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Live: Hundreds march on Parliament demanding climate action (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 7 months ago by Dave to c/politics

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From Whangārei to Invercargill, thousands are expected to take to the streets in Friday's climate strike.

But it is not just about the climate crisis: The event is led by a coalition including Toitū Te Tiriti, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, and School Strike 4 Climate.

They have six demands. To keep the ban on oil and gas exploration, end the Fast Track Approvals Bill, toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi, climate education for all, lower the voting age to 16 and to "free Palestine".

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[–] Dave 9 points 7 months ago (10 children)

TBH I was thinking the same. Sure you have lots of people, but it's easy for the government to say "well, those protests were mostly about climate change so we don't think it really shows the public wants us to stop with the Fast Track Approvals Bill". I'm no protest expert, but I would have thought protesting one issue would be easier to get real action on as the government would find it harder to ignore.

[–] liv 5 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Coincidentally I just ran this past my partner because like you and @ilovethebomb@Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz it seems to be muddying the water to me.

They pointed out to me that School Strike had invited Free Palestine along because wars devastate the environment, this war in particular because the unusually high volume of ordnance. Also there's the whole Ecocide issue around the deliberate destruction of environment etc.

The other thing is School Strike seems to have always conceptualised a lot of this stuff as relating to each other, e.g they want to be allowed to vote because they're frustrated with what the existing electorate votes for vis a vis climate change. But I agree it doesn't seem that clear, they need much more targeted slogans.

[–] Ilovethebomb 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The youth voting age thing makes sense, or at least it makes sense that a youth organisation would support that.

With the US military thing, like any military, they do a lot more than just dropping bombs on brown people, they do a lot of logistics and humanitarian work, including humanitarian aid being delivered to Gaza by both air and sea, search and rescue, and even a lot of scientific research.

[–] liv 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes and Jimmy Saville raised money for charity. :p

Seriously though, I got the impression they were protesting the war on Gaza and the use of environmentally destructive ordinance, not the actual existence of the US Military.

[–] Ilovethebomb 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My point was most of their carbon emissions are probably from doing the more useful stuff.

[–] liv 3 points 7 months ago

The fact the US military probably pollute in other ways isn't really that relevant to the direct effects of Israel's war in Gaza though.

Here's a quick example of the kind of things people are looking at (this estimate doesn't look at things like forever chemicals and rebuild costs so it's quite a low estimate):

The vast majority (over 99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US.

According to the study, which is based on only a handful of carbon-intensive activities and is therefore probably a significant underestimate, the climate cost of the first 60 days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal.

The analysis, