OPINION
James Shaw is off to help steer a private investment company into greener pastures. That’s excellent news. As the Green’s former co-leader said in his valedictory speech last Wednesday, after politics, the second most influential lever for climate action is finance.
He’s right about that, although not in every way. The world’s big money is critical to slowing the depletion of rainforests, speeding the advance of renewable energy and promoting technological innovation.
It will also be invaluable if we are to reform our cities so we can more easily lead low-emissions lives.
Morrison, the company in which Shaw will become an “operating partner”, is New Zealand’s largest private investment fund. Some of its $38 billion is already invested in solar and wind energy and other green technologies, but much more is needed.
The appointment of Shaw suggests that may be about to happen.
And yet, through the infrastructure company Infratil, which it manages, Morrison has also been heavily invested in enterprises that are not climate-friendly. That includes Wellington Airport – part of the most damaging transport industry on the planet – and Z Energy, which it formed after joining with the New Zealand Super Fund to buy Shell NZ in 2010.
Morrison and the NZSF both more than doubled their money when they floated Z just five years later. Z, like other oil companies, puts a great deal of effort into greenwashing its activities. But an oil company is an oil company.
The job of an “operating partner” is usually to identify investment opportunities and work out how to make the most of them. The world is awash with green investment opportunities and Shaw will not find it hard to get among them.
But the planet won’t be saved just with relatively easy options like solar farms in the desert. Much more is required. Rainforests, mentioned above, provide one example of the challenge. For cattle ranchers in Brazil and palm oil farmers in Indonesia to agree to leave the forests standing, they require viable economic alternatives.
The answers are not obvious but it will take investment bankers like Shaw to find them and make it happen.
And there’s something else. It’s not enough for them to be doing good work. They also have to stop the bad work. As Shaw knows acutely from his own experience at successive global COP meetings, divestment is critical.
The world could get itself on track to reduce emissions below the Paris target of 1.5 per cent tomorrow, if banks, sovereign wealth funds and other investors simply refused to finance major corporate emitters.
But that’s not happening. On the contrary, everywhere from the seabed to the thawing tundra, there’s a renewed rush to plunder the as-yet unexploited fossil fuels and mineral resources of the planet.
Shaw is renowned for his skill in forging consensus agreements on climate action in Parliament. That skill will be much more severely tested when he’s facing down people drunk on the money still to be made from fossil fuels. Yet that, critically, will be - or should be - his job.
He wasn’t helped last week when, just a couple of hours after his valedictory, Green MP Julie-Anne Genter got out of her seat in the debating chamber, went over to National Party Cabinet minister Matt Doocey and ranted in his face.
It was so wrong, for so many reasons. Most obviously, because Parliament must be a safe space for democratic debate.
Also, she badly compromised her party. All politicians should know to do the right thing, but the Greens like us to think it’s in their DNA.
A string of National MPs have been accused of bullying behaviour in recent years, which many commentators (including me) have said exposes a sense of entitlement baked into that party’s DNA. Genter joins an unhappy list of Green MPs who invite us to consider if something is also amiss in their party makeup.
Having said that, I confess to considerable sympathy for her, especially because the issue at stake was transport policy. Genter had listened to yet another defence of the indefensible, as Doocey and his colleagues declared their transport plans will improve our lives.
But the evidence from here and overseas is overwhelming: the Government’s transport policies will make emissions, congestion, road safety, public health and the cost of living worse.
“Read the report!” shouted Genter, clearly furious the Government is yet again ignoring the evidence of the damage that will be done.
The day itself may have prompted her fury. Government MPs had enjoyed listening to Shaw, a person most of them seem to believe has been an admirable politician, but saw no contradiction in their reconvening later that evening to trash one of his own core messages.
Shaw views the new transport policy as a terrible backward step for the country every bit as much as Genter does. Sadly, she drowned out her own message: the shouting was reported, but not what she was shouting about.
As for Shaw himself, he must have wondered what he had done to make his own colleague obliterate his moment to be memorable. Genter swallowed up all the oxygen available to the Greens that evening and over the next day. She led the news; his speech did not.
And yet it was a brilliant speech: insightful, challenging, generous and frequently very funny.
Many observers like to think of Shaw as a “Blue-Green”, by which they probably mean he’s a sensible moderate chap, unlike the dangerous radicals he’s been consorting with.
Shaw, for his part, has always said the social reforms promoted by “Red-Greens” are intrinsic to his own beliefs. You can’t seriously fight climate change if you don’t recognise that the people it hurts the most, locally and globally, are already the most marginalised.
Are the Blue-Greens really even a thing? National likes to say it has many Blue-Green MPs, from the Prime Minister on down. But if that’s true, and if they really do respect Shaw, will they respect his legacy?
A string of government measures that will raise emissions suggests not. From cancelling the EV rebate to raising public transport fares, there’s good evidence this Government cares far too little about climate action.
Now the big test has arrived. The Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is sponsored by National’s Infrastructure Minister, Chris Bishop. He’s another supposed Blue-Green.
Is he? Fair to say he’s not a gleeful champion of the dark side, like Sith Lord Jonesy and his “goodbye Freddie” and “dig, baby, dig” rhetoric.
NZ First’s Minister for Regional Development and Resources, Shane Jones, appears to think that elegantly phrased jokes obscure the malevolence of his intent. “Gone are the days of the multicoloured skink, the kiwi, many other species that have been weaponised to deny regional New Zealand communities their right to a livelihood,” he told Parliament.
He’s talking about species extinction. Reducing the biodiversity that safeguards us against biological catastrophe, even though we are already the country doing this faster than any other.
But for all Jones’ bluster, it’s Bishop doing the real damage. If his bill becomes law, three “development” ministers (and not the Environment Minister) will be empowered to green-light projects in mining, transport, energy and other infrastructure, without having to worry about conflicts of interest, accept expert advice or justify their decisions. They will be able to approve projects rejected by the courts. Public input and even the information we receive will be limited.
It’s a recipe for environmental disaster and political corruption. It’s a historic setback after decades of slow and painful progress towards aligning the country’s economic and environmental goals.
If Blue-Greens are a thing, you’d think they’d be worried about this, because the potential for long-term damage is incalculable.
The Auditor-General, John Ryan, has formally expressed his concern and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, former National minister Simon Upton, has warned of the “significant environmental risks”.
They and many other critics have called for a raft of changes. Principally, they want the ministers not to have the final say.
If Luxon, Bishop and all their Blue-Green colleagues really do respect James Shaw, they will change the Fast-Track Approvals Bill.
But there’s another possibility. Trampling democratic processes and the environment and bugger the climate? That’s what some of the donors who made record contributions last year to all three coalition parties were hoping to buy, isn’t it?
Good luck to James Shaw, moving into the world of high finance. Bloody hell, somebody’s got to do it.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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