Despite the Labour Government declaring a 'climate change emergency' in 2019, Environment Minister David Parker, against advice, has given Auckland's Glenbrook Steel Mill permission to carry on polluting. It is the country's 11th biggest polluter.

IT WAS NOT SO LONG AGO, in September 2019, that a reported 180,000 people demonstrated throughout the country demanding urgent action on Climate change. The demonstration, part of the worldwide School Strike for Climate movement, represented 3.5 percent of the population. In 2019, perhaps prompted by the 'pressure from below' and wanting to appear as if her Labour Government was taking climate change seriously, Jacinda Ardern introduced a Parliamentary motion to declare a 'climate change emergency'.

Speaking in parliament, Ardern said the country had to 'act with urgency':

'This declaration is an acknowledgement of the next generation. An acknowledgement of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and do not take action now. It is up to us to make sure we demonstrate a plan for action, and a reason for hope.'

But Jacinda Ardern's  grandiose declaration has never been met with the radical and substantial action required to adequately address the challenge that climate change poses. Invariably the Labour Government's actions on climate change have been defined by what powerful economic interests will accept and tolerate. And the market friendly Green Party has failed to put up any significant resistance. 

The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has been proved right when she called out the Labour Government's parliamentary declaration as 'meaningless virtue signalling' unless it was met with immediate action. 

Some four years after the Labour Government's passed its declaration, Environment Minister David Parker has underlined just what meaningless piece of virtue signalling it really was. 

Giving the middle digit to the 180,000 folk who demonstrated in 2018 and the many more thousands that have demonstrated since, Parker has given the NZ Steel his blessing to carry on polluting New Zealand skies.

Despite being advised by his own staff that he should intervene 'as soon as possible' to prevent Auckland's Glenbrook Steel Mill obtaining consent to continue polluting, Parker sat on his hands. He has given the country's 11th-biggest emitter permission to carry on, business as usual, for another 25 years. There are no conditions on its greenhouse gas emissions.

This is in despite of Parker also being informed this will have a significantly negative impact on whether New Zealand can meet its climate goal of being carbon-neutral. 

It is apparent that our politicians do not feel the same sense of urgency about climate change as they did about the coronavirus pandemic. The Labour Government took immediate action to prevent a full-blown pandemic that had the potential to kill thousands of people. Yet, despite the extreme dangers we are confronted with by climate change, it continues to be regarded as incidental to the interests of the corporate sector. 

Even events like Cyclone Gabrielle don't appear to be able to make the Labour Government treat climate change with the urgency it demands. Scientists say that climate change worsened flooding from the cyclone, yet this still has not persuaded David Parker to bring one of the country's biggest polluters to heel. 

While David Parker deserves all the opprobrium that is being heaped upon him, it is also worth noting that market-friendly Climate Change Minister James Shaw appears to have rolled over and surrendered to corporate interests. 

It is obvious that our economic system is not compatible with the actions needed to combat climate change. It results in someone like Environment Minister David Parker allowing NZ Steel to effectively dismiss the environmental interests of the country in its pursuit of profit. New Zealand Steel’s holding company Tasman Steel increased its profit by 153% to a bumper $340 million in the year to June while receiving free carbon credits worth $117m from the Government. It is the country's single biggest recipient of free carbon credits.

As author and activist Naomi Klein warns: 'All we have to do is not react as if this is a full- blown crisis…then, bit by bit, we will have arrived at the place we most fear, the thing from which we have been averting our eyes.'