Graham Kennedy: General Debate 
Graham Kennedy: General Debate 
[Volume:668;Page:14859] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I rise to address the issue of climate change and this Government’s failure to develop adequate national policy to combat it. 
Climate change has slipped below the threshold of daily media focus and that is the way that this Government seems to want it. The failure at Copenhagen to tackle the global threat head on has sent the international community into a state of collective catatonia. We see this in the lack of leadership from the UN in the actions of national Governments around the world and in the attitude of much of the public around the world. 
The problem we have is that nature is not disposed to wait for humanity to iron itself out morally and get its political act together. The poor countries rail against us for historical responsibility and insufficient reduction targets. The rich countries fear the projected population growth among the poor and insist that they enter binding commitments before we sign on to medium-term cuts. 
Humanity probably faces only two global threats: immolation through nuclear conflict or suffocation through global warming. The first is the product of traditional enmity; the enemy was the other tribe or the other nation. Climate change is the product of a new enemy: us. We try to cut nuclear arsenals by changing the enemy’s behaviour; we are required to cut carbon emissions by changing our own behaviour. It is no surprise that we are not succeeding. Most Governments lack the political courage to convey the magnitude of the climate change threat to their peoples and they lack the political insight to prescribe the required global and national policies that are necessary. 
Before during and since Copenhagen the threat of serious unpredictable climate change has grown. Our scientists do not know when non-linear change might occur but they warn that tipping points exist. If the precautionary principle is to mean anything we must all move with speedy purpose and resolve. Translated politically that means we must act not as an international community of States but as a global community of peoples who are represented by Governments. If the difference seems vanishingly small then we do well to act on it none the less lest our prospects of survival prove to be the same. 
Our professional negotiators are rearranging the deckchairs contemplating whether we shall have one or two legal agreements and whether it will be next year or 3 or 10 years from now. Our political leaders dampen our expectations with appeals to realism. We all suffer from cognitive dissonance. Every so often we see the magnitude and imminence of the threat but it is simply too frightening to accept individually and politically so we basically return to business and government as usual. 
As the Minister made clear recently in question time the state of play is the Copenhagen Accord with voluntary commitments to national cuts. These are demonstrably inadequate to the science-based judgment of what is required to avert failure but we pretend that it is a useful start to greater things. We are told that global emissions must peak within about 7 years and we know that the accord is way way short of achieving that so we mumble about bigger cuts later and avoid looking into our children’s eyes. 
Let us address some facts. To achieve a 2 degrees Celsius threshold we must reduce our global carbon budget from 50 gigatonnes today to 36 by 2020 and to seven by 2050. The rich countries must cut from about 40 today to 11 by 2020 and to one by 2050. That is correct: we in the rich world must emit only one gigatonne in 2050 out of the seven emitted by the world that year. It is called contraction and convergence and it is the only way humanity will successfully deal with climate change. That is when our moral and political standards merge at the global level. After 10 millennia especially the past two centuries it is the moment of truth. 
For our part New Zealand has to agree through treaty or by voluntary declaration in advance to cut our national emissions proportionately. That means we must cut from 78 million tonnes today to 56 million tonnes in 2020 down to 1.6 million in 2050. That is the scale of the challenge before New Zealand. It is as well that we face up to it now not when it is too late.