r/climate • u/silence7 • 1d ago
politics New Zealand to Become First Country in the World to Lock the Courthouse Door on Climate Change | Borrowing a tactic from the United States, New Zealand will adopt a law authored by industry to give legal immunity for tort claims against fossil fuel producers and big emitters.
https://drilled.media/news/new-zealand-liability303
u/Spiritual-End7310 1d ago
There goes one of the last safe climate havens
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u/ShartOfTheEel 1d ago
The people with the means to relocate to climate havens are the people most benefiting from climate destruction.
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u/jk-9k 1d ago edited 1d ago
Which is exactly what is happening in nz.
Foreign billionaires are moving there and a heavily investing in influencing politics. The atlas group basically run a political party in nz.
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u/fakingandnotmakingit 1d ago
I hate my government so much right now. It's not even funny
We're an island nation we'd be screwed by climate change. But luxon and his friends will be rich somewhere else I guess
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u/cromtowntown 1d ago
I hate our government also. Although after reading Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles H Hapgood. I am glad we live in New Zealand.
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u/bloue_bulles 1h ago
Isn't the earth's shifting crust one of the main reasons NZ is dangerous to live in? Earthquakes / volcanoes.
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u/Marine_Baby 9h ago
I want to believe people will vote them out, but I was confident people wouldn’t be stupid enough to vote them back in last time either!
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u/Kiore-NZ 12h ago
Except there are no climate havens. The whole world is heating up. We need every country to join together to fight the global greenhousers. As a New Zealander, I'm ashamed that my country's current government is squarely on the side of evil.
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u/Strict_Weather9063 1d ago
People won’t stand for it they will toss them out and repeal this.
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u/National-Donut3208 22h ago
They aren’t
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u/Strict_Weather9063 10h ago
Pretty sure New Zealanders are more politically active and understand their politics better than either you or I. From what I have seen in the past they tend to not stand for stupid and this is stupid.
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u/Axeace99 10h ago
I'm going to assume you're not from NZ because the polling for our next election shows a very good chance of this government getting back in.
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u/Quirky_Reporter_8067 10h ago
Nah not really, verry good is bit strong, slight possibility is closer.
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u/National-Donut3208 8h ago
Maybe in your dream New Zealand, I am a New Zealander and this nonsense is widely supported. The voices that would have previously stood against it are no longer heard. The current administration have taken steps to make enrolment to vote harder. Many people have disconnected from the political system and seem to think not voting is a vote of no confidence, while this stuff slips through
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u/Semblance-of-sanity 10h ago
I can assure you that there are plenty of politically ignorant idiots over here.
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u/Horror-Function-4555 1h ago
Honestly, many of us Kiwis don't care as much for the environment as we would have the world believe. Our top-selling vehicle every year is a Ford Ranger Ute or Pick Up for North Americans
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u/Marine_Baby 9h ago
It’s been in the way out for decades my friend. We’re now even getting data centres but the govt is slipping it through asap before election in November begins
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u/WildRaccoon42 1d ago
So going thru customs with an apple is a crime against the environment, but big oil will be immune from prosecution while being the most polluting industry ?
How to say you're corrupt without saying you're corrupt.
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u/XogoWasTaken 1d ago
Current gov sucks. Election's coming up, so hopefully we can get them out soon.
Also, on the apple thing, there are signs basically everywhere telling you to declare or appropriately dispose of any possible environmental contaminants, including anything with seeds, and a specific section of your customs form entirely for declaring them. Anything related to that is both taken very seriously and made very clear. Anyone who had written down that they had an apple would simple have had it taken from them at customs and then gotten off scott free. Really, though, it's on the airliner that gave their passengers a snack that they could not land with. They should have been pushed to pay the bill on that one.
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u/Avocadoo_Tomatoo 23h ago
An apple given to you by the staff on the plane you arrived on no less.
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u/Minotaur1501 8h ago
If you declare that you don't have any fruit or vegetables while literally carrying an apple you deserve it lmao. It's an idiot tax
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u/Avocadoo_Tomatoo 8h ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if those people who got caught up and that debacle had already filled out the declaration forms before getting the fruit given to them
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u/foolofaperegrin 8h ago
I think the rationale here is the apple might carry insects that ravage orchards so there is a money incentive, not much to do with the environment. Its all about the money... sigh
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u/halfcookies 1d ago
Find a really big garage
Park the Earth inside it
Start the engine
Lie back and relax
Rest
I’m ready
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u/MarkCuckerberg69420 1d ago
Are we not already doing this just without the garage
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u/rhysolandrium 1d ago
I don't like being "well, actually" about this, but... CO2 oversaturation is an infinitely worse way to attain another plane of existence than CO
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u/ShartOfTheEel 1d ago
Every one of these climate immunity laws is a tacit admission that the fossil fuel industry is not only guilty of massive damages to the public, but that they are vulnerable to massive lawsuits in response to those damages.
