Tuesday, May 09, 2023



Auckland is drowning... again

As I write, Auckland is flooding, for the second time this year. One once-in-a-hundred year weather event in a year is unfortunate; two in a few months is beginning to look like a trend. Of course, we know what that trend is called: climate change. So its distressing to see the government still dragging its feet on this: still refusing to make farmers, who are responsible for 50% of our emissions, take responsibility for the pollution they produce; still refusing to shut down the fossil fuel industry; still subsidising industrial polluters; still fucking around.

That fucking around costs. People might be dead. People will lose their homes, or face serious disruption to their lives. And then there's the money. The government is already on the hook for billions after the last floods, and it'll probably be on the hook for more for this lot. Isn't it time we tried to minimise those costs, by addressing the cause, rather than just blithely dragging out feet to apocalypse (or, in the case of National/ACT, running headlong into it)?

Twice in one year should be a warning. We need to stop fucking around on climate change. And any government which doesn't heed that warning, and apply their maximum efforts to cutting our emissions as quickly as possible should be regarded as trying to murder us.