Bolger says many people have been disappointed at the Government's "timid response on Green issues" over the past three years, despite having the Green Party in Cabinet for the first time.

At the same time, however, NZ First acted as a handbrake on some of the Government's key marine conservation commitments including the Kermadec Marine Sanctuary, cameras on fishing boats and banning new mines on public conservation land.

"Essentially we've done nothing apart from passing a Zero Carbon Act, and that had the support of the whole of Parliament. Moving to green vehicles and all that, none of that's happened," says Bolger. "And I'm sure that the green-leaning world will be very disappointed."

It is now time to stand up and be counted, Bolger counsels Ardern.

"I think she should move on the policies she laid out three years ago. I'm looking particularly at reducing the pollution that our very large vehicle fleet is emitting; the government has control of a large number of those vehicles and they could make a difference starting tomorrow."

Bolger is hopeful we'll now start seeing faster progress on environmental issues. It's not something we can stop with a vaccine - there isn't one for climate change.

It will take "hard, difficult and often unpopular policy decisions," says Bolger.

"We have to see whether the new government will want to face up to that."

Greenpeace New Zealand's Russel Norman agrees with Bolger's assessment.

Norman, who is also a former Green Party leader, is concerned Labour might spend the next three years "watching their polling and taking no risks" because they don't want to fall below 45-50 percent.

"This is a moment for transformation - we need action on climate change and biodiversity - a price on agricultural emissions, phasing out nitrogen fertiliser, transition to regenerative agriculture, cameras on boats, and end to bottom trawling and so much more. The numbers are there to take action and there are no more excuses for failing to take action."

BERL research director Ganesh Nana wonders if Labour will give the Greens a role in government, given its majority.

"The Greens will probably want to be inside the tent; but it will remain to be seen how much the Ardern/Robertson leadership will view this as a mandate for change.

"Change with regard to climate policy and inequality will be on the table. This is the Covid opportunity - the question for now will be how much of this mandate will be used."

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As the 25th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP25 meets in Madrid December 2-13, the big emitters need to commit to a U-turn in their emission trajectory to avert the extreme impacts that scientists project.

Leaders in the top-emitting nations need to drive climate action in view of their high share in carbon emissions (Figure 1).

The top 10 percent of countries (20 of them) make up 81 percent of global carbon discharges, starting with China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan.

Given the dominance of these large economies, their national policies make all the difference to whether we can expect a reversal in the carbon intensity of global economic growth.

A recent U.N. report calls for a 7.6 per cent a year emission decline for the next 10 years to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

Contrastingly, emissions have increased 3 per cent over the past three years, led by the United States, China, and India.

To motivate far stronger steps, it would help to be convinced that the payoffs from switching to a low-carbon growth path far outweigh the costs of making the transition.

The benefits of climate action include avoided damages from climate change. And there is growing evidence on the damages that can be averted by timely climate action.

India, according to a World Bank estimate, could incur damages of 2.8 per cent of GDP by 2050 in the current climate trajectory.

A recent estimate places the loss from climate change from extreme weather events for 82 countries at 3 per cent of GDP by 2050.

There are also costs to taking climate action.

For instance, the cost of switching from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of energy.

These costs of acting, however, are much smaller than the above-mentioned costs of not acting. The costs of addressing the climate crisis rise with every delay in taking measures, thus placing a premium on timely responses.

Past estimates, however, understate the true damages of climate inaction.

For one thing, improved global elevation data show coastal levels and habitats to be much lower and therefore the risk of floods and storms much higher than earlier maps had suggested.

Furthermore, we are also seeing climate-aggravating feedbacks that were not fully appreciated before.

For example, temperatures are increasing energy consumption in air conditioning and refrigeration. Also, global warming is making forest fires more destructive, in turn contributing to new climatic extremes.

Armed with all this knowledge, the single biggest step the big carbon-emitting countries could take is to cut their fossil fuel combustion.

Eliminating all subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption is a part of this agenda. Continue reading

The Committee on Climate Change (the CCC) was established as an independent body to advise the British government - as well as the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland - by the Climate Change Act of 2008.

"Achieving a ‘net-zero' target by the middle of the century is in line with the UK's commitment under the Paris Agreement; the pact which the UK and the rest of the world signed in 2015 to curb dramatically the polluting gases that cause climate change," the committee said May 2. Read more

Now it is an image of our fellow human beings, millions of them, battling on the frontlines for survival.

While the west debate the merits of climate science, in large parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands climate change is a daily reality.

Many of these communities rely on fishing and farming for their subsistence — but unpredictable weather and extreme weather events are wreaking havoc.

This is especially true of East Africa where I have just returned from visiting communities on the brink of famine.

Over 20 million people throughout the region are facing what the UN has characterised as the greatest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Everything I saw confirmed this assessment.

Widespread malnutrition and in many cases starvation, is sweeping through Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Sudan, Malawi and Yemen.

The crisis is being fuelled by conflict in certain areas while rising food prices and a large scale drought are affecting the region as a whole.

In 2016 East Africa was hit by a supercharged El Niño — a warming of temperatures on the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

While dry spells are not uncommon for the region, abnormally high temperatures have intensified both the severity and the length of the drought.

For farming and pastoralist communities the effects have been devastating.

With over 30 years of involvement in global affairs, I have never seen anything on this scale.

Millions of men, women and children are, literally, desperate for food and water.

Released just last month, the Disaster Alley report warns that, if left unchecked, global warming will cause increasingly regular and severe humanitarian crises not unlike the one taking hold in East Africa.

Images of droughts, famines, and mass migration are what we must now conjure up when thinking about climate change.

But all is not lost. Continue reading

• Image: Eureka St

"However," says the message from the president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, "tourism not only contributes to global warming: it is also a victim of it."

World Tourism Day, promoted by the World Tourism Organisation, is celebrated on September 27.

Continue reading