SOUTH WAIRARAPA REBUS CLUB

The guest speaker at our 23 July Meeting was Lisa McLaren QSM of Masterton, a “reluctant activist”, who was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal in the 2020 New Year’s Honours for her services to climate change advocacy. Co-convenor of the NZ youth delegation to the Paris climate talks, she was also convenor of the Zero Carbon Act Campaign, supported by Generation Zero, a New Zealand-based youth climate change group who launched their blueprint for the law change some four years ago.

Lisa has attended several United Nations climate change negotiations including those in Poland, Germany, and France. The New Zealand youth delegation had been attending climate negotiations for the decade following the notoriously unsuccessful talks in Copenhagen in 2009, as they saw that there was a crucial role for young people to play in creating the solutions that would define their future. They knew the importance of New Zealand’s stance in the world; they saw the symbolic power of New Zealand leadership. Climate change is the challenge of their generation and young people are the inheritors of humanity’s response to climate change. 

Solutions to the problems were available; many world leaders were acutely aware of the scale of the issue; maybe the governments of the world would make a binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent runaway climate change.  Hope and belief were shattered when negotiations failed to reach a meaningful agreement each year until the 2015 Paris negotiations. Despite the need to act in order to secure a stable future for young and future generations, successive attempts saw no political consequences for inaction and plenty of pressure from special interests to maintain the status quo.

Young people from the New Zealand youth delegation went on to start the group Generation Zero in 2011, as a voice of those who would inherit the future, a voice that would demand local action on climate change.  Working at both regional and national levels, Generation Zero’s movement built a consensus of intergenerational and cross-party support for a Zero Carbon Act. Growing public pressure saw the national conversation switch from, “Should we act on climate change?” to “How do we act on climate change?”.

On 14 November 2019, Parliament passed the Zero Carbon Act, modelled on the UK Climate Change Act (2008), with technically unanimous support due to the Act Party deciding not to vote. As enacted, while it falls short of their initial ambition, it contains provision for a net zero carbon balance by 2050, legally binding interim targets and an independent Climate Change Commission. A significant victory on the road to success was getting all the youth sections of the main political parties on board, also Jan Wright, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The need now is to implement an ambitious plan to ensure a just transition for all New Zealanders.

The South Wairarapa Rebus Club meets in the South Wairarapa Working Men’s Club on the fourth Friday morning of each month and organises an outing in those months with a fifth Friday. Anyone in the retired age group who may be interested in SW Rebus Club is welcome to come along to a meeting as a visitor.  Please contact David Woodhams 306 8319.