Since our governing parliamentary circles seem to have abandoned any semblance of civility, respect for dissenting MPs views (however strong their mandates from the public) or justice for any but the richest among us, I feel it’s reasonable to call a spade a spade in the face of last week’s newspaper column from Simon Watts, the Honourable Minister for Climate Change.
With the vast Amazon Basin’s planetary lungs just up the South American coast, the United Nations’ 30th multilateral Climate Change Conference gathering in Brazil this month focussed on keeping some semblance of global climate change commitments in place – a Herculean task in its own right.
A high proportion of smaller nations were represented and the conference grabbed headlines and international colour, even showing some lively wins towards slowing the ossified western financial world from its continuing drive to exterminate nature itself, along with a clear majority of the humans who depend on it.
Perhaps our representative at COP30, the Honourable Minister, read the wrong agenda when writing a piece for a New Zealand Herald feature on 19 November about his attendance. Or maybe the business feature itself, under a headline ‘Sustainable Business and Finance’, put him crook.
He would be there to “advance our interests and support our transition to a climate resilient economy,” said the minister.
Since COP also “brings together businesses, people and groups at the forefront of the global economic transition it is important we have a seat at the table,” he said, pledging climate action that, variously, “grows our economy”, “advances our interests”, “unlocks our economic potential”, “grows the prosperity of the region”, “ensures we remain globally competitive”, makes New Zealand “stronger and more resilient” in a changing world, and underpins “New Zealand’s export offering, from tourism to food production and consumer goods. ”
Besides helping Kiwi businesses enter high-value international markets and “transition to a lower emissions economy”.
Under the headline: “A seat at the table on climate change” and a dubious subhead about “Transitioning to a lower emissions economy helps Kiwi businesses”, the ubiquitous ‘economy’ that was to deliver all these outcomes featured in 15 of the story’s 17 short paragraphs about the part we as a developed nation would be playing in saving the planet from the disturbingly obvious ravages of greed.
A row of colourful indigenous Brazilians staring boldly into the cameras of the global press corps provided a strong note of irony as the accompanying illustration.
One hopes the minister kept quiet at the conference itself which was actually on climate change and its parallel threat to the future of the human race.
Where did we lose our signature leadership and sometimes fearless truth-telling to power at the highest levels? And the obvious fact that small committed groups and like-minded small countries often achieve much while larger ones – fragmented or sabotaged by powerful self-interest – can easily be persuaded to merely generate a convenient fog.
London School of Economics author Cahal Moran, in his 2025 Why We’re Getting Poorer: a realist’s guide to the economy and how we can fix it, peels back the dogma and magical thinking that has enabled powerful private actors to shape the world economy in their own interests in the absence of deliberate mechanisms to ensure the brittle system functions well and benefits everyone.
Historically, corporations always were sanctioned monopolies and designing, monitoring and regulating a resilient and ultimately fair global network is the only way to approach the realities facing both the present global economy and the people who make it up, he says. A balance of cooperation and competition should give us the way forward for more equitable outcomes, including those who work to keep it all ticking over.
Shamubeel Eaqub, one of our own more perceptive social economists, describes this time as a “hinge moment” at the end of the peace-driven global order set in place after the second world war with its defining geopolitics, trade, economics and the investing patterns that were fundamentally a bet on rising economic prosperity and managed uncertainties.
Inequality fell sharply with the widespread adoption of the welfare state and remained low until the neoliberal reforms of the 1970s and 1980s brought increased inequality that failed to generate the anticipated renewed economic dynamism and inequality remained entrenched, Eaqub said in an article in October’s New Zealand Geographic.
“If improving economic standards leave too many people behind, then their grievances against the current economic system are understandable and perhaps justified.
“For those less fortunate, this erodes people’s satisfaction with life. Their trust in each other, their community and their institutions (like courts, politicians and democracy) and a breakdown of social cohesion.” he said.
“The biggest fracturing is explained by the rich-poor divide, along with political alliances, ethnicity and age. The more entrenched inequality and poverty become, the bigger the risks to the foundations of national economic prosperity.”
The conclusion shows up in the current polarisation in politics around the world and the Helen Clark Foundation’s Social Cohesion report shows that we are now less cohesive than Australia.
No wonder we are so uneasy.
• Liz Waters
© Waiheke Gulf News Ltd 2025