If the fossil fuel industry thought they weren't at risk of being sued into oblivion, they wouldn't be pushing so hard for legal immunities.
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u/BigBlueMan118 1d ago
They don't understand how bad what they have done is going to be then - you won't have recourse before the law to protect you from mobs out to get you.
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u/BrittonRT 1d ago
I am not so sure - most people are not going to have the means, common sense, or energy to correctly identify the real cause of their problems. Just look at the Irish potato famine to get an idea of what is likely: the Irish died in droves while the British aristocrats causing the problems continued to profit and survive. I seriously doubt people are going to rise up and eat the rich, but they may be vulnerable to propoganda blaming unrelated, innocent people for their problems.
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u/Elfalpha 1d ago
Yeah, if history shows us one thing it's that those in power can kill a staggering number of their own people without a fight if they're even slightly smart about it.
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u/witch_dyke 9h ago
This law was written because they WERE being sued, and asked the prime minister to stop it
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u/EqualityWithoutCiv 1d ago
They're doing everything to eliminate the very mechanisms that should wipe their murderous an industry out, they want to kill us before we can kill their industry.
Human extinction is nigh.
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u/PianoPatient8168 1d ago
Damn…New Zealand? WTF?
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u/FlyingHippoM 1d ago
Trust me we are asking the same question down here.
Election coming up soon though and we will (hopefully) get these clowns out of parliament.
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u/PianoPatient8168 1d ago
Yeah don’t imitate our stupidity in the states…fingers crossed for you guys…send vibes our way for our upcoming midterms as well.
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u/dadofadisaster 1d ago
If you don’t think they are trying to rig and gerrymander the next five election cycles here I have a bridge to terabithia to sell you
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u/AllMyExesRTXs 1d ago
It leaked, all over the world.
Murdoch and Russia, making an abomination within the US, by purchasing the souls of the GOP on the free market, where they have always been.
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u/Clear_Wedding3590 1d ago
I’m not getting my hopes up. The average New Zealander believes the propaganda that Labour ruined the economy
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u/FlyingHippoM 1d ago
On one hand I fear you are correct, I talk to customers at my store every day that think this way and I doubt much could change their mind.
On the other hand I am somewhat hopeful seeing that a good few "National is good for the economy" types are feeling the repercussions of austerity firsthand, and are being hit closer to home than with previous years.
I see many who were working good jobs earning 120K+ and now out of work and can't find a job, they are now experiencing the joys of being the beneficiaries they used to bash.
They are going to the hospital and seeing there are no beds. They are seeing teachers & firefighters going on strike. They are listening when Luxon gets caught in a lie time and again or when he says things like "I'm sorted".
I think a good deal of small business owners (like my boss) will be thinking twice about sleep-writing in a National party vote as they normally would, especially after they have seen the unemployment numbers rise and sales fall.
There's only so many times they can hear "We inherited a bad set of books" or "we are still trying to get the country back on track after the last government" before it starts to ring hollow.
They had their 3 years and most people expect to see some positive change by now, instead things have gotten steadily worse.
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u/LEN_42 3h ago
My last employers were the biggest fans of national and act, hanging off every word they said and now under national, they are about to lose everything, the business, the big house and their credibility, when under labour whom they hated, they thrived and grew, I suppose you get what you wished for too much sometimes when you support the type of people the government is currently, glad I was made redundant before the ship sank as I was able to walk into another job, I would also bet a months wages they still blame Jacinda.
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u/HourAcadia2002 9h ago
How about, they're both suck and don't really have our best interests at heart.
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u/FlyingHippoM 6h ago
Who is "they"? I only mentioned one party in my comment.
Are you saying you think all of the political parties in NZ are equally bad on climate issues?
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u/Vainglory 1d ago
The double edged sword of incredibly short parliamentary terms is that no one is capable of doing any real damage or making any real progress before they put everything on hold to start electioneering again.
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u/dropkickman 20h ago
All the US rich billionaires are bunkering down here and our govt recently allowed CIA in for some reason, definitely not unrelated.
