CLIMATE CHANGE : THE POLITICIANS FAIL AGAIN

Climate change activists at the COP24 climate talks.

While Maori Climate Change Commissioner Donna Awatere-Huaata has branded the COP24 climate talks as a failure, Climate Minister James Shaw wants us to think they were a 'breakthrough'.

EMPEROR NERO never actually played the violin while Rome burned but its a useful analogy to employ when talking about the recently concluded COP24 climate talks in Kawotice, Poland. That's because our so-called political representatives at COP simply fiddled while the planet burns up.

While it is clear that only radical and fundamental change can save us now, COP24 tinkered at the edges of a problem that now threatens to overwhelm us. As 15 year Swedish girl Greta Thunberg told the conference, they were only prepared to do what was politically expedient rather than what was necessary.

In the end COP 24 agreed on rules for implementing the sorely inadequate 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to keep global warming as close to 1.5 degrees as possible, but it made next to no progress in increasing governments’ commitments to cut emissions. The world remains on track for 3C of warming, which scientists says will bring catastrophic extreme weather.

The 156 page final text, agreed to the eleventh hour almost to save face, agreed to some monitoring tools by which countries will measure the progressive reduction of carbon emissions, outlined the support to be given to poor countries to mitigate the consequences of climate change already underway, and to initiate energy transition. Some of  it is couched in generalities, none of it is enforceable. 

Of course  Green Party co-leader and Climate Change minister James Shaw has seen things differently. An apologist for 'green capitalism', he has described the final document as a 'breakthrough' among other positive descriptions he has carelessly tossed around like confetti. Unfortunately Shaw's nonsense has received far more coverage in the mainstream media than the far more accurate assessment of Maori Climate Change commissioner Donna Awatere-Huaata. In a press statement she commented:

“It is barely two months since the world’s leading scientists told us that unless we set more ambitious targets, the world is currently on track to achieve a 3 degree planet – a catastrophe for the vulnerable – extinction for many species – extreme unbearable weather events. .

James Shaw : Spinning the failure of  COP24 as a 'breakthrough'.

“It has taken 15 days to merely agree on setting the rules for accounting and recording greenhouse gas emissions. But the really important issue, the one that will keep warming to 1.5 degrees by setting more ambitious targets to be implemented urgently was put aside to be discussed at next years conference.

She also provided a useful historical analogy, but this one rooted in historical fact rather then myth:

"On September 30th, 1938, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, stepped off a plane and waved a signed document with Hitler declaring ‘Peace for our time’. His appeasement pre-empted the invasion of Poland, I fear we have seen another appeasement in Poland 80 years later with a threat far more dangerous to our species than the fight against fascism."

COP24 underlines that we can no longer allow the politicians to control the narrative because they will act in a way that does not upset the interests of the political and economic status quo. A week ago 100 academics and activists, including Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, signed an open letter in support of Extinction Rebellion. In a part, the letter says:

"When a government wilfully abrogates its responsibility to protect its citizens from harm and to secure the future for generations to come, it has failed in its most essential duty of stewardship. The “social contract” has been broken, and it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself."

Here in New Zealand, we need to bypass the Labour-led government's inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty and politicians like James Shaw need to be told that what they are doing, supposedly in our name, is no longer acceptable. A change is coming.