Having observed the failure of many governments to effect real change at climate conferences, former Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons shares what she has learned about community engagement to help the environment.

Do we lobby the government to reduce climate emissions, or change our own light bulbs?

Our Climate Declaration includes ‘growing local food, eating less meat and dairy’ in its vision of a climate-safe Aotearoa. Why did we include this?

Drawdown, a compendium of climate change solutions edited by Paul Hawken, lists changing to a plant-based diet as the third most powerful emissions-reducing intervention possible, surpassed only by avoiding release of refrigerants and stabilizing the number of humans on the earth.

In the Declaration we pulled out the barest few essential elements of a sustainable and healthy diet. Here is some of the rest of the story.

There are three huge carbon reservoirs – the earth (soils), the oceans, and the atmosphere. The first has been dangerously depleted, the second and third overloaded. How do we move the carbon back to where it ought to be? How do we bring the carbon home? 

Now that I’ve read - not all but most of - “Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming” edited by Paul Hawken, I recommend starting at the back. Begin by reading the chapters at the end called “An Opening” and “What do the Numbers tell us?”

Clean cookstoves (replacing kerosene), improved rice cultivation and protecting tropical forests are clearly not things we can implement within NZ. 

We have a logo!

You’ll have noticed our new logo on opening our website. We had a number of excellent submissions for a logo and selected a design by Kit Hindin of New Media Design in Christchurch. You can see more about Kit here: http://newmediadesign.nz/       https://www.facebook.com/newmediadesign.nz/  We thought this design conveyed that we are dealing with an urgent global issue, in which we are pushing out dangerous limits, and which requires decisive action. Thank you Kit! And thanks to others who submitted fine designs.

We hope everyone will enjoy using the logo in your work on Our Climate Declaration. Feel free to copy it on to whatever you are doing to promote this work. 

Cities are where most people in the world live and New Zealand is no exception. But cities are not inevitably carbon-producing hot spots. Urban design can make them sustainable, economical, pleasantly liveable and walkable. The section in Drawdown on Walkable Cities describes four criteria that encourage people to walk (or cycle) rather than drive their cars.

What we do with our food scraps and other waste products has a significant impact on climate change. Why is that? 

Action in Dunedin over the past two months has mostly revolved around making two verbal submissions (with Rosemary Penwarden) to local government authorities. The first was to the Dunedin City Council (DCC) and the second was to the Otago Regional Council (ORC).

It’s hard to believe that “low carbon pathways” actually exist in traffic-congested Auckland where 800 cars are unloaded at the wharves each week and 4000 more houses are urgently needed to accommodate population expansion. But a seminar one recent Saturday afternoon in Auckland’s Central Library provided glimpses of their existence – if you look in the right places.