THE EARTH IS GETTING HOTTER AT A FASTER RATE, DESPITE GOVERNMENT PLEDGES TO DO MORE

 

In 2023, for the first time, global warming exceeded 1.5C for an entire year. Less than five years ago the consensus was, unless serious and fundamental action was taken, the world would be warmer by over 1.5C by 2030. We are seven years ahead of schedule.

IN FEBRUARY, the European Union's climate service announced that, for the first time, global warming had exceeded 1.5C across an entire year. This week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report that there was a 'high probability' that 2024 would be another year of record-breaking temperatures and warned that efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate.

Less than five years ago the consensus was, unless serious and fundamental action was taken, the world would be warmer by over 1.5C by 2030. We have reached that unwelcome point some seven years ahead of schedule.

This represents a huge failure by our so-called political representatives to do the right thing. In 2015, they committed their governments to limiting the long-term temperature rise to below 1.5C. But we have now reached the point when it is not an exaggeration to say that the environmental systems that maintain human life will begin to collapse. We are already seeing early indicators of that happening; severe weather events have become the norm and New Zealand has not been immune from their impact. There will be more such weather events, that is certain.

Numerous political summits have been held where political leaders, business representatives and bureaucrats have consistently failed to come up with anything approaching an adequate response to climate change. In 2021 Greta Thunberg blasted global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as 'blah, blah, blah':

'Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.'

But the twin motors of capitalism, profit and accumulation, demand that the short term interests of capital overwhelm the longer-term considerations of protecting the planet. It really is capitalism versus the planet. The biggest single reason that we have seen such little progress on climate change is because the obvious solutions—cracking down on corporations, planning our economies—are seen as impossible by the political class.

While our political representatives continue to claim, 'we're all in this together', as if we're all responsible for climate change, it has always been an explicitly class issue. Climate change has been caused by the wealthy, and its effects fall most heavily on the poor. Just 100 companies are responsible for 70 per cent of all carbon emissions. Globally, the wealthiest 10 per cent are responsible for 50 per cent of all lifestyle consumption emissions.

The only way to effectively fight the climate crisis is to challenge the logic of capitalism itself. We have to continue to reject the neoliberal ideology, that has most recently been expressed by NZ First's Shane Jones. It says that the value of everything - land, knowledge, and even human life - can only be determined by how much money it can make for the wealthy.

Dealing with the existential threat humanity is facing requires the kind of radical state intervention that no liberal government would consider, and no international institution would allow. It requires a global Green New Deal. It requires system change.

 

UNDER CO-LEADER James Shaw, the Green Party pursued its fantasy of an environmentally friendly capitalism. Shaw's belief in a 'green capitalism' meant that he continued to insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it was 'people', not our economic system, that was responsible for climate change.

It's worth noting that new co-leader Chloe Swarbrick wrote several newspaper columns contradicting that view, and since she became co-leader, there has already been a recognisable shift in the Green Party's political direction. In Parliament yesterday, Swarbrick made it clear that the Green Party was seeking more than just cosmetic changes:

'...we are currently facing the dual crises of the greatest wealth inequality that we have ever seen on record in this country and the climate crisis. In the face of that, I believe in the ingenuity, the creativity, and the imagination of New Zealanders. The Greens believe that in working together, we can completely transform that system, because another world is possible. In the words of the Hurricanes Poua team, 'Governments are temporary', and New Zealand is the one who gets to decide our future.'

It can only be viewed as positive, and encouraging, that Swarbrick has rejected James Shaw's deliberate positioning of climate polices as compatible with the free market worldview.