CLIMATE CHANGE : THE GOVERNMENT TINKERS WHILE THE FLOODWATERS RISE

With much of Westport submerged under floodwaters, the Labour Government, backed by the Green Party, remains committed to a woefully inadequate market driven 'solution' to climate change that is already failing to deliver results.

AFTER THE DEVASTATING flooding on the West Coast and the recent flooding in Canterbury, lets hope that the politicians and the media alike will retire such misleading descriptions as 'one in a hundred year flooding'' and 'one in a hundred year weather event'. Such descriptions assume that weather patterns will remain much the same as they have been for the past century but, with the tentacles of climate change wrapping themselves around the country, we know that this is simply not true. As well, such descriptions provide false hope for folk who might think we just have to temporarily hunker down for a bit and wait for the storm to pass. But this beast is going nowhere soon.

Perhaps we might have more confidence in overcoming this crisis if the politicians were providing the leadership that is required. But that leadership is missing. In New Zealand we have gone from a Prime Minister claiming that climate change was the nuclear free moment of her generation but now leading a Labour Government, assisted by the Green Party, that is only prepared to take measures that won't upset the economic status quo. No wonder that Lawyers for Climate Action has filed for a judicial review of the Climate Change Commission's final report, saying that its recommendations  lack either the scale or urgency to effectively combat climate change.

But this is not about reversing climate change. As the flooding in Westport and elsewhere highlights, this is about preventing catastrophic climate change. We're not going to do that if we continue down our present course. Let's be clear: our present economic framework is a threat to our ecological stability and our politicians, intent on protecting corporate interests above everything else, are sending us all down a very dangerous road indeed.  

While the corporate-friendly Climate Change Minister James Shaw continues to fantasise about his 'green capitalism', the solution to the crisis that confronts us is not - as the Labour Government and the Green Party think -  just a technical problem that can be dealt with by the market and the corporate sector. Instead it requires a decisive break with the capitalist economy,  something that would be achievable under the policy mix of a Green New Deal. The silence you hear is not a single parliamentary politician calling for a GND.

As activist and writer Naomi Klein has observed : 'Our economic model is at war with the Earth. We cannot change the laws of nature. But we can change our economy. Climate change is our best chance to demand and build a better world.'