Too important an issue for politics
Climate change is the most pressing issue of our age. There is no getting around that and no wishing away the harsh reality of it. The time for doubt, debate and scepticism has passed and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 report, which found we had just 12 years to keep global warming within 1.5C, was a global wake-up call.
But the urgent news has not sunk in everywhere, it seems. It would be ironic if it were not tragic that two coastal areas that will be hit especially hard by rising sea levels and increasingly frequent storms – the West Coast of the South Island and Thames-coromandel – have local authorities that need to see even more proof of climate change before they act.
The West Coast Regional Council made headlines last month when its submission on the Government’s Zero Carbon Bill stated ‘‘the evidence proving anthropogenic climate change must be presented and proven beyond reasonable doubt’’ before the council supported the bill. Legitimate questions about the future of jobs and communities on the coast were lost in the fallout.
It will surprise no-one that the West Coast Regional Council is among the 23 New Zealand councils that have not signed up to Local Government New Zealand’s Climate Change Declaration, which urges the Government to act and for economic assessments to be made, while committing to local action plans and emission reductions.
It is understood the 23 councils, ranging from the Stratford District Council in Taranaki and the Hurunui District Council in North Canterbury to the Hamilton City Council, have not signed for a variety of reasons. It cannot be assumed all 23 councils are packed with climate change deniers who disagree with mainstream views about science and the environment.
But it seems at least one is questioning the science. Thames-coromandel Mayor Sandra Goudie told RNZ her council had not signed the declaration because of uncertainty over outcomes. Pressed further, Goudie refused to commit to a view on whether climate change was really happening and described the issue as ‘‘incredibly highly politically charged and driven’’.
To describe the issue of climate change as ‘‘politically charged’’ is to assume there is still room for a range of opinions on the reality of climate change. This is the kind of view commonly heard more than a decade ago, but now very rare as the scientific consensus has settled. Climate change is now much bigger than party politics or tribal ideology.
Goudie is a first-term mayor and dairy farmer who did three terms as National’s Coromandel MP. Some will immediately see her as representing one side of polarised arguments in New Zealand between urban and rural voters or environmentalists and farmers. Such stark generalisations are not helpful.
But New Zealanders, whether in remote farming communities, small towns or larger cities, deserve more informed leadership than that which Goudie and her councillors seem to be offering the people of Thames-coromandel. With local body elections approaching later in 2019, many voters there and elsewhere in the country may find themselves looking at the list of signatories to the declaration, checking if their own local body has joined up and if they haven’t yet, asking why not.
To describe the issue as ‘‘politically charged’’ is to assume there is still room for a range of opinions ...