This 2015 documentary, sadly is the last to be made by director Alister Barry because the funding for making such movies has dried up.
The
film chronicles the years since the late 1980’s when the science
was generally accepted and how industry lobbying and climate change
denialist think tanks undermined successive government efforts to
take action on reducing emssions.
It
is,overall a story of backsliding and missed opportunities.
It
shows clearly how things have evolved,since the election of the present government in 2008, to the point where New Zealand
is today.
National
scrapped the moratorium on building new fossil fuel power stations.
Over time agriculture’s inclusion in the emission trading scheme
was postponed indefinitely; corporations were freed to increase
emissions without limit; New Zealand abandoned its commitment to the
Kyoto protocol process
Between
1990 and 2013 New Zealand’s burning of fossil fuels doubled,
overall emssions tripled. The rate of increase was amongst the
highest in the developed world.
Now,
all that the government has to say on climate change is, in its
official documents, to excuse its inacton and argue for doing
nothing.
Meanwhile
we have moved to rapid climate change and 50 non-reversible, positive
feedbacks have been triggered, and with 400+ ppm of CO2 further
warming is guaranteed - and so too humanity’s fate
Hot
Air
The
politics of climate change in New Zealand
The
politics of climate change in New Zealand. In precise, documented
detail we see how, over twenty years, National and Labour government
ministers, supported by advisers and scientists, presented their
Cabinet colleagues with proposals for nation-wide action. With
similar clarity, we see how big business recruited climate change
deniers and spin doctors to manipulate public opinion, frighten
politicians and remove climate change from voters’ attention and
governments’ agendas. As the film takes us behind the scenes we
begin to see exactly why and how we are allowing corporations and
their executives to subvert democracy.
Finally
here is Alister Barry’s 1996 film, Someone Else’s Country,
which is about the neo-liberal
take-over of this country that has determined NZ’s fate since 1984,
The Business Round Table and the pro-denial lobby should be arrested for crimes against humanity.
ReplyDelete