In a self-serving world, fresh air

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4576581a1865.html

Sunday, 08 June 2008

In a self-serving world, fresh air

A breath of fresh air swept through New Zealand this past week. World Environment Day was a welcome relief after months of self-serving, narrow-minded politicking from sections of business determined to kill off constructive climate change and energy legislation.

As this year's global host to the annual United Nations event, New Zealand attracted visits from two senior UN officials. They reminded us of the towering environmental challenges the world faces and the role we can play in helping to meet them, particularly in agriculture.

While Dr Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN's Environment Programme, and Rajendra Pachauri, chair of its Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, helped set the international context, a wide range of Kiwis - companies large and small, not-for-profits, community and government bodies and individuals - provided plenty of evidence of constructive engagement.

Steiner confronted head-on the enormous difficulties involved in trying to achieve a global response to climate change. The challenge came not from finding the technology or money. Most of the former is here now or coming relatively soon; and investing in it would cost only 0.1% of economic activity over the next 30 years.

Rather, "our challenge is to prevent sub-sectors holding back the development of the economy", he told a business symposium in Auckland organised by Victoria University's Institute of Policy Studies and Climate Change Research Institute. He warned that some industries and companies are determined to pursue their own short-term, self-interest.

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