Wake-up call on climate

The Commissioner for the Environment’s report and the ‘‘Hallelujah Chorus’’ from the scientists referred to in your editorial ‘‘Flailing around in the darkness’’ (November 12) should give us all another wake-up call.

On July 3, 10 Environment Southland councillors voted for climate-urgency action plan. CEO Rob Phillips said that it could be produced in three months.

When can we expect the promised action plan, and will it be affected by the Commissioner for the Environment’s report?

I see parallels between corporations, organisations, lobby groups and Silicon Valley billionaires giving donations and, in exchange, receiving benefits from national and local governments, and Martin Luther’s 95 Reformation theses.

In 1517 at the beginning of the Reformation, he described the manipulation of ordinary people through the Catholic Church’s granting a reduced time in purgatory if payments, known as indulgences, were made to the church.

Perhaps in the interests of public information sharing, the ES climate action group could pin their list of required actions to the front doors of the four Southland councils, as did Martin Luther with his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church.

In public submissions made before the ES climate change debate, it was stated that we all need to take personal, moral, collective and ontological (philosophy of being) responsibility for the ‘climate urgency’ and implement actions to mitigate and adapt to the crisis.

Rev Denis Bartley