De-Carbonise Auckland by 2030!!

( please consider signing the open letter on their website)

On Monday 10 August We went to an excellent meeting at The Grid in downtown Auckland, organised by Bike Auckland and Generation Zero and chaired by Lucy Lawless. The purpose of the meeting was to publicise the campaign, “The Race to Decarbonise Auckland Transport”:

https://www.generationzero.org/decarbonise_transport_2030?mc_cid=58df924e64&mc_eid=264f2bbd2d

Guest speaker Dr Paul Winton has set up his own investment consultancy firm on climate issues, the  1point5 Project: a campaign to radically reduce NZ’s emissions by 2030 by decarbonising transport.

He demonstrated through the statistics for carbon emissions from different sources that only by tackling the transport industry can we make the reductions essential to the climate change battle in New Zealand-  a reduction of 60% by 2030 . 

His lively presentation was inspiring, and offered both compliments and challenges to the Auckland Council’s policy for climate action: he praised it as the best council policy on climate in Aotearoa so far, but demonstrated the importance of a strategy for enhancing it to deal with the 14 million tons of excess carbon we produce each year.

In this podcast he explains further:

https://www.podcasts.nz/dr-paul-winton-interview/

The other guest speaker, Jenny Cooper QC, President of Lawyers for Climate Action,  was outstanding too, with her detailed study of legal action that can be taken to pressure organisations to change. It’s worth reading this and using some of the strategies that are possible for local as well as national action:

https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-areas/environmental-law/climate-crisis-the-cold-hard-facts-about-all-that-hot-air.

Biking is Climate Action!

Great to see and hear so many strong young people from many different cultures at this Auckland gathering –many in their Generation Zero T-shirts as well as lots of old-timers like us , and everyone in between!