Here is a photo of me with Aaron Packard, one of the driving forces behind 350 Aotearoa, in the Radhudspladsen in Central Copenhagen, on Sunday afternoon.  Aaron has done a terrific job working with other young people, first in New Zealand and more lately internationally, to raise awareness about climate change.  350.org works in a non-partisan way, and invites representatives from all political parties to participate in its events.  One of its most recent rallies was a candlelight vigil held in Wellington on Saturday night.

I ran into Aaron as he and a colleague were putting up posters around the Radhudsplatsen – which has been set up as a people’s centre on climate change – to advertise a talk being given tomorrow by President Nasheed of Mauritius and Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.  I met Bill today, and I’m looking forward to hearing the talk tomorrow. Mauritius is in the same position as many of our Pacific neighbours – it has contributed little or nothing to the problem of climate change, but being comprised of low-lying atolls, it will be amongst the first and most drastically to be affected by the problem.

Tomorrow also sees the arrival of ministerial delegations in Copenhagen.  Business groups are miffed that they have been omitted from New Zealand’s (large) delegation, which – apart from Nick Smith and Tim Groser, and representatives of the iwi leaders’ group who were added as part of the National/Maori Party deal to amend the ETS – is
entirely composed of officials.  Like NGO groups and media, business representatives are having to rely on briefings, conducted to date by Nick Smith’s politically-appointed climate change advisor, a former Business New Zealand staffer.  A broader-based delegation, including key business and NGO figures, with direct access to official advice
and support, would be more likely to work in New Zealand’s interests.

Meanwhile, the Government maintains its increasingly untenable positions on:

• pollution reduction targets (”Unless we get every concession out of the Copenhagen Conference that we want, we won’t be announcing tougher targets, even if other countries do”)
• its lack of a plan to get domestic pollution down (”We want to change the way in which emissions are counted, rather than actually reduce emissions.  Failing that, we’ll just buy emissions credits offshore rather than achieve reductions at home”)
• support for the small island states (”We follow the USA and Australia in all things because Tim Groser sees climate change talks as an extension of our trade negotiation strategy rather than an environmental issue”)

And we all thought their “moderated” ETS was bad enough.  It was just a warm-up (no pun intended).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 6:30 am and is filed under climate change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.