AGM Newsletter May 2026
You are invited to our AGM May 29, which includes a webinar.
In this newsletter we bring you first a perspective from Europe that offers a cold comfort - our difficulties as climate activists are shared. We balance this with an invitation to our AGM to hear our guest speaker, Adam Currie, 350 Aotearoa’s climate campaigner, whose energies and commitment are inspiring.
This month leading international medical journal The Lancet published the 2026 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change.
“As the world boils,” it states, “….the news is bleak.”
The bleakness this time comes not from scientific reports but from an analysis of the political and social environments in which the climate-aware community struggles to be heard.
And it sounds like home.
As we are struggling to make climate issues a part of election discussions, the report notes a decline in engagement with the health effects of climate change by politicians, business leaders, media and the public. This “engagement gap” is, they say, the most immediate challenge facing Europe’s climate and health community.
Partly this disengagement is the result of public anxiety about cost-of-living pressures, exacerbated by the effects of wars in Ukraine and Iran, but it also reflects the hostility to climate policies and even to the science, shown by right-of-centre populist parties.
We know society needs profound changes if we’re to survive this heated, overshot world. But the process of change, the report comments, needs to create space for a broad and diverse community of activists. It quotes “Radical Justice: Building the World We Need” (2026) by Nani Jansen Reventlow:
“You do not have to get arrested and imprisoned. You do not have to lie in the road. You can find something you are good at and pursue your own path.”
The path taken by Adam Currie, guest speaker at our AGM on Friday May 29 has seen him arrested after co-organising a five day protest camp at the Denniston Plateau that culminated in shutting down a mine when protesters climbed into a coal bucket. This was an unusual action for Adam who has spent years focused on legal campaigning and community organizing work for a range of organisations including Greenpeace, Generation Zero and freefares.nz.
He will speak about his experiences and the potential of making polluters pay for a just transition to a cleaner, fairer Aotearoa.
AGM May 29 Agenda and Convener’s Report
Invitation to Attend AGM
Date: May 29, 2026
Time: 4:00 PM
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88346275576?pwd=bUxIaWgxNnRXR29FUnNUbGNpazREdz09
Meeting ID: 883 4627 5576
Passcode: 867817
Lastly, a word from our Jack Santa Barbara:
The recent Fossil Fuel Transition Conference in Colombia is an important development in supplementing IPCC deliberations. But for it to succeed, there are a number of issues it needs to attend to. Here are some comments about how to upgrade the Santa Marta process.
Click the above link to view the article on Jack’s Substack.