Jacida Ardern declared that New Zealand faces a climate emergency. She may think it’s just symbolic but there are prices, aside from making the word “emergency” just that much more useless. Ardern has stepped into a psychology trap like a public Chastity Vow. She and everyone who voted for it will be measured against this in everything they do. She’s been captured just that bit tighter. What?! say the eternally indignant, How can you fund a new Port / Frigate / Hospital / insert idea here — when we face a climate emergency, right here, right now and for the next billion years! This will be used against her and the party and she will have less room to maneuver.
But the real price is what irresponsible people might do next
Declaring a fake emergency also provides the perfect excuse for activists to break the law then say “I’m just saving the Earth, your honor!” Perpetrators of civil disobedience have been using this in the US and UK to stay out of jail for things like shutting high pressure gas pipelines — a form of industrial sabotage that risks explosions. Alleged law breakers don’t have to prove there is a climate emergency, they just have to prove that a reasonable person would think there is. Thus Jacinda Ardern’s declaration becomes a reason for doing all kinds of dangerous and damaging activities, and then getting off scot free.
Activists are using the climate emergency as a new legal defence to justify law-breaking
Nicole Rogers, Senior lecturer, School of Law and Justice, Southern Cross University
The defence permits law-breaking in circumstances of “sudden or extraordinary emergency” if:
…an ordinary person possessing ordinary power of self-control could not reasonably be expected to act otherwise.
It’s a version of the common law “necessity defence”, which allows law-breaking to avoid greater harm or irreparable evil. This defence has been argued by climate activists in the US and UK for over a decade.
Emergencies are also the choice du jour for censorship. It’s that much easier to declare that people who discuss the role of the sun in climate change are dangerous thinkers.
If you are in New Zealand, hop over to the Climate Science Coalition and speak up while you still can.
The last word today goes to New Zealand’s official bureau NIWA. Here’s a graph from their site of what 25,000 years of climate emergency looks like. Which part are we supposed to panic over?
It’s a climate emergency, just like every other year since the last glacial maximum. From NIWA, NZ.
There’s another 1°C (in theory) that occurred over the 20th Century that’s not shown on the graph, but we are supposed to believe another half a degree more will turn the north island into a coral sea or something.
But even if that occurs, NZ will not even be as warm as it was 10,000 years ago.
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