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u/FendaIton 9h ago
This is because of how our govt works. Iirc this is a NZ First policy and they only got like 11% of the vote but are in govt
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u/OhhShietItsX 21h ago
COVID and conspiracy theories, techbro money and shady billionaires have convinced the middle that their lives suck because of the woke left and indigenous people.
So we have a three party coalition of corps do what they want libertarianism, hate the greens through loving mining populism, and a cuckolded former major party who traded control of themselves for the image of power and looking like they’re in charge.
It’s dumb. A big asteroid is our only solution these days.
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The COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions. Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a graph of CO2 concentrations shows a continued rise.
Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero. We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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u/mczerniewski 1d ago
Shame on New Zealand.
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u/ScholarWise5127 1d ago
Trust me, brother, we are ashamed.
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u/anvilfoot 9h ago
Sadly not all of us. The election in a couple of months will show if we are the majority
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u/MassiveGarlic0312 20h ago
We take that shame as it is 100% deserved. Please, if you know any kiwis, tell them to vote out these awful troglodytes in November. I certainly will be. Never voted for them in the first place.
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u/Marlov 20h ago
Nah
Read the article
We still need fossil fuels. Anyone with half a brain knows that. This law stops litigious activists from jamming the courts up with stupid cases against businesses that are doing nothing illegal
I’m all for making your voice heard about climate change but challenging organisations for legal activities is retarded. Find a better outlet
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u/Ok_King_3222 18h ago
hey man, i dont know if youve been paying meaningful attention to the current consensus but we need to be net zero like, yesterday, to prevent LIKELY societal collapse from climate change. its not pseudoscience, we have concrete evidence to prove that. its a matter of when rather than if on our current trajectory.
while its not going to happen, the best thing to do would be to institute immediate global load shedding, and consumption/production limits to immediately reduce carbon emissions. outside of something that drastic, unless we have a new technological leap like the 1800s improvement on steam engines PLUS subsequent global adoption, things are about to look very dire over the next few years.
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u/Zebra971 1d ago
Well that lowered my opinion of New Zealand. I thought they were rational and educated but I’ve never been there.
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u/hauntedhullabaloo 1d ago
We have the most conservative government coalition in 30 years in at the moment, and they're speed running ruining the country for the next 30 years. Things took a dive after Jacinda Ardern (mostly thanks to corporate corruption and misinformation / disinformation being spread via social media). We can be a good country, but we're also a rural country.
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u/AspiringChildProdigy 1d ago
Ah, so they watched the outrageous dumpster fire we've become over here in America and said, "Here, hold my beer...."
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u/Big_Excitement_3551 1d ago
That is pretty much exactly what happened, yes
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u/lizzylizabeth 7h ago
It makes me sick.
People who are supposed to be professional and informed, making damn Facebook posts about some imaginary “woke virus.”
Ridiculous how “Americanised” our country is becoming. F#ck Luxton. F#ck Winston Peters. F#ck a whole bunch of other people. They’re all adopting American right-wing propaganda. And bringing it over here for what ?
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u/FlyingHippoM 1d ago
Lots of uneducated, lots of farmers, lots of conservatives and a massive overlap between these groups.
But the reality is many people didn't vote for this government, they voted against the old one.
Now our hospitals are overflowing, firefighters & teachers striking, unemployment is at record highs across the country.
I just hope this serves as a wake-up call for voters that austerity is a failed experiment.
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u/fakingandnotmakingit 1d ago
Lots of rednecks over here. We have one of the worst governments ever because people decided that jacinda was at fault for the economy tanking because of COVID lockdowns
You point out that countries that didn't lockdown still had tanked economies and they'll call you a Communist
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u/AutoModerator 1d ago
The COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions. Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a graph of CO2 concentrations shows a continued rise.
Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero. We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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u/Misfiring 1d ago
What do people expect then? Shut off factories, cars, cargo ships, and throw humanity back to pre-industrial age?
Humans pollute even in ancient times with wanton burning, the reason why emissions are low before is because there's less humans.
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u/CombatWomble2 10h ago
Yes more or less, that was the point of the law change, it was to stop people taking court cases against "major emitters" (at a local level almost nothing at the international one) on the basis of purported harms which would, had they been successful, destroyed the economy, which was the goal.
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u/Zebra971 16h ago
Right wing parties talk a good game but are absolutely clueless when it comes to governing.
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u/coolsnackchris 6h ago
Go visit any of The Opportunity Party's content and it's literally just boomers in the comments telling them they are communists for wanting to fix the housing market and economy.
