EVs and agriculture: Ardern signs climate deal with California Governor Gavin Newsom. Video / California Governor Gavin Newsom
If flattery was a tradeable commodity, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would have quite a trade deal going on after a US weekend focusing on climate change and technology.
First up was California Governor Gavin Newsom, who Ardern met in San Francisco on Saturday morning (NZ time) to ink a partnershipon climate change, sharing tech and projects in areas such as transport and agriculture.
Newsom began by saying few people had been tested in their leadership the way Ardern was after the Christchurch mosque attacks and it inspired him every day.
"And you can't take for granted leadership .. when you find it - people who really step up, meet a moment head on."
He wound up the event with a further flurry of compliments, saying he was privileged and humbled the leader of an entire country would deign to meet with him, the mere governor of a US state.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and California Governor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco Botanical Gardens. Photo / supplied by Office of Governor Gavin Newsom
Ardern reminded him size mattered: "You've got quite a large economy."
He does indeed: if the state of California was a country, it would be the fifth-largest economy in the world with a gross state product of $3.4 trillion to New Zealand's GDP of $350 billion.
Newsom had just finished talking about California's $US47.1b spending plan on climate change.
When Ardern noted the $3b budget attached to her own climate change programme, she had to assure Newsom it was actually quite a lot of money in New Zealand terms.
That difference in scale is why the climate change agreement is a bigger deal than it might seem - Ardern is hoping it will at least make it easier to boost the number of electric cars and infrastructure for them.
Next on the list was Microsoft's president Brad Smith.
At a function for Ardern in Seattle, she barely had to lift a finger to promote her delegation: Smith turned into New Zealand Inc for her.
He got in a pitch for tourists to go to New Zealand, for meat and then for technological innovation. He noted one company on the delegation, LawVu, had an AI programme to manage legal issues: "You're in the right place. Lawsuits are to Americans what sheep are to New Zealand."
He too then sang Ardern's praises for the response to the Christchurch mosque attacks - but he pointed out it was not only the gun reforms but her push on the Christchurch Call to try to prevent social media being used for terrorism and violence.
Smith had been an early and active promoter of those efforts - and he referred to Ardern's Harvard University speech, in which she had called for social media platforms to up their game when it came to the algorithms used to direct people to other content.
"As [Ardern] said yesterday, we are not done yet. We have more to do."
And while the flattery will not go amiss, especially after a bruising year back at home on the Covid response, Ardern will be more interested in the interest from tech companies for business and the Christchurch Call.
Her weekend with the tech companies will have pleased her in that regard. Ardern had also met with Twitter and Amazon and visited Amazon's famous Spheres in Seattle - or as a local said they were called, the Big Balls of Bezos.
Amazon told media the high use of renewable energy in New Zealand was one of the reasons it was investing $7.5b in data centres for its cloud business there - measures that make it possible for corporates to reduce their carbon footprint can be big business.
The trick was opening the doors - and people like Newsom and Smith can be good allies in that regard.
