Tag: Wise Response

Sign up: Wise Response group petitions parliament to take climate, sustainability seriously

The Wise Response group, set up a year ago to build public and political awareness of the need for a serious review of New Zealand’s future policy directions on climate change, economics and sustainability, has launched a petition to persuade parliament that a “national risk assessment” is urgently required. From the Avaaz petition page:

This petition therefore calls on Parliament as a whole to see funds allocated for an assessment of NZ’s critical risks in 5 key areas:

  1. Economic / Financial Security: the risk of a sudden, deepening, or prolonged financial crisis.
  2. Energy and Climate Security: the risk of continuing our heavy dependence on fossil fuels.
  3. Business Continuity: the risk exposure of all New Zealand business, including farming, to a lower carbon economy.
  4. Ecological / Environmental Security: the risks in failing to genuinely protect both land-based and marine ecosystems and their natural processes.
  5. Genuine Well-Being: the risk of persisting with a subsidised, debt-based inequitable economy, preoccupied with maximising consumption and GDP.

For more information on the petition — which is to be delivered to parliament in early April — see the Avaaz.org petition page, and for background on Wise Response see their web site, or this post at Southern Energy and Resilience.

I’ll support anything that forces the powers that be to revisit their attitudes to planning for climate change, building a resilient and sustainable economy and increasing the health and well-being of New Zealanders. I’ve signed. I hope you will too.

Symptoms too serious to ignore: a call to face up to NZ’s critical risks

A loose affiliation of New Zealand’s great and good will launch an appeal to parliament next week, asking for a dispassionate and non-partisan risk assessment of the “unprecedented threats to our collective security” facing the country as a result of climate change, fossil fuel extraction and economic uncertainty. The Wise Response group features poets, writers, All Blacks, academics, surgeons and scientists amongst its first 100 supporters ((The Otago Daily Times lists Brian Turner, Wayne Smith, Fiona Kidman, Glenn Turner, David Thom, Philip Temple, Anne Salmond, Julian Dean, Owen Marshall, Morgan Williams, Chris Trotter, Bruce Burns, Richard Langston and Anton Oliver amongst others.)), and will launch its appeal at a public meeting in Dunedin on March 8th.

In its appeal the group identifies critical risks in five areas:

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