The cynical use by James Shaw of the School Strike for Climate

From NZ journalist, Lisa Stewart

IS SCHOOL STRIKE FOR CLIMATE A GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA EXERCISE?

NZ Against the Current,

11 March, 2019

With the 2018 Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning we have less than twelve years to effectively tackle climate change, why is School Strike for Climate NZ supporting the disastrous government plan for carbon neutrality by 2050 - about thirty years too late?

WHILE I STILL applaud the students who will be striking for more action on climate change, I'm disappointed and alarmed to learn that the School Strike For Climate NZ organisers are actually demanding so little from this Labour-led government and its coalition partner, the Green Party. Indeed its list of demands are suspiciously government friendly.

One of its central demands is that the government pass 'an ambitious and effective Zero Carbon Act that gives New Zealand a coherent long term plan to get to carbon neutrality by 2050.' But isn't that the Labour-led government's plan anyway? How is this, in any way, a demand?

School Strike for Climate NZ comments on its website that the 2018 report of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that ''global mean temperature rise greater than 1.5 degrees celsius will cause widespread suffering and mass migration, irreversible damage to the natural world, and massive damage to the world economy. '

True enough. But what they omit to say is that the IPCC reports also warns that we have then less than twelve years to effectively tackle climate change otherwise the planet will go beyond the 1.5 degrees celsius of warming. Indeed some commentators think that the IPCC are being optimistic. David Wallace-Wells, the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, says that the IPPC's 'worst case scenario is actually, a best case."

He comments: "What has been called a genocidal level of warming is already our inevitable future. The question is how much worse than that it will get … We are on track for four degrees of warming, more than twice as much as most scientists believe is possible to endure without inflicting climate suffering on hundreds of millions or threatening at least parts of the social and political infrastructure we call, grandly, ‘civilization’.”

Faced with an imminent threat to planetary civilisation you would naturally think that School Strike For Climate would be demanding more than the timid and disastrous climate change policies that the Labour-led government is pursuing.

In fact none of so -called demands of School Strike for Climate are particularly demanding. Indeed the government can justifiably argue that it is addressing every single one of them. The total list of demands are:

1.Passing an ambitious and effective Zero Carbon Act that gives New Zealand a coherent long term plan to get to carbon neutrality by 2050.

2.Keeping the effect of global warming and its consequences for all living things on this planet in mind when making decisions for the future.

3.The paths to reaching our emission targets being fast tracked, well planned and transparent so the New Zealand public is aware that progress is being made and can hold the Government to account;

4.Ceasing all exploration and extraction of more fossil fuels immediately. We already have more in our reserves than we can afford to burn to avoid catastrophic climate change. We need to invest in renewable energy alternatives now.

5.Regulating emissions from agriculture, which account for almost half of our emissions, and for which there is currently no plan.

This is far from being a demand for 'system change not climate change'. In fact you could go as far as saying that the student strike on Friday is shaping up to be little more than support for the Labour-led's government's present policies. It would be interesting to know how these five demands were arrived at and who was involved.

Rachel Stewart writes a regular column for the NZ Herald and she has written extensively on climate change. In a tweet she observes that the striking students are being manipulated: 'This is the dead hand of liberalism and green capitalism trying to stifle a youth rebellion like those overseas which are clearly heading for 'system change'. The youth will catch up fast when they realise they have been played.'

While School Strike for Climate might highlight the crisis of climate change the very fact that it is so government friendly means it is unlikely to move the debate from where we are now and, frankly, change nothing. I doubt the Minister for Climate Change would be quite so keen to appear in photos with students who are demanding 'system change not climate change'.