For there’s a bear who shouldn’t be there. Because she’s losing her home in the Arctic.
Yesterday the government delivered a Budget with a deficit in ambition. It completely failed to back our clean energy innovators. Today, at Skycity in Auckland, the Prime Minister met with a bunch of business executives. And no doubt there was some back-slapping and high fives all round.
Pastries, cheese scrolls and sausages on sticks were scoffed as John Key wandered around shaking hands. Maybe the National party coffers might even see a little boost too from the assembled suits.
A climate refugee in #Auckland has come to John Key’s post budget briefing – climate change can’t be ignored #nzpol pic.twitter.com/WtUq8E0a2I— Greenpeace NZ (@GreenpeaceNZ) May 15, 2014
But the polar bear was also trying to get into the room to remind them that the Budget failed to help build a cleaner, smarter future. A future that backs the Kiwi innovators who could deliver the solutions to climate change, provide tens of thousands of jobs and give the economy a multi-billion dollar boost.
Solutions that also mean that polar bears have a home in the Arctic.
Over the last six years the government has been hell-bent on subsidising some of the richest, most polluting foreign companies on the planet – all at the expense of our own, home-grown innovative clean energy industry. They have failed to reduce pollution and embrace the opportunities that moving to a cleaner way of powering our homes will bring. It’s bad economic management.
Leading finance houses are pouring money into clean energy, and smart governments around the world are realising this. They are moving away from backing fossil fuels as the threat of losing places like the Arctic becomes a reality.
John Key’s Budget has ignored the New Zealand-grown industries that would put this country at the heart of a growing global industrial sector.
A smart, sensible Budget would have established a clean energy investment bank to support business investment in industries that could help save places like the Arctic.
So if you go down to the town today, you’re sure to get a surprise. You’ll see John Key and his business chums gaily gad about. The polluters, the traders oh how they love to play and shout.
But our bear is there to make them care and to tell them to help the Arctic out.
This blog is part of the #election2014 series. The series discusses New Zealand politics and the policies and, sometimes, lack of them, of our political parties. We hope that it provokes a bit of debate.
Greenpeace is non-party political. We do not align ourselves with any political party and are committed to the principle of political independence. To maintain our independence, we don’t accept money from governments, corporations or political parties.
