DOWN THE DUSTPIPE: Climate change minister Paula Bennett lack of action suggests support for the status quo.
As I write my final contribution for the year (and - as I am about to leave Whanganui - for the foreseeable future), I am thinking back over the seven years or so I have been writing here.
I have been wondering what has changed - and what hasn't.
When it comes to the care of our natural environment and living more sustainably has anything changed?
Are we more caring and careful individually and collectively? Are we seeing more enlightened guidance and policy-making from our politicians? Is there evidence of a shift of values in society generally?
My first answer is an emphatic "Yes" in respect of the many, many examples of community groups and individuals who daily demonstrate their commitment to caring for our environment. I find it heartening and inspiring as I read and hear about these examples.
In Whanganui there are the increasing number of people using the Resource Recovery Centre or Re-use Academy, the many volunteers at Bushy Park, Gordons Bush or in Coast Care, and the youngsters learning about caring for the natural world in enviro-schools.
And there examples like this in every community throughout the country.
The commercial world also includes many examples of businesses taking up the challenge and demonstrating conservation values.
Many more than previously are making financial contributions to the survival of various species, such as kiwi and kokako. Others are changing their practices to minimise waste or conserve energy, recognising their impact on the wider environment.
I celebrate the hundreds, even thousands of farmers, who have faced up to the effects their work has on our environment, and have taken steps to reduce these effects.
Sadly I cannot see similar efforts from our national politicians. In the time I have been writing I have seen little if any change in the emphasis on economic growth at the expense of the environment.
Monetary values dominate the thinking of those in power - and none more so than in the approach to climate change. The same lack of balance and unwillingness to deal with our carbon emissions continues.
The Minister for Climate Change Issues has just returned from the latest climate conference (which was charged with the task of deciding on the rules to implement the Paris agreement). Rather than responding to the many options available for addressing our emissions profile, she has appointed a group to look at how we might, as a nation, adapt to climate change, rather than prevent or mitigate against it.
This demonstrates this Government's commitment to the economic status quo. A group of 50 leading Kiwis have just written to the Government asking it to do more to address climate change. From its record so far it is unlikely to respond.
By the time this is published, an American university climate scientist, Guy McPherson, will have told a Whanganui audience of his view that the climate situation is so dire that the human species could be extinct in 10 years.
Whether his view is extreme or not, the message from the scientific community grows more urgent by the day. In spite of this, the actions of our Government have not changed much in the seven years I have been writing.
Efforts to find more fossil fuels continue, as they do in any number of other developed countries. The Government's response to critics is to say that the country needs to ensure its economic wellbeing - again demonstrating that it is stuck in its old paradigm.
Much as I can celebrate the progress made in the private sector I believe that it is our Government which must provide the policy settings for handling looming climate change. Sadly its record gives no reason for optimism.
*Philip McConkey has worked in the helping professions as a social worker, counsellor and family therapist. He has three daughters and five grand-children who provide much of his motivation in the conservation field