Failure, in this instance, though, means decimation of the scientifically necessary fundamentals for
human life on earth as we know it.
It’s really that simple.
Humanity gets its act together, or we don’t. We either herald in an era of increasingly volatile and more frequent weather, mass human displacement, ocean acidification, greater disease and misery, or we dismantle the profit-at-all-costs economic system that’s causing it.
Christopher Luxon’s Government, which has cut rapid decarbonisation efforts, public transport investment and protection of conservation and green spaces to pave the way for fossil fuel lobbyists, doesn’t really care about your cost of living.
In fact, all of these things will increase the cost, and decrease the quality of our living. Nowhere is this more stark than in the Government’s own draft Emissions Reduction Plan, which not only takes us off track to meet carbon reduction stepping stones in 2035 and neutrality in 2050, but also outlines how their approach will cost the poorest New Zealander four times as much as the wealthiest.
But we’re just a small country, aye?
We contribute less than a percentage of the world’s emissions, aye?
Well, yeah. But if you add up all the countries responsible for fewer than 2% of emissions, you’re quickly talking about more than a third of the world’s total emissions.
And if all of those countries are off the hook, then shouldn’t the big emitters be too? And then what? Let our planet burn?
Is that really who we are? Is that really what we want?
Are we the kind of people who do the right thing even when no one else is watching? Or the lemmings who jump off the bridge because “everyone else is”?
We all know global politics is more fraught and precarious than in any other time in living memory, perversely at a time that requires the greatest human collaboration we’ve ever seen to meet the challenge of existential threat.
A wise man (my dad, paraphrasing a bunch of other very wise people) always says to worry only about the things you have control over. What Aotearoa New Zealand has control over is our emissions and the rulebook that governs our economy.
Yet Climate Minister Simon Watts will attend COP29 to represent a government that has actively chosen to increase emissions and inequality in our country.
These decisions aren’t in favour of the majority of regular people. They are decisions on behalf of lobbyists laughing their way to the bank.
Real climate action not only reduces emissions, but it improves quality of life and reduces the cost of living.
Imagine if we could efficiently and affordably get around and between our towns and cities like any other grown-up country that’s invested properly in its rail network — instead of wasting hours of our lives in congestion on both workdays and holidays. Imagine if your home was powered through distributed, renewable, community-owned energy — instead of being prey to profit-gauging electricity companies. Imagine if we truly respected our local food growers by supporting them over Australian-owned supermarkets.
The reason these things haven’t happened is because we’ve had 40 years of politics dominated by trickledown economics. The Government is pretending the solution to the problems created by this system is to double down on it. ]New Zealanders are smarter than that.
The sweeping majority of New Zealanders care about each other and the planet we live on.
If mainstream politics isn’t willing to deliver the policy platform to meet those values, it’s past time to remake mainstream politics.
The funny thing is, this really is down to whether the majority of New Zealanders want to get involved in politics or not.
We get the politics we think we deserve, much like we get the love that we think we deserve. We’ve expected far too little for far too long, and got precisely that. While a number of Americans lament a deeply entrenched, billionaire-backed two-party system that upholds the status quo, New Zealanders still, thankfully, have genuine options.
It’s time for rational, open, informed public debate about the kind of country we deserve that’s not limited by two legacy parties waiting for their turn on the Treasury benches.
Whether or not you mess with politics, politics messes with you. Christopher Luxon wants you switched off. That’s because politics belongs to those who turn up. So it’s time to turn up.
Our future is a group project.