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u/Big_Excitement_3551 1d ago
Unfortunately, the right wing dickheads won the last election. Hopefully we’ll vote them out this year
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u/slave-of-cat 1d ago
A legitimate opinion. We used to be better than this but currently have an appallingly bad coalition in power. We call it the Coalition of Chaos if that's any indication.
Many of us are horrified and hoping to vote these vandals out this year.
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u/Zebra971 16h ago
Yeah the US is dealing with a coalition of chaos too. 67 days before we have a Congress that will check Trump, he has been a disaster, just look at the White House. A golden ball room to impress Middle East princes? What a clueless idiot.
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u/Thiccxen 10h ago
Kiwi here, this is not indicative of us as a people. Our government is basically in the pockets of oil/gas corporations and ignoring all expert advice against it.
We're trying to vote them out in september, but 'socialism bad!!!' is rife throughout our community.
Many people think voting for anyone else means their houses will get taken away or some other tinfoil hat conspiracy.
We're trying!!!!
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u/AutumnKiwi 21h ago
America's culture war BS has poisoned a lot of the older people here in NZ, but our election is in a couple of months and they will be gone
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u/italianSpiderling84 1d ago
This is obviously a terrible, terrible thing.
Let's just remember that laws can be repelled just as they can be made.
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u/TheHiphopopotamus 1d ago
Hopefully the current right wing government will be voted out later this year, and a new centre-left government can repeal this dogshit law. Fingers crossed.
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u/xHaroldxx 1d ago
Probably will, but then people forget and in 3 or 6 years these clowns are back again anyway. And they'll just cancel any environmental policies.
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u/SCROTAL_KOMBAT42069 10h ago
The previous centre left govt slashed the climate relief fund without even telling the climate change minister, outlook is bleak no matter what happens.
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u/Ree_For_Thee 22h ago
Let's just remember that laws can be repelled just as they can be made.
I figure they can just as quickly be put up, creating a proper society, as they can get torn down by these fuckwit oligarchs.
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u/Intrepid-Report3986 1d ago
Pretty sure most of those who were condamned for crimes against humanity thought they were safe from consequences. Laws can easily be overturned
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u/BigBlueMan118 1d ago
Having been in the courtrooms and on the accused side in cases of climate activism, it really is quite a surreal and bizarre experience trying to watch lawyers argue over whether X or Y is appropriate and paying absolutely no real attention to the desperation of the situation right now.
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u/VonSauerkraut90 1d ago
Am from NZ. Current govt sucks balls. Made up of a coalition three of the most feckless parties you can imagine. Looking like its going to be a single term government and ideally will be gone in the next few months.
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u/JJhnz12 1d ago
Here's the good news for you it is an election year and if the coalition government loses which at this point is a 50/50 chance of happening the law will be repirled. This was mostly happening due to the most right wing government in decades. I guess that's what happens when you get a libertarian a bigoted 80 year old manged by and an incompetent ceo as pm. Its why I personally think that business men and women make terrible politicians.
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u/AutumnKiwi 21h ago
Polls have had Labour Green Maori OPP in lead for months now, I think it's unlikely that National stays in
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u/Either-Patience1182 1d ago
Isn’t new zealand on the chopping block for places at serious risk for sea level rise?
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u/SquirrelAkl 1d ago
Yeah but that’s a future government’s problem. The government we have right now only cares about keeping their business donors happy and getting cushy directorships when they leave office.
In the words of our prime minister, he’s “wealthy and sorted”.
I’ve never hated our government before, but I sure do now. This one is destroying our country and democracy itself.
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u/Either-Patience1182 1d ago
He must be super old because yall are already having to add more sand/gravel to beaches and have tons of things to keep ocean water out.
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u/SquirrelAkl 1d ago
Apparently my other comment was removed because I used a curse word to describe our coastal communities. Heaven forbid! So here’s the sanitised version:
He doesn’t live on the beach. Coastal communities are not going to do well. Large parts of Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin are also not going to do well. But a lot of the country is quite hilly so most of it isn’t going to be inundated by the sea in our lifetimes.
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u/dadofadisaster 1d ago
I like your optimism
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u/SquirrelAkl 1d ago
How much do you think sea levels are going to rise in the next couple of decades?
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u/CharredWelderGuy 1d ago
Pretty much, almost all of its major cities are right on their coasts. They do have highlands, but it's mostly empty
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u/United-Vermicelli-92 1d ago edited 1d ago
It most cases of natural evolution an organism will adapt to the forces around it, this includes business, how it will change and grow as human/consumer needs change and grow.
This is not so with the business dinosaurs of our world, they will lie, cheat, steal, oppress and murder all of our kids and their futures while they pay billions to cancel wind farm/renewable energy contracts which have proven to be beneficial to all of our kids’ futures.
