“Get your heroes stuck up a tree,” goes the advice to creative writers, “then hurl rocks at them.” In other words, dear authors, don’t settle for one calamity, but compound it with another.
The object, of course, is to have our heroes dig deep, and summon the brilliance and resolve to prevail against impossible odds.
Were we scripting the drama of an entire civilisation at risk, we couldn’t do better than strand everyone up a climate-crisis tree, and then fling lethal Covid rocks at them, making the tension unbearable. Tragically, that’s exactly the double crisis humanity now faces.
“Compelling climate strategies are based on restricting global overheating to 1.5˚C”
For why a 1.5˚C limit is critical, see NASA . When Covid-19 struck, New Zealand was facing the challenging 30-year decarbonisation pathway set by our Zero Carbon Act (ZCA). Requiring 7-10% emissions cuts year-on-year, with enough massive investments in mitigation and adaptation (e.g. electrifying transport, and urban flood defences) to challenge even a robust, innovative society like ours.
Add spiralling Covid-19 debt, and climate funding faces an even greater crisis. Christiana Figueres, of Paris Agreement fame, spelled this out to RNZ listeners (here). Figueres was unequivocal: unless Coronavirus packages are also climate-recovery ones, the fiscal vacuum left by Covid will cripple essential climate strategies.
This urgency is heightened by scientists struggling to tell climate reality as bad as it is (refer seasoned climate advocate Bill McKibben or Australia’s thinktank Breakthrough discussing climate an existential security risk.). Even October’s “Acuity”, the staid magazine for Australasian Chartered Accountants, published a sobering scenario of a world warmed 4˚C and only able to support one billion people.
In that context, James Shaw’s announcement of businesses needing to report climate risk (Scoop) might seem small fry. It is, however, a world-leading initiative capable of propelling major shifts in investment strategy, while equipping commerce to better-weather unfolding climate storms. With world governments and businesses still largely myopic on climate, this offers a pioneering example needed far beyond New Zealand.
The overarching issue for Election 2020, then, is neither Covid-19, nor its economic fallout, but electing a government that doesn’t drop the climate ball as it faces down other challenges. And this seriously limits options for prudent voters.
With the stakes for the election off-scale-high, it’s salutary how few politicians have shown willing to grapple with the double climate/Coronavirus dilemma. To secure a half-decent chance of a half-decent future, this means the next government must have two paramount capabilities:
developing visionary climate strategies that also heal Covid wounds;
carrying us together along the challenging path ahead.
To give credit where it’s due, the withering crises that have confronted this Government have been handled with remarkable aplomb. And, thanks largely to the Greens, the Government has adopted milestone climate legislation, like the cross-party ZCA and ending oil exploration.
Overall, however, the PM’s once-celebrated slogan “climate change is our nuclear free moment” looks increasingly just that: a slogan. Marc Daalder’s comparison Ardern and Boris Johnson on climate, revealed our PM in a quite unflattering light (Newsroom).
Perhaps that light should have fallen more on other cabinet ministers. As Shaw battled for the climate with a coalition knot tying his hands behind his back, budget 2019 offered climate meagre pickings, with NZ First has been a persistent climate deadweight (see Stuff). And, while minister Damian O’Connor kept his balance on the critical ag-and-climate tightrope, Phil Twyford, minister for the other climate-critical sector, transport, was largely missing in action.
Cabinet also sidestepped chances to integrate Covid and climate recovery, with Grant Robertson and Winston Peters each side-lining Climate Change Commission advice as they “justified” why major infrastructure projects could not be green.
But if Labour has fallen short, National has taken giant leaps into the past by appointing a climate demon to their top job. Judith Collins brings such a toxic legacy on climate I see her as unfit to lead any country into the 2020s. Doubting climate science and a 1.5˚C limit, maligning those championing such limits (Carbon News: Fanatics_overstating_climate_case_says_Collins), and regularly on record as pro-oil-exploration, Collins has next to no sense of the climate crisis, or doesn’t care, or both.
“Collins confronts her traditional voters with a profound dilemma: ”
With our business community better and better informed on climate, and an ag sector increasingly aware of climate impacts and strategies like regenerative agriculture (https://pureadvantage.org/ourregenerativefuturecampaign/ ), Collins confronts her traditional voters with a profound dilemma: should they remain loyal to a party led by someone with the climate sensitivity of Trump, or should they optimise our chances of a promising future, and reprioritise their 2020 vote?
That then begs the question for whom to vote.
The Greens must be in the mix: they’ve achieved more for climate strategy than the rest put together, offer well-qualified and visionary incumbents (like Shaw, and associate transport minister Julie Anne Genter), and stand out in policy assessments as having the best nouse for integrating economic, social and climate issues (e.g. Ora Taiao here,)
But who else?
· Labour has earned its leadership badge, but not (yet) that for climate commitment;
· ACT competes with National for the most retrograde climate thinking (NZ Herald);
· TOP’s climate policy is in damage control after leader Simmons dismissed 1.5˚C, rejecting the Paris Agreement, ZCA and science in one fell swoop; (Ora Taiao didn’t know that when compiling their scorecard below, but I attended the meeting where Simmons spoke).
NZ First has consistently applied the handbrake on climate policy
· and Sustainable NZ seems oblivious to climate change altogether, giving it no mention at all on their website’s list of “top policy priorities” or “ten policy areas”, and “reducing emissions” is the very last item on the second list.
Which makes life easy for climate-savvy voters as they have just one realistic option in 2020: The Greens strong enough to have real climate clout in a Labour-led government.
In these extraordinary times, party vote Green becomes the standout choice for a promising future.
Election policy scorecard from Ora Taiao (here).
