New Zealand scientists have warned that Antarctica's sea ice is rapidly disappearing and have criticised New Zealand's inadequate climate change policies. But are our political parties listening?
IN THE middle of a dispiriting and lacklustre election campaign that slouches toward an inevitable conclusion, a group of New Zealand scientists have expressed deep concern about the alarming rate that Antarctica sea ice has disappeared this year. According to Dr Natalie Robinson of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Antarctica is now missing 'between seven and 10 New Zealand's worth of sea ice.' The continent's ice mass, said Robinson, 'has dropped off a cliff'.
This is an issue of the most extreme urgency, to put it mildly, because the sea ice regulates the global climate system, helping to keep the environment habitable for humans. Melting sea ice, in stark contrast, is responsible for the ocean overturning currents that distribute heat, salt and nutrients throughout the oceans and absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
The issue of Antarctica's melting ice though made the headlines for, perhaps, all of one twenty-four news cycle. It has since been buried under an avalanche of election campaign material. The existential threat represented by Antarctica's fast disappearing ice mass is not as clickbait-friendly as opinion poll results, accusations of racism being thrown about like confetti, Chris Hipkins laid low by Covid and...Winston Peters.
The scientists also observed that, despite the fact that climate change represents a real threat to New Zealand in terms of such issues as food production and extreme weather conditions, it was still not being treated with the seriousness or urgency that is demanded. They also pointedly observed that climate charge policies were still being determined by the short-term electoral interests of the major political parties.
It is certainly true that efforts to tackle climate change, to date have been inadequate. In September a United Nations report commented that many countries, including New Zealand, were falling well behind in tackling climate change.
Responding to the report, University of Canterbury political science professor Bronwyn Hayward said: '...we're still heading for a 2.5 degree warmer world. Overall, New Zealand isn't tracking well. Making it happen takes government stepping up and constantly raising their aspirations and actually changing their actions. New Zealand has aspirations, but not enough action.'
This is untrue. The Green Party cannot adequately tackle climate change effectively until it acknowledges that it is our present economic system that is driving climate change. It refuses to do that. If climate change is a train bearing down at rapid speed, rather than halt the train the Green Party prefers to give it a new lick of paint - even as the train smashes into us. Instead of adopting the demand of the international ecosocialist movement for 'system change, not climate change' the Green Party continues to believe in the disastrous fantasy of a 'green capitalism'. The Green Party differs little from Labour or National in its prioritisation of the interests and values of the corporate sector rather than the country as a whole.
As author and activist Naomi Klein observed some years ago: 'A crisis this big, this encompassing, changes everything! The stuff we have been told is impossible must start happening right away. And all that stuff we have been told is inevitable has to stop - right away.'
New Zealand remains a million miles away from adopting such a stance even as the fingers of climate change tighten their grip around the country. Yet all our political parties claim that tackling climate change remains an utmost priority even when it is clear they remain committed to the interests and values of an economic system that is, inexorably, dragging the planet over the cliff. When there has to be, at least, a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are largely responsible for creating and deepening the crisis, our political parties simply decline to take such action.
I recently stumbled across an old Turkish proverb that sums up the problem that our present set of political parties represent: 'The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.'
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