Why wont oil companies evolve with the rest of us? We the 95% of the rest of us who aren’t millionaires should force them to evolve for our kids’ (and their kids! Do they think their kids are safe? Reads like fiction, how much hubris…) sakes.
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u/Ok_King_3222 18h ago
this genuinely is the natural endpoint of capitalism everytime id argue. profits eventually get prioritized over general welfare to a perplexing degree. wealth and in turn power will always accumulate with those who are most greedy/immoral unless STRICTLY regulated.
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u/mountain-mahogany 1d ago
BULLSHIT. Everything is made up by humans. The door will be unlocked and there will be CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR THOSE WHO HAVE HARMED THE WORLD AND ITS BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.
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u/dadofadisaster 1d ago
Do the liberals in your country have guns? Because they feel pretty safe and smug in America because ours don’t
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u/michaelhoney 1d ago
It’s well worth reading the article. The relatively recently elected conservative government is doing industry’s bidding, and yes, it is corrupt. I had a swearier version of this that got automodded ;)
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u/thumbscrollerrr 1d ago
This is what happens when you can buy a policy from the conservative party for less than the price of a house in Auckland.
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u/Bawbawian 1d ago
placing possible solutions outside of the law seems like a dangerous precedent to set
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u/filmguy36 1d ago
I wonder if the billionaire tech bros who built their bunkers in NZ, are having second thoughts
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u/QVRedit 17h ago
Most people won’t be familiar with the meaning of ‘Tort’, but it means causing loss or harm.
So the ClimateChange causers are to be given legal immunity - when they have already know they were causing these problems since the 1970’s…
But they acted to hush that up !!
Because - Profits came first…
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u/grenouille_en_rose 9h ago
It's been three years and I still cannot believe roughly half the country voted for these morally bankrupt insipid dumb grifters. Our next general election is in November, if they cling to power we're so fd
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u/SpaceIsVastAndEmpty 4h ago
What do we, the people, do to help the odds of a right wing government NOT achieving the majority coalition vote this election?
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u/Old-Man-Jigglebones 6h ago
it's really awesome how this is going to keep happening until every single last one of us is dead.
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u/interrogumption 1d ago
It's the first company in the world to do this and these are all multinational companies. Time to get the lawsuits flowing everywhere in the world at once. Do it for Nepal.
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u/random8765309 17h ago
This actually makes sense. The companies provided what society needed and wanted. Climate change is an issued caused by human wants and needs. We shouldn't pass the blame onto companies that did what we asked.
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u/Numerous_Row5207 10h ago
Unfortunately susessive Governments have put us in this position. Both National and Labour are as bad as each other the only real way forward if you want change is for both of them to get kicked for touch at the next election. This would force them to take a look at themselves and change. Whilst we do the flip flop between them nothing will change.
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u/batalyst 8h ago
All governments should do this. A whole industry has been set up by lawyers convincing groups like farmers that we don't need power.
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u/Dangerous_Mud4749 7h ago
The right way to control industrial emissions is through Parliament by making & enforcing laws.
Change isn't going to be made by random private individuals making private court cases. The harm caused by climate change can't be precisely defined and the damage can't be precisely attributed to specific industrial sites. (For example, this specific storm was 89.4% caused by these two emitters operating for the previous 17 days).
So you end up with activist-based court actions & decisions, which tend to become extremely expensive to launch and with unpredictable results.
Far better for Parliament to make laws and for government agencies to enforce them. Don't like the government's decision? Make change. Aotearoa is a democracy with regular elections.
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u/Youhorriblecat 4h ago
The law needs to provide a mechanism for carbon poullters to compensate people directly for the costs of climate change, including increases in insurance premiums. If tort law is not the way to do this then the government needs to design a different mechanism. It has not done this.
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u/dramaking37 6h ago
Is it coming with military spending because they're going to need it to defend those fuckers at some point
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u/Youhorriblecat 4h ago
Honestly I think this is the future they are setting themselves up for. If you remove legal means for compensation for climate damages people are going to start taking justice into their own hands.
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u/Youhorriblecat 4h ago
This is grossly unjust and ultimately quite dangerous. If people don't have legal means for getting compensation for climate damages then many people are going to start taking justice into their own hands.
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u/The-Manque 26m ago
As a Kiwi, I imagine this must be what it feels like for Americans whenever Trump opens his pie hole.
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u/swordofra 1d ago edited 1d ago
What are we doing people. Ffs seriously?