Stuff Digital Edition

Tackling climate crisis

Andrea Vance andrea.vance@stuff.co.nz

What a flying shame. The National Party is wagging their flygskam (the Swedish buzzword for flight-shame) finger at James Shaw for jetting to the other side of the world in the name of climate change.

The Greens co-leader is off to Scotland next month for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference.

MP Stuart Smith had a new twist on the social guilt about air travel, arguing Shaw and his (rather bloated) entourage shouldn’t be taking up nine rooms in managed isolation.

It’s a reductive, petty argument.

Yes, the personal actions of political and civil leaders can set a sensible example. But individual behaviour is not central to tackling global warming: flying currently accounts for only about three per cent of global carbon emissions.

Painting Shaw as an elite hypocrite is a sly deflection tactic to undermine climate action.

It’s a bad-faith argument that comes from the well-thumbed playbook of industries seeking to divert attention from more effective collective and systemic measures such as ending fossil fuel subsidies, or carbon pricing.

COP26 is a critical moment, one of humanity’s last chances to slow global warming. It comes only months after a United Nations report that showed the world was warming faster than previously thought.

Five years on from the landmark Paris Agreement, countries must come with updated Nationally Determined Contributions, the commitments made to reduce carbon emissions.

Virtual diplomacy has run its course, and New Zealand’s absence from the top tables is starting to be noticed (Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta is yet

Opinion

en-nz

2021-10-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

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