Anthropogenic Climate Change Impacts Everyone

Even Those Who Don't Believe It Exists

At the Big Gay Out last weekend I met Connor, a candidate in the recent local body election. He came up and said thanks for the election coverage and pointed out how frustrating it was that there was so little other coverage on it.

I get that - it’s always been a bugbear of mine as well. I tried my best last year as a one man show to cover as much as possible. But the way the system is set up means the turn around on candidates declaring and the election is short, the amount of anything that can be produced is limited.

Last week I had to sit back and watch as my home town was flooded. Record rain, about a months worth in a day, hit the western parts of Waipā and Ōtorohanga. The rain didn’t stop after a day. The water treatment plant for the area was pretty much destroyed, flooded and washed out. The bush walks were destroyed on the mountain, state highway 39 was shut down as flooding hit and at least one person lost their life.

Then the next day the lows pushed the weather system back and it hit the east coast. We saw states of emergency declared down Tairāwhiti, Tararua, Banks Peninsula and more. On Monday we awoke to storm damage in Rangitikei, Ruapehu and Manawatu.

There’s so much to be mad about. From Nicola Willis cutting the climate emergency relief fund to the irony of climate change denying Reality Check Radio, a “media” outlet that has regular climate change denying shows, having a billboard on the road that saw a bridge washed out because of a weather event clearly exacerbated by climate change.

200 metres from the State Highway 39 Bridge in Pirongia, closed after major rainfall caused massive flooding, a local proudly displays a Reality Check Radio sign, a “media” outlet that regularly platforms climate change denial shows.

And for me there’s an extra personal issue I have - one of the local Pirongia Councillors (they have 2) didn’t do a fucking thing in the lead up to the storm or while it was happening. No posts telling people where to go for any emergency support they might need. No heads up of the weather warning, no “stay away from the dangerously over full river which is full of debris.” For October’s local election, Pirongia had three candidates.

One was the incumbent, one was a former TOP candidate and one was the Better Waipa candidate who lives in Cambridge. He believes climate change is a scam and so are carbon credits. He opposed 3 waters because he thought it was a UN plan to steal our water and that farmers are being arrested in Europe for not being environmental enough.

Meet Pirongia’s Cambridge based Councillor who believes he knows more than 99% of international experts on climate change because an astroturf group run locally by a Voices for Freedom member who won awards for his work with the disinformation network said so.

He is a cooker - like the rest of the Better Waipa and its associated group Better Hamilton (side note here that has no relevance whatsoever to this newsletter article but I’ve seriously never had so many moles from inside a council messaging me about how inept elected members are before, but daaaaamn, Hamilton City Council staff are not happy at how cruel, uninformed and ignorant of what councils actually do, the processes involved or the legal requirements of Councils the new Better Hamilton councillors are - it’s genuinely amazing to see how three people could so quickly poison what seems to be an entire organisation and one of the largest employers in the city against them with their ineptitude, selfishness and obliviousness. Anyway I’m sure that will work out fine and there’s nothing for Hamilton voters to be worried about at all and my warnings were probably for nothing - after all they’ve only just started calling for withdrawing funding for the creative sector, public transport and environmental organisations since before the election)

Anyway - I digress.

In Pirongia, they have a clearly conspiracy fuelled Councillor - one who thinks Groundswell are a legitimate group worthy of his respect and not a rural astroturf where the founders are being played by local atlas drones who was supported locally by an anti-trans, fat-phobic former academic who can’t seem to find work in the tertiary sector after telling scientists they don’t know how to do their job.

Now to be fair, a few Facebook posts or showing up to the place he was elected despite living 40km away in a totally different area, wouldn’t have stopped all the water - but that’s part of what we expect from our elected leaders - to show up and show some sort of leadership. Instead the closest that came from him was a public meeting on Tuesday night where he apparently got some Council staff there to talk through recovery options, thanked by a local on their community Facebook page

Further south in Ōtorohanga, their new Mayor, Rodney Dow, has been out in the flood hit community looking after people. His response to the death of someone in his community showed a man who was genuinely grieving on behalf of those who had lost so much. Physically holding back tears while telling media that things are replaceable, even taonga lost when their museum flooded, while tragic, pale in importance to human life.

