KEY POINTS:
In what seems little more than months, there has been a dramatic change in attitudes towards climate change. Partly this is a result of the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and abnormal weather patterns around the world. Partly, it reflects the consensus in the scientific community that man-made global warming exists and that - as spelled out by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern - it could have catastrophic consequences.
Politicians have not been so slow to catch the drift, and the likelihood that environmental matters could become a bigger issue for voters. First, there was the National Party's new blue-green tinge, presented by a leader who, a little over a year ago, was sceptical of the notion of global warming. Now it is Labour's turn.
The centrepiece of Helen Clark's speech to the party's annual conference was a call for New Zealand to be a world leader in sustainability. She said she wanted to make it "carbon neutral", a goal even more ambitious than that set by the Kyoto Protocol.
Precisely what the Prime Minister envisaged was not outlined. But much of this was an attempt to galvanise the party and its supporters and portray a party moving on from troubled times and grabbing a part of the next big thing. Perception was more important than particulars.
But it was also to do with positioning New Zealand as the drive to tackle climate change gathers pace. It was hardly accidental that the Prime Minister's speech coincided more or less with the release of the Stern Report. She would have known its likely tenor, if not the conclusion that unchecked climate change would turn 200 million people into refugees as their homes were taken by drought or flood and could result in the permanent loss of 20 per cent of global output.
She would also have been aware of the importance of the work. Here was a heavyweight economist adding a new slant to the warnings of scientists and confirming that, whatever the difficulties of quantifying the effects of climate change, it cannot be disregarded.
On the Prime Minister's radar would also have been the gathering disapproval in Europe of the "food miles" travelled by exotic produce because of the necessary aviation emissions. This is not mentioned explicitly in the Stern Report, but has been canvassed by Stephen Byers, a former British Cabinet minister and member of an expert panel of international politicians on climate change. New Zealand has been singled out as a candidate for a tax on food miles because sending 1kg of kiwifruit to Europe is said to result in 5kg of carbon being discharged into the atmosphere.
The concept is far from watertight. New Zealand farming practices are far more efficient than those in Europe, and the colossal number of short-haul flights within Europe is surely far more damaging emissions-wise. But it is a dangerous idea, because it is easily understood by an increasingly green population and is simple to act on. Correctly, the Government has recognised New Zealand's vulnerability and that much of the potential damage can be averted if it is acknowledged to be a world leader in sustainability.
Championing that cause, therefore, serves several purposes. But its impact will go only so far. Even when detail is added to the sloganeering, climate change is highly unlikely to be a defining election issue. This is not the stuff that galvanises party activists or voters. More immediate matters, often aligned to the hip-pocket, will usually hold sway. Rightly or wrongly.
