Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declared a climate emergency, where she said that this would be “one of the greatest challenges of our time”.
A motion tabled in the parliament on Wednesday had acknowledged the impacts of climate change that would jeopardize the New Zealanders’ safety, primary industries and also clean water availability – not to mention the other threats like flood or wildfire.
There are currently thirty-two nations that also recognized the global crisis by declaring the same.
The other matters that should be payed attention to is the biodiversity of plants and animals, like fear of species going extinct and the declining numbers of the ones that remain.
This declaration is supported by the Green Party and the Māori Party, but opposed by the National and Act parties.
Arden urged that this act must be critically acted upon. “This declaration is an acknowledgement of the next generation. An acknowledgement of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and do not take action now,” she said.
The government sector will only be allowed to buy electric or hybrid vehicles, with other carbon-emitting structures like boilers in public services buildings will be phased out.
The country would also have to sign the Paris Agreement and passing the Zero Carbon Act 2019 to call for recognition of the progress of change that commits the country to reduce emissions.
The Climate Change Commission puts the country to a path of zero emissions by 2050, making it the first country to ever enforce it by law.
Even though this is finally been put up with Parliamentary procedure, the experts say that the country is falling behind on the changes that need to be done for that to happen.
“The irony is, even under [President] Trump, the US is going to have made better per-capita reductions than we have,” University of Canterbury political science professor Bronwyn Hayward said last week.
Writing in The Conversation, Robert McLachlan, a professor of applied mathematics at Massey University, said New Zealand was yet to make emissions reductions. Having 43 industrialized countries, New Zealand is among 12 that have seen net emissions increase between 1990 and 2018.
Wednesday’s declaration would also require the government to give alternatives to the other sectors of the economy, demonstrating how it’s possible to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
But opposition parties have described the move as a publicity stunt, with the National Party leader, Judith Collins, calling it “virtue signalling”.
“We think it’s all very well to declare an emergency but there’s no proper plan in place as to how to deal with it,” Collins told Radio New Zealand.
The government’s fleet of more than 15,000 vehicles, only 10% of them are electric stands and makes them contribute 0.17% of the global emissions, rising up to 60% in the past two decades.
Some of the nations source of carbon emissions are vehicles and greenhouse gases from agriculture.
Currently, the second-term Labour government has yet to introduce carbon-cutting policies that would ensure the country’s pledge to become a reality.
Source: The Guardian