THE KIDS ARE COMING AND THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY

Politicians discussing climate change.

Davidson and Twyford: Don't worry kids, we'll be carbon neutral in... 2050.

Politicians like Housing Minister Phil Twyford and Green co-leader Marama Davidson have come out in support of the Youth Strike 4 Climate scheduled for March 15. But both politicians support market-led 'solutions' to climate change that aim to see the country carbon neutral by 2050. Yet the recent report from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change says we have no more than twelve years to effectively tackle climate change before we reach the point of no return.

WE SHOULD ALL KNOW by now - but many of us still don't - not to believe the sympathetic and supportive rhetoric of centrist and liberal (can you really tell the difference?) politicians like Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern or the Green co-leader Marama Davidson.

They tell us they 'feel the pain' of those living in poverty or denied access to underfunded welfare and health services - but they carry on supporting the market driven policies that continue to inflict hardship and misery on local communities.

In this world Marama Davidson can anguish on Twitter about the number of New Zealanders living in poverty but stand up in Parliament and deliver a speech praising Grant Robertson's first budget that confirmed the continuation of neoliberalism. There is something in Martin Luther King's observation that “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.'

With the youth of New Zealand preparing to join youth all around the world to protest the lack of action to fight climate change Labour and Green politicians have been keen to express their solidarity with the kids. They want us to know they are down with the students - unlike the horrible Nats who have been criticising the kids for planning to 'bunk' time off from school.

Yesterday Housing Minister Phil Twyford said that he thought it was 'great' to see young people getting involved in issues like climate change because "if there's one issue that's going to affect the next generation it's climate change".

Meanwhile Green co-leader Marama Davidson has used the upcoming Youth Strike 4 Climate protest to score a few political points against the National Party. "Those Nats politicians and people putting our passionate, informed kids down for organising school strikes because they care about their future and our planet - deep deep shame on you all." she has said on Twitter, displaying a level of smug superiority not justified by her support for the government's inadequate climate change policies.

The clock is ticking. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that we must drastically reduce emissions in the next twelve years to avoid climate catastrophe. Yet both Twyford and Davidson support a climate change policy that is aiming for carbon neutrality in some thirty years time, in 2050. The Labour-led government is fiddling while the planet burns.

Ocasio-Cortez : Climate delayers aren't much better than climate deniers.

The problem we confront is that the narrative of market 'solutions' to climate change is fundamentally flawed. We are expected to believe that the system that created the crisis in the first place can also pull us back from the precipice if we just tinker with it a bit. Politicians like Twyford and Davidson want us to believe that capitalism is our friend in the fight against climate change when all the evidence tells us its our enemy.

It was 16 year old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg who inspired the School Strike for Climate movement. She has told establishment politicians that "“Our house is on fire! I don’t want your hope. I want you to feel the fear. I want you to act as if the house is on fire. Because it is.”

New Zealand politicians are not acting as if the house was on fire. Far from it. And, as socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has observed "Climate delayers aren’t much better than climate deniers. With either one, if they get their way, we’re toast.” She's proposing a Green New Deal for the United States. Why are our politicians ,who loudly proclaim their support for Youth Strike 4 Climate, not proposing something similar here?

Six years ago in Berlin the Spanish sculptor Isaac Cordal unveiled what was to become something of an iconic piece of art. It went viral on the internet and was unofficially dubbed 'Politicians debating global warming.' It was part of a series of sculptures called Follow the Leaders.

Said Cordal of his work: “These pieces reflect our own decline. We live immersed in the collapse of a system that needs change.”

System change not climate change.