SYSTEM CHANGE, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE

 

A new report from the independent Climate Change Commission says that emission reductions have stalled since the National-led government took office, and New Zealand is no longer on track to meet its legally binding climate targets. New Zealand cannot afford another decade of managerialism, denialism, or incrementalism.

ALTHOUGH THE Labour Government’s efforts to fight climate change were largely timid, compromised, and shaped more by political caution than scientific urgency, the situation has deteriorated sharply under the National-led Government. Labour’s incrementalism was never enough, and its Green Party ally — fixated with 'green capitalism' — spent too long defending the indefensible. But what has followed is not merely inadequate—it is a deliberate reversal of even the modest progress previously made.

A new report from New Zealand’s independent Climate Change Commission makes this painfully clear. Emissions reductions have stalled since the Luxon Government took office, and New Zealand is no longer on track to meet its legally binding climate targets. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of arithmetic. The country is emitting too much, acting too slowly, and drifting too far from the commitments it made to its own people and to the world.

Greenpeace has been blunt about the consequences. Spokesperson Will Appleby has described the report as 'a stark warning – the Luxon Government is undermining climate action, putting everyday New Zealanders at risk.' He is right to call it climate denialism. From reinstating offshore oil and gas exploration, to scrapping the clean car discount, to cancelling the Lake Onslow pumped hydro project, to shielding agribusiness from accountability for its massive emissions footprint, the Government has taken a sledgehammer to the fragile scaffolding of climate policy. These are not neutral decisions. They are choices that privilege short-term profit over long-term survival.

But the deeper problem is not simply that National is failing. It is that the political system itself has lost the capacity to respond to the scale of the crisis. Labour’s instinct, if returned to power, would be to tinker at the edges—restore a subsidy here, adjust a target there, negotiate another compromise with industries that have already delayed action for decades. The Greens, once the moral compass of climate politics, have become entangled in parliamentary pragmatism and coalition etiquette. None of this meets the moment.

We are living through a period in which extreme weather events are no longer anomalies—they are the new normal. New Zealand has already seen unprecedented flooding, storms that wipe out infrastructure, and rainfall patterns that defy historical precedent. These events are not isolated tragedies. They are early warnings of what lies ahead: ecosystem collapse, ocean acidification, mass desertification, and coastal cities slowly drowning as sea levels rise. The science is not speculative. It is descriptive. It is telling us what is happening now, not merely what might happen later.

Yet the political class continues to behave as though climate change is a policy area rather than an existential threat. They debate emissions budgets as if they were debating tax brackets. They treat climate targets as aspirational rather than binding. And they speak of 'balancing'  environmental concerns with economic growth, as though the economy can grow on a dead planet.

What blocks any real fight against climate change is not a lack of technological solutions or public support. It is the structure of political power itself. Governments continue to represent the interests of the capitalist class—those who profit from extraction, pollution, and the externalisation of risk. The fossil fuel industry, industrial agriculture, and carbon-intensive corporations have spent decades shaping policy to protect their bottom lines. They have lobbied, funded, and influenced their way into a position where climate action is always diluted, delayed, or derailed.

It is the capitalist system that puts profit above all else. It is capitalists who profit from the climate crisis while the poorest suffer its consequences. When storms destroy homes, it is not the shareholders of oil companies who are displaced. When drought devastates crops, it is not corporate executives who go hungry. When insurance becomes unaffordable, it is not the wealthy who are forced to abandon their communities. Climate change is class war conducted by atmospheric means.

The National-led Government is simply the most recent expression of this logic. It is not an aberration. It is the system functioning exactly as designed. A government committed to deregulation, fossil fuel expansion, and agribusiness protection is not failing to address climate change—it is succeeding in protecting the interests of those who benefit from inaction.

The challenge, then, is not to persuade governments to act more responsibly within the existing framework. It is to recognise that the framework itself is the problem. A political system beholden to capital cannot deliver climate justice. A market-driven economy cannot solve a crisis created by markets. A society organised around profit cannot safeguard the conditions for life.

Real climate action requires confronting the economic order that created the crisis. It requires shifting power away from corporations and toward communities. It requires public ownership of energy, transport, and infrastructure. It requires regulating agribusiness not as a partner but as a polluter. It requires planning, not profit. It requires a politics that treats climate change not as an environmental issue but as a structural one.

New Zealand cannot afford another decade of managerialism, denialism, or incrementalism. The climate crisis is accelerating, and the window for meaningful action is closing. The choice is no longer between left and right, or between Labour and National. It is between a system that guarantees catastrophe and a movement willing to build something different. It remains either system change  —  or climate change.

If the political establishment cannot rise to the challenge, then the public will have to. Because the climate will not wait for governments to find their courage.