day, minute by minute, second by second,’’ Handford said.
‘‘Now we have one of the biggest mandates this Government will ever have to be able to truly, transformationally tackle the climate crisis.’’
Dr Jim Salinger, aged 73, is a retired climate scientist, and first spotted the signs of global warming in the mid-1970s in temperature data.
‘‘I’ve been talking about this probably forever,’’ he told Shaw. ‘‘Until recently, I’ve watched successive governments bugger around now for three decades.’’
He noted that weather-related disasters, which will increase as the world warms, are already arriving frequently.
‘‘The Napier floods actually made 150 houses uninhabitable and 600 houses damaged.’’
Salinger called for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Government to agree to the Climate Change Commission’s recommended advice and budgets, which will be publicly released in February. He also wants farmers to receive taxpayer support to switch to regenerative agriculture methods.
‘‘Failure to do so will mean New Zealand will be seen as a global perpetrator because of their huge emissions.’’
Five members of the group – Sir Alan Mark (the oldest member at age 88), James Renwick, sisters Chloe and Florence van Dyke, and Bethany Mataiti – were unable to attend, but they sent their messages for the Government with the others.
The ambassadors’ event coincided with demonstrations by School Strike 4 Climate NZ and Parents For Climate Aotearoa.
Aigagalefili Fepulea’i-Tapua’i, the founder of climate protest group 4 Tha Kulture, also spoke to Shaw. New Zealand had an obligation to the Pacific Islands and Pasifika people, she said.
‘‘New Zealand was built on the exploitation of Pacific immigrants,’’ she said. ‘‘In Banaba in 1901, the mining of phosphate in that country completely degraded the island and forced the relocation to Fiji of the indigenous people – phosphate that now fertilises the farmlands here in New Zealand.’’
Shaw told the activists he would take their sentiments to Parliament. ‘‘I agree with everything that all of you have said.’’