From the CEO

Anake Goodall

Climate change is not only inevitable, it is already here with an urgency that demands honest and earnest responsibility be taken for the last two centuries of human activity so that future generations do not inherit environmental collapse. This is no light ask and the stakes have never been higher as environmental disasters ravage communities and entire nations face being covered by rising seas.

For rich nations, climate change is not easy to see or feel. Floods, droughts and storms are literally a world away, concentrated, with a sense of geographical double jeopardy, in developing nations portrayed by remote satellite footage that can never convey the depth and extent of human tragedy. For us, climate change is the subtle, unobservable phantom that over time will creep up on us. We cannot escape. The mahinga kai values that have defined Ngāi Tahu over generations could face their greatest threat in a landscape so altered that we cannot do what we have always done.

New Zealand has recently taken our second attempt at creating law to respond to climate change; the Emissions Trading Scheme, that despite the media frenzy remains incomprehensible to most. The scheme is supposed to help stop climate change by making polluters pay for the carbon they emit into the environment, on the basis that carbon released into the atmosphere has contributed to global warming. Use petrol, own cows, chop down trees or do a series of other things that spurt out carbon, and face a liability. Paying for carbon emissions is not only supposed to make industry more responsible by giving them an incentive to limit and reduce their bad emitting ways, it is also supposed to create conditions that change the way we live, such as making renewable energy more competitive.

The scheme is the product of a bloody political process, as the debate turned more to who will pay and how much, rather than the actual issue of collective responsibility for the environmental effects of our lifestyles. As this issue went to print, the same debate was occurring in the international arena. This perhaps points to the real question being not whether the scheme will work, because law is only one small part of the solution, but how we can each be honest enough about our actions to be responsible for the greatest global challenge of this century.

Ngā mea i hangaia e te tangata
Mā te tangata anō e whakaaro atu

What man creates,
Man must also resolve

Rakiihia Tau (snr)