Can Govt tackle its ‘nuclear-free’ moment?

In the throes of an enthralling rise to power within the Labour Party, Jacinda Ardern launched her campaign to lead the country with a powerful call to arms. She declared climate change her generation’s ‘‘nuclear-free moment’’. ‘‘I am determined that we will tackle it head-on.’’ That was almost two years ago. This week, those in charge of monitoring our progress in facing that ‘‘nuclear-free moment’’ moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock a little closer to midnight.

Environment Aotearoa 2019, a three-year stocktake of the nation’s

natural assets by the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Stats NZ, is merely the latest volume of grim reading we’ve come to expect about the impact of climate change and human activity: thousands of species going, going, gone; sick rivers; productive land and habitats gobbled up by urban sprawl; and the increasingly calamitous onset of a warming climate.

‘‘As a nation, we need to make a bold plan to protect and restore nature now,’’ said Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague.

That bold plan would need to consider practically every facet of the way we live, move, eat and work. This is far bigger than a few single-use plastic bags.

Up to now, agriculture has been an easy scapegoat for the majority of us who have long since left those small country roads to contribute to the growing urban sprawl. But as Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton pointed out in his recent report, emissions from transporting that great body of urban humanity is every bit as responsible for the pickle we are now in.

Many of us are free to think globally and act locally. And we should do.

But as powerful as ordinary punters and businesses are and can be, when it comes to formulating a bold plan, the ‘‘we’’ Hague refers to is surely the Government.

It sets the rules, it holds the purse strings and, as its leader has pointed out, this is its ‘‘nuclear moment’’.

No other organisation or industry has the power or mandate to pull the levers of action as part of a meaningful, cohesive plan.

The trouble is the sobering Environment Aotearoa 2019 report comes in the same week that this Government, despite undeniable momentum, was unable to build sufficient support to make another bold change and implement a capital gains tax. Even the more moderate ‘‘minority report’’ was considered too politically risky.

The challenge set out in the MfE and Stats NZ report is far greater than that posed by Sir Michael Cullen and his Tax Working Group.

Meeting it will mean pain for many, but possibly more so in regional and business catchments prowled by Winston Peters and NZ First. If they were unwilling to stomach a capital gains tax because of the potential impacts on business and agricultural interests, what chance a suite of changes carrying the same threat of extinction for those sectors as that faced by many of our bird, fish and plant species.

Politicians no doubt hold a genuine concern for the planet, but this week has demonstrated they are more likely to act on a greater concern for the polls.