Greenpeace is calling on the Government to follow the lead of the UK and declare a climate and environment emergency, after history making scenes in UK Parliament this morning saw MPs pass a motion to make the country the first in the world to do so.<\/p>\n
It comes on the back of waves of climate protests that have hit the UK, which include hundreds of thousands of students going on strike from school, and thousands of people being arrested due to mass occupations as part of the Extinction Rebellion movement.<\/p>\n
Scotland and Wales have also declared a climate emergency following protests there.<\/p>\n
Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, says it\u2019s time for the New Zealand Government to do the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Zealand is already seen as a world leader when it comes to climate action thanks to the historic ban on new oil and gas exploration permits,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now need to go a step further by formally declaring a climate and environment emergency, and follow it up with the action required to meet the greatest challenge of our time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scale of ambition needed to solve a problem as large as climate change has been likened to a war-time effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greenpeace is calling for a series of sweeping policy changes to tackle the climate emergency.<\/p>\n
These include a complete end to fossil fuel exploration on land and sea, including revoking existing oil and gas permits. The organisation is also demanding a plan to phase out the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, and heavy investment \u00a0in electric transport and renewable energy like wind and solar with batteries.<\/p>\n
Norman says the country\u2019s biggest climate and water polluter, agriculture, must be a key focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to ban synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, which drives the dairy intensification that pollutes our climate and our rivers. We also have to dramatically reduce the number of dairy cows in the country, and change land use to less polluting ways of farming,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Among the most intense gases that cause atmospheric heating are nitrous oxide, which has nearly 300 times the heating power of carbon dioxide, and methane.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been clearly warned by scientists that we have just 10 years to halve emissions in order to avoid climate breakdown that will cause dramatic rates of extinction, and the displacement and death of tens of millions of people,\u201d Norman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change is a global emergency – let\u2019s act like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n\t\t\t Join our call on the New Zealand Government to make climate crisis its nuclear free moment by taking the climate emergency seriously, with real action now.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Greenpeace is calling on the Government to follow the lead of the UK and declare a climate and environment emergency, after history making scenes in UK Parliament this morning saw…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":5171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,19,26,29,32],"p4-page-type":[7],"class_list":["post-5397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greenpeace","tag-climate","tag-food-and-farming","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-clean-energy","tag-peoplepower","p4-page-type-press-release"],"yoast_head":"\n