Imagine this: the prime minister and his entire cabinet, the opposition front bench and the largest other party in Parliament all sign up to make personal emissions cuts of 10% in 2010. Not 10% in 10 years, — 10% next year. Not in NZ, sadly, but that’s what has just happened in Britain. The 10:10 campaign, created by Age Of Stupid producer Franny Armstrong and her team, was launched last Tuesday. Armstrong is impressed by the rapid response:
“It’s amazing that within 48 hours of the campaign’s launch, the leaderships of the three main political parties have committed to cut their 10%. Who said people power was dead? These politicians clearly recognise that each person in Britain must start cutting their emissions as part of a national war-effort-scale response to the climate crisis.”
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s government flounders around trying to find support to water down the emissions trading scheme. Rod Oram in today’s Sunday Star Times considers National’s options:
..almost anything is possible because National has dissembled, prevaricated and otherwise failed to reveal its true beliefs on climate change in opposition and so far in government.
Time for a 10:10 campaign in New Zealand. Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party should jump to join in. Rodney and ACT are obviously a lost cause, but if enough people signed up — the momentum in Britain has been impressive, and the Greenpeace Sign On campaign here has done well — the pressure on Key and Smith might force them to do the right thing. But I won’t be holding my breath.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – if this government was as committed to dealing with the problem of AGW as they are to cutting the public service, we could have a 10% reduction in emissions by next year. That first 10% is the easy stuff. But babies only take little faultering steps to begin with. Once on the way the rest begins to fall into place.
I agree – a response from our elected representatives on the other side of the isle – and from the Maori Party who profess that the ETS doesn’t go far enough – (and as it currently stands they are right) – would really put some pressure on.
R2 is completely wrong when he says other countries overseas are not getting involved, it’s simply because he is reading the wrong stuff!
OT, but the NZ Climate Anti-Science Coalition has just confirmed that it is firmly opposed to science: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/2838932/Niwa-supercomputer-a-waste-sceptics.
Perhaps now John Key will realise why it is a waste of time to listen to these nincompoops? I doubt it…
There may be a post in this one… Always nice to draw attention to the quality of the advice being given to ACT. 😉
Press release, 7th September 1667, London.
The Gravitation Science Coalition (GSC) has today called for the extermination of all apple trees in the kingdom.
GSC Spokesman Brian Leyland explained, “It’s that Isaac Newton’s fault. He has politicised apple growing with his delusional theories about gravity. Everyone knows that there have always been fluctuations in gravity, and things can fall up as well as down. We’re just rebounding from the Little Gravity Age at the moment. We will soon be back to the normal pattern of things falling upwards before long – in fact I’m sure there has been a lightening trend for the last 10 years or so.”
“It’s just a bit inconvenient for our theories if Newton goes around knocking apples out of trees all the time. So we’d like to get rid of all the apple trees, and then people won’t have any choice but to believe us. That’s progress for you.”
Thanks CTG. You gave me my laugh of the day, and heaven knows laughs aren’t easy to come by in this field.
It would be funny except Newtons theory of gravity was proven wrong by Albert Einstein.
Turns out even ‘The Science” can be changed overtime. Who knows, maybe General Relativity will be proven wrong one day? And maybe even (anthropogenic) “Climate Change”.
“National has dissembled, prevaricated and otherwise failed to reveal its true beliefs on climate change in opposition and so far in government.”
In the absence of such a revealing are we to take the actions of various Ministers as indicative of what the Government thinks?
I’ve just written to Transport Minister Steven Joyce lamenting his decision not to proceed with the fuel economy standards on the grounds that they would make large cars more expensive. Earlier in the year I wrote protesting his relegation of Government spending on public transport on the grounds that money from motorists should be spent on roads for motorists.
The Minister of Energy has reversed the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs, lifted the moratorium on fossil fuel power stations, and announced his intention to rewrite energy policy to put environmental concerns firmly behind energy security as a priority. He got letters from me too.
The Climate Change Minister speaks as if he is more concerned with the economy than with climate change. (Yes, I wrote to him as well.)
Add to these the Prime Minister’s failure to say anything at all about climate change other than that it must take second place to the economy. (And to him.)
One might reasonably conclude that the only belief the Government has about climate change is that it’s not very important. If that’s not the case it wouldn’t take long for the Prime Minister to set the record straight (and explain the actions of his ministers).
The 10:10 idea is brilliant – bring some urgency to this matter. The long term targets are fine and necessary but doing something concrete NOW is a necessity. Inertia is the enemy.
Pointless quibbling over the gummint – they will do just less than the BARE MINIMUM. The country voted for tax cuts and smacking – you won’t get either of those and you definitely won’t see any leadership on this issue from them – look elsewhere or generate it yourself (as others are doing).