Ōtorohanga Mayor Rodney Dow talking to media on Saturday almost breaks down talking about the trgic loss of life and impacts to his community.

Together his and Waipā’s Councils worked together in their responses, coordinated efforts and expertise. They opened Mayoral relief funds There has been constant updates from their councils on social platforms and through the media.

They are leading. It’s a stark contrast.

Over the same weekend, the Prime Minister told us about his date to Sail GP in Auckland, his trip to Gore and Celebrating lunar new year. On Monday as the weather battered the lower North Island and Upper South Island, he went on the radio to talk about getting a State of Origin game at Eden Park. In fact he posted 4 times on Tuesday about the State of Origin game, he eventually re-posted a safety message from mark Mitchell then at 4pm posted his own “be safe” message. Our Emergency Management minister Mark Mitchell hadn’t posted on Facebook for 3 days before the event and at least two days after but was in the area doing some media where he downplayed climate change and simply said that sometimes bad weather happens - which is consistent with the poor track record National has on climate change.

At least the local MP, someone who used her connections in government to try and get her son off horrendous animal abuse charges, she put out a post about help in Ōtorohanga if needed. Oh and while this was happening, the Herald was running a story of the sacrifice a local MP made the last time a weather event like this hit the country - Tom Rutherford in the Bay of Plenty had to take a day from planning his wedding to help the victims of the Mauao slips. Harrowing stuff, I’m sure but by some miracle the one day interruption to planning didn’t stop the wedding going ahead and I’m sure the people of Tauranga are grateful for that.

I hope National send NZME edible arrangements regularly for all the PR they’re doing for the party.

In October voters had a chance to elect leaders who cared for their communities. I really wanted to see that happen. In Ōtorohanga they clearly did that. In the Pirongia ward in Waipā they didn’t succeed as well.

And like I said - there’s absolutely a person view that comes into play on this for me. It does still bug me that even after reaching out to the third candidate in the race offering to help after being harassed in a visit to my parents by the conspiracy group that won that seat, I never heard anything back.

Oh and as the weather evolved, on Wednesday the storm hit Banks Peninsula - One of the districts here, Selwyn, voted more conspiracy theorists onto council than anywhere else. One was caught claiming weather modification was real with a fake account, their deputy Mayor is a far right, fascist loving Trump fanboy who demanded people mourn for Charlie Kirk, made homophobic dog whistles to get people to vote and doesn’t believe in anthropomorphic climate change. Our tax dollars will end up paying for the clean up of a mess they refuse to listen to the reasons it was so impactful because they don’t like what they hear.

In November, we have a chance to get us politicians who actually care enough about us to realise that when houses are flooding, taonga from the landing place of the Tainui Waka are being lost and people are dying that we don’t need to see him showing us how amazing the date night to a yacht race is or getting really excited for a sportsball game we have no stake in at all.

Maybe I’m just upset, emotional at seeing the damage and destruction of the place that will always be home for me, being represented by at least one person who is clearly susceptible to bullshit, and easily manipulated by grifters and ghouls, while the CEO of NZ Inc, who bent the knee to climate change deniers, science disinformation spreaders, and got up on TV and said he believed in climate but not climate change talks up his date night to the rich people yachting show and another example of retroactive events funding paying for things that were already paid for while my parents are told to conserve water as my mother helps deal with the impacts of the storm on animals in the region, my sister can’t get to work because her yard is flooded, and the community is in shock from the sheer destruction of the event.

And I am definitely not impressed that so many of the places in states of emergency, clean up mode, recovering, repairing, and working out what happens next voted in people that are not equipped to work out what to do to not let this happen again. I’m annoyed that the coverage was lacking, that the news deserts in our many smaller communities mean disinformation peddling candidates got in with very little push back and even our major media outlets left their pushback and coverage too late to make a difference - and now communities are suffering for it. And I am very much annoyed at myself that I couldn’t do more in that respect as well and now we’re stuck with the current status quo for a while.

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