Climate Change: Overdoing it?

Climate change is here, causing increasingly severe weather. In April, Wellington was flooded by extreme rainfall, making 40 homes uninhabitable and killing one person. Auckland suffered similar floods in 2023. We had more weather-related states of emergency in the first two months of 2026 than in the whole of 2025, and the number has only increased. A severe weather warning affecting multiple regions is issued every two weeks. But weirdly, the minister for climate change and local government thinks councils are doing too much to stop this, and has sent them a shitty letter demanding they pretend its not happening:

Wellington’s mayor has slammed a climate mitigation letter from the local government minister as “tone deaf”, in a city where a man died in flood waters and other residents scrambled for their lives mere weeks ago.

Local Government Minister Simon Watts’ letter to mayors, regional council chairpeople and council chief executives around the country started arriving in in-boxes about 6pm on Tuesday.

In it, he insinuated councils were “gold-plating” climate initiatives and building for worst-case scenarios at ratepayers’ expenses.

[...]

Asked for examples of problem initiatives, Watts’ office highlighted a Greater Wellington Regional Council regional flood hazard assessment, which produced a map showing where is prone to flooding risk. Areas severely flooded in April, such as Emerson St in Berhampore, were identified as being at risk.

The last bit makes it crystal clear why Watts is doing this: because clearly identifying climate change risks means some people's property values will drop. People with houses in flood zones might not be able to insure or sell them, and developers who have hoarded coastal property won't be able to develop it and might lose money. So to protect the imaginary property values of the rich, we all have to ignore what is happening before our eyes and pretend that everything is perfectly normal.

This is, simply, bullshit. And if Watts gets his way, more people will die. But Watts doesn't care. Weirdly, he seems to think none of this bad weather will affect him in any way.

Climate change is an existential threat to future for humanity. The regime has clearly chosen a side in that struggle, and it is the side of polluters and devastation. They have moved from passively not giving a shit to actively trying to stop people from doing anything about it. If we want a future, we need to throw this climate quisling regime out of office, and elect a government which will protect us, rather than protecting polluters.