“THERE is no planet B”, says the controversially sacked NIWA scientist and shared winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Jim Salinger.
The world-class scientist has been rallying up support on climate change issues since he was abruptly fired from NIWA after “talking to the media without permission” in April.
Salinger will be a keynote speaker at a protest march to Parliament in the capital, with the aim of convincing Prime Minister John Key to go to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen two days later.
Salinger says as New Zealand’s leader, it’s Key’s duty to attend the talks, which Salinger describes as “the most important meeting of the decade”.
Initially, Key said he wasn’t going to the climate talks because no other world leaders were – until Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and Gordon Brown (to name a few), confirmed they would be in attendance.
Then Key claimed he didn’t want to pay for it out of the Parliamentary travelling budget, so Salinger, along with Kiwi actress Lucy Lawless, presented him with $5,000 to cover his expenses.
So, grabbing the remaining straws on the ground, Key said he didn’t want to fly to Copenhagen because of the carbon footprint.
“It’s very strange,” says Salinger. “He can still change his mind – he’s our leader, and all of our trading partners are going, but he isn’t. I know he’s got a country to run, but the point is leaders are the ones who make the decisions. He should be there because there will be things happening behind the scenes that you’d want to know [as PM].”
Megan Hubscher, the organiser of the upcoming march to Parliament, says Key needs to listen to New Zealand.
“My feeling is that John Key doesn’t recognise the urgency of the situation that the world is facing,” she says. “This march is to demonstrate to him that the majority of New Zealand want him to take a stand and aim for ambitious and binding [emission] targets at Copenhagen. The public will is for action, and all that’s missing is the political will.”
Hubscher invited political parties to join the march in Wellington and speak about their feelings on climate change.
Representatives from the Greens and Labour accepted the invitation, but the two parties who passed the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), National and the Maori Party, declined.
There are things that New Zealand can do specifically which will have immediate positive effects on the environment, Salinger says.
He thinks it’s more important to focus on taking advantage of clean technology like wind and wave power, which is an especially good option for Wellington, than buying into the dense and widely criticised ETS, where polluters can buy and sell carbon credits.
“Let’s get into practical things that everyone can understand, like house insulation,” he says. “New Zealand also has a lot of solar radiation, and [we should follow] some countries that have solar hot water on top of their roofs. We’ve got a whole lot of wind and geothermal energy. All these clean technologies are ready and waiting.”
In six months, more than 170,000 New Zealanders joined the Sign On campaign in support of a 40% emission reduction by 2020.
Salinger says the target is reachable, and very vital. “Basically the latest model is showing that if we don’t do anything, we’ll be three to four degrees warmer by 2050, and have a two metre sea level rise this century.”
The biggest sign of climate change in New Zealand is the huge reduction of permanent snow on the Southern Alps, he says.
“There was 100 cubic km of permanent snow in the 1900s, now we’re down to 45 [cubic km],” he says.
Union members from Unite and the Council of Trade Unions, members from the Anglican and Catholic Church, Oxfam, WWF and Greenpeace have confirmed they will be present at the Wellington march.
Hubscher says it’s important that Wellingtonians stand up and do something especially after New Zealand received international flak for it’s laissez-faire attitude to climate change.
A recent article in The Guardian by Fred Pearce called New Zealand’s environmental stance a “green wash”. It reads, “New Zealand trades on its greenness to promote its two big industries: tourism and dairy exports… The government’s national marketing strategy is underpinned by a survey showing that tourism would be reduced by 68% if the country lost its prized ‘clean, green image’, and even international purchases of its dairy products could halve. The trouble is, on the climate change front at least, that green image increasingly defies reality.”
Say it ain’t so, Wellington.
Walk for climate change, Jim Salinger, Civic Square, 1pm, followed by the march and other speakers, December 5.
Sophie Schröder