More than half of New Zealanders want the Government to act with more urgency on climate change following Cyclone Gabrielle, according to a new poll.
The 1News Kantar Public poll asked eligible voters how they thought the Government should change its climate policy in response to recent significant weather events, if at all.
Of the 1002 respondents, 54% want the Government to act with more urgency, while 27% said they want the Government to continue as planned.
The results follow the Government scrapping a suite of climate change initiatives yesterday. (Source: 1News)
A further 10% want less urgency, and another 10% didn't know or refused to answer.
It follows a Government announcement yesterday of its second tranche of "reprioritisation", which includes scrapping the clean car upgrade scheme to save $586 million.
It also included abandoning most of the Government's plan to cut speed limits - despite higher speeds causing greater emissions - and a new social leasing car scheme, which Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said yesterday was "proving difficult to implement". The scheme would have provided leasing arrangements to low-income families for clean cars.
The Green Party has expressed varying levels of disappointment and frustration with the announcement.
However, they say they have nothing to gain from stepping away from its deal with Labour. (Source: 1News)
The 1News Kantar Public poll showed groups of eligible voters more likely than average to say the Government should act with more urgency on its climate change policy include Green Party supporters (85%), Pasifika people (68%), women aged 18 to 34 (67%) and Labour Party supporters (65%).
Those more likely to say the Government should continue as planned with climate change policy are National Party supporters (33%) and men (32%), while those more likely to advocate for less urgency include Act Party supporters (30%), people from the top of the South Island and West Coast (22%) and men aged 55 plus (16%).
Former Green Party co-leader Russell Norman said the results showed ordinary New Zealanders wanted more action on climate change than what the Government was providing.
“The last thing they want is for the Government to decrease action on climate change.”
He said it was telling that even in a cost of living crisis the majority of people still wanted action on climate change.
“People understand that this is an emergency and they need the Government to act.”
He said Cyclone Gabrielle had illustrated the impacts of climate change, and he believed its impact on people’s view of climate change would be lasting, rather than fleeting.
“There are cost of living pressures and everyone’s feeling it, but it’s also true that we have to cut emissions… if we don’t cut emissions we have to run faster and faster to try to adapt to worse and worse climate change.”
Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who has written a book on maramataka (the Māori lunar calendar) and is an outspoken advocate for rangatahi on climate action, said it was important to have someone of Māori descent at decision-making tables for climate issues.
"We don't need to change the climate. The climate is forever changing, that's its job. We have to learn how to change ourselves to listen to the climate.
"Without Māori, you don't have another understanding of the environment. We have a whole other world where we are immersed with our stories, our genealogy, our whakapapa, our way of connecting to the environment."
She said Māori move with the environment as opposed to making the environment move with them.
Yesterday, 1News also revealed the poll found the cost of living is the issue most likely to influence voters at 48% of respondents. Climate change was a distant second on 12%, followed by healthcare (11%), crime (10%), tax cuts (5%) and education (4%). Some said something else (8%) and 2% didn't know or refused to answer.
This morning, in response to yesterday's Government announcement, Green Party MP Chloe Swarbrick said: "What's the point of all of that power if in the middle of a climate crisis you're justifying cutting climate action? I just don't get it."
Fellow Green MP Ricardo Menendez March said delaying action on climate is a new form of climate denialism.
"The planet cannot wait and it's not a battle between addressing the cost of living crisis and tackling climate change - we can do both."
National's view
National Party climate change spokesman Todd Muller said recent weather events had brought climate change to the "front of mind" for many New Zealanders.
He said there were three opportunities for action on climate change - building on renewable electricity and energy, industrial heat - moving manufacturing onto "power" instead of coal and gas, and agriculture.
"That's a big part of the equation and we've got to find a way of making our cows and sheep belch less."
He said it wasn't helpful to see climate action as a "race" between adaptation and mitigation.
"Both need to happen at the same time, we have to play our part to reduce emissions... but we also have to learn to live with climate change because it's not going away.
"Urgency must be coupled with actually making a difference and seeing emissions come down."
He said National had a plan focused on renewable energy, transport, industrial heat and agriculture which it would "share shortly".
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