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One hundred eminent New Zealanders have united backing a call for the country's Parliament to comprehensively assess the risks of climate change to New Zealand and to draw up plans to deal with them.
The Wise Response appeal, backed by a list of distinguished people from academia, the arts, sports and other fields, was presented to lawmakers on Wednesday, with a warning that the country was ignoring the possible consequences of global climate change.
"So far, New Zealand has failed to truly face up to such unprecedented threats to its collective security. Indeed, some policies exacerbate the situation," said the appeal.
"There appears to be an unwavering faith that technological fixes will be found in time. Yet with scientists saying critical ' thresholds' are upon us, the odds of such solutions being found diminish by the day and the consequences of this faith being ill- founded will, in all probability, be disastrous and irreversible."
It urged legislators to consider five aspects of climate change: economic security in the event of a financial crisis; energy and climate security and the country's heavy dependence on fossil fuels; business continuity with a switch to a lower carbon economy; ecological security and protection; and measuring "progress" by methods other than consumption and GDP.
The signatories included former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmers and Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown.
Climate change group 350 Aotearoa, which supported the appeal, said thousands of ordinary New Zealanders had also added their signatures to the appeal, which was presented a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a dire report on the global climate.
"For New Zealand, it's key that we assess climate change risks not only in terms of direct impacts on our coastlines and agriculture, but also understand the larger risks that we're exposed to as part of a global economic and political system, from global energy and economic security, to risks of increased global conflicts, and immigration impacts," 350 Aotearoa chairperson Aaron Packard said in a statement.
The main opposition Labor Party said the government should be " future-proofing" the country's economy by moving away from fossil fuel dependence, rather than locking New Zealand into greater reliance.
"No generation has the right to rob from future generations by depleting and destroying the environmental wealth that our economy is based on," Labor environment and climate change spokesperson Moana Mackey said in a statement after receiving the appeal.
The opposition Green Party said the IPCC report had been "a massive wake-up call" that the government should take seriously.
"As Wise Response points out, we cannot keep allowing economic development to come at the expense of our environment, when it's the environment that underpins the economy in the first place," Green Party climate change spokesperson Kennedy Graham said in a statement after meeting the appeal presenters.
