Graham Kennedy: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18884. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):Over the past few months I have intervened on a number of occasions in the general debate to draw our collective attention to the issue of climate change. I have heard it said including in this Chamber that the Green Party does not own the issue of climate change. We could not agree more. The issue is owned by humanity—which includes the National Party—so the Greens do not have sole ownership.But shared ownership does not in itself mean shared insight. The Prime Minister as we have noted before was sceptical of global warming as recently as 2005 a decade after the previous National Government signed the global treaty acknowledging it to be a threat to the future of humankind. On becoming Prime Minister Mr Key allowed himself and therefore his Government to acknowledge climate change to be a problem but the sceptical mind-set remains. Its mutated form lives on in policy prevarication. We are small so mitigation is not essential; it is long term so mitigation is not urgent; and as long as it is not urgent or essential we can continue with our mercantilist “New Zealand Inc.” approach to the world where we earn dollars through raw commodity export earnings off the global economy. Wrong on both counts. Mitigation by New Zealand is essential and it is urgent.It is urgent because serious climate change has already arrived. This week the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a finding that May 2014 was the hottest month in recorded history. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surface was 0.74 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average—15.5 instead of 14.8. Is this significant? Yes because it is part of a pattern. Four of the five warmest Mays on record have occurred in the past 5 years. May 2014 is the 351st consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. Does this matter? Yes because it is linked to severe climate change beginning with precipitation. Extreme wetness says the agency was observed in May over Europe and equatorial Africa while extreme dryness was experienced in South America and Australia.Why go into such detail on what is essentially a scientific issue and so soon before an election? Because this is the House of Representatives and we are meant to be responsible for the future of this country and our people. Because although we sit uncomfortably in our chairs here when the subject comes up and avoid eye contact the fact is that climate change is the biggest issue to confront us ever. So when we receive news of this kind reinforcing the obvious it needs to be read into the record of this House even if only once. It needs to be on record that this House was warned during debate over the impending danger of a warming climate.So what might this Parliament do then in response? We could begin by taking seriously the Wise Response petition which calls for a national risk assessment supported by cross-party endorsement. We could agree that our Parliament has two responsibilities: a short-term one to protect the job security of the present generation and a long-term one to ensure the next generation has half a chance to protect their quality of life. And even a distant responsibility that would recognise the possibility of a sea level rise over centuries and millennia of 10 to 20 metres if Greenland and Antarctica are truly in irreversible ice-melt.If this sounds politically surreal in 2014 perhaps we are in new and uncharted territory. We could then acknowledge together the international advice that today’s preventive measures will actually be economically advantageous to us all. Then we could agree even with an election looming that we will not misrepresent each other’s policies and could search for common ground that can underpin an enduring national climate policy because this climate thing is bigger than politics and bigger than all of us mortals alive right now really.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.