James Shaw in Parliament yesterday during the Ministerial Statements — Cyclone Gabrielle—Declaration of State of National Emergency.
Transcript from Hansard:
Yeah, thank you, Mr Speaker. The Green Party also supports the declaration of a state of emergency in response to Cyclone Gabrielle. I do want to thank the Government and the Minister for the decisive and comprehensive course of action that they are taking in response to this crisis.
I have to say that, just when we thought we had had our worst climate-related disaster this country only two weeks ago, we are facing an even more significant challenge. Last week, I went up to Auckland and saw the damage and saw the work that community organisations have been doing, including visiting a house that had been lifted completely off its foundations by the force of the water and shunted across its sections.
I have to say that, as I stand here today, I struggle to find words to express what I am thinking and feeling about this particular crisis. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as sad or as angry about the lost decades that we spent bickering and arguing about whether climate change was real or not, whether it was caused by humans or not, whether it was bad or not, whether we should do something about it or not, because it is clearly here now, and if we do not act, it will get worse.
I’ve been recalling, actually, a quote from a different time about a different crisis: “The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” And there will be people who say, you know—just as the National Rifle Association in the United States does about shootings over there—it’s “too soon” to talk about these things, but we are standing in it right now. This is a climate change – related event. The severity of it, of course, made worse by the fact that our global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 degrees. We need to stop making excuses for inaction. We cannot put our heads in the sand when the beach is flooding. We must act now.
Coverage in the Guardian:
In an interview with the Guardian, Shaw said he had spoken to New Zealand’s prime minister and finance minister about action that could allow those receiving insurance payments to rebuild their homes to relocate elsewhere instead.
“Some of those houses are in places where it’s a bad idea to have a house,” he said, referring to the “tens of thousands” of New Zealand homes built on flood plains or erosion-prone coastlines.
“There are decisions that we could make that I think would lead to longer term resilience and a more adaptive response that if we don’t make them, you’ll probably just get a reversion to the status quo,” said Shaw.
But he cautioned against a shift away from reducing emissions in order to foot the bill for dealing with the effects of the climate crisis.
“There will be a certain crowd who say … let’s give up on stopping climate change and its focus entirely on responding to the effects of climate change and I cannot state enough what a catastrophic mistake that would be,” Shaw said. “Because every tenth of a degree of warming increases the frequency and the severity of these events.”
Bold added.
Front page image RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
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