Climate Change: How to vote

Climate change is a big problem, and it often seems overwhelming. While individual action will help - every little bit helps - a lot of the changes we need to make are at a level far above that of individual action. Changes to the global energy system, or to farm pollution (which, insofar as it responds to market signals, responds to them from other countries, not from us plebs who host the farms and are left with their pollution). On these issues it seems like there's very little we can do.

Except there is something we can do: we can vote. These problems can be dealt with by government policy, which is set by elected politicians. So if we vote in politicians who actually want to fix the climate, rather then collaborate with the polluters who are destroying it, then we stand a chance of fixing things (or at least a better one than we would under the collaborators).

So who should climate-aware voters vote for this election? Vote for climate action has a simple guide, with a summary of policies. And Stuff has a comprehensive survey of where the parties stand on various climate policies, with both a summary and further detail on each one. The upshot of both is clear: if you want climate action, vote for the Greens or Te Pāti Māori. If you want to burn the world, vote National or ACT. Its that simple.