AFTER GABRIELLE : TIME FOR A GREEN NEW DEAL?

In the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle our politicians continue to talk of 'adapting' to climate change. But if the warming of the planet is allowed to continue then we will rapidly reach the point where the scale of the crisis will be beyond what we can 'adapt' to. A Green New Deal offers a new way forward - so why aren't any of our politicians talking about it?

IN THE aftermath of the devastating Cyclone Gabrielle, the Chief Executive of the NZ Insurance Council, Tim Grafton, has said that 'New Zealand must not lose the opportunity to build back better from the catastrophic extreme weather events of the past two weeks.'

'Build back better' came something of a catchphrase as New Zealand grappled with the covid pandemic. As early as February 2021 the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, was insisting that 'the Government remains focused on building back better.'

But Robertson's words proved to be hollow. The New Zealand that has emerged from the pandemic is as unequal and divided a country as the one that entered it - perhaps more so. This was always going to be the case with the Labour Government doing everything within in its power to prop up a failing status quo. 

In 2020 the Labour-led government shelled out over $13 billion in wage subsidies while giving nothing to those who really needed help. As business commentator Bernard Hickey has observed, the Government delivered, 'the biggest shot of cash and monetary support to the wealthy in the history of New Zealand, while giving nothing to the renters, the jobless, students, migrants and the working poor who mostly voted it in'.

Can we really have any real confidence that the government, either Labour-led or National-led, will treat the climate crisis any differently? Can it really 'build back better'? And what does 'building back better' really mean in the face of a climate crisis that threatens to overwhelm us? Is it little more than what Victoria University’s Economics of Disasters and Climate Change chair Professor Ilan Noy has described as a 'post-disaster managed retreat.'? It is hardly an inspired vision of a brighter future. 

But it seems that alarms bells for a 'managed retreat' are beginning to ring, and Climate Change minister James Shaw has instructed officials to look at 'accelerating adaptation plans'. 

While we might try to make the country's infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather, it also suggests that impacts of climate change are manageable. But how 'manageable' is the climate crisis when the CEO of the Insurance Council is proposing that some areas of New Zealand may simply have to be abandoned as areas of settlement?

And although we might try to make the country's infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather, if the warming of the planet is allowed to continue then we will rapidly reach the point where the scale of the crisis will be beyond what we can 'adapt' to.

In recent years there have been frequent calls for New Zealand to adopt its own version of a Green New Deal. But those calls have always been ignored by a political establishment more concerned with protecting corporate interests and the neoliberal orthodoxy. 

While there has always been support for a GND within some sections of the Green Party, the Green Party MP's have failed to embrace it. Co-leader James Shaw has actively obstructed its progress. The irony is that in 2021 the Green Party signed up to the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal (GND). 

The Global Alliance says that it would 'redesign economies so that never again can so much be hoarded by so few' and that it 'will channel the investment needed to transform our homes and buildings, industry, energy, manufacturing, land, agriculture, and the systems of care that support us all to meet the challenges of the crisis in climate and nature'.

Green co-leader Marama Davidson is one of the signatories to the Global Alliance. But she has done nothing to promote the GND in New Zealand and has defended James Shaw's fantasy of a 'green capitalism'. 

The GND is both a policy manifesto and a vision of a different world, unshackled from neoliberalism. It was popularised by US Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey — first in 2019 then again in 2021.  It proposes a world in which workers’ rights, community health, and our shared climate come before corporate profits. The GND has been adopted by many political parties around the world. 

But not in New Zealand. Our present set of market-loyal politicians are more concerned with bailing out the status quo rather than looking to build a new and better future. They have consistently shown that they are not prepared to countenance the real structural transformation that is required and continue to defend an economic system that is not fit for purpose.

Yes, the GND requires massive change because it involves a reimagining of both our economy and society. As the young activist Greta Thunberg has said: 'If solutions within this system are so difficult to find then maybe we should change the system itself'. 

The alternative is to continue to tinker at the edges of a crisis that continues to deepen.  We ignore the stark warning handed down by Cyclone Gabrielle at our own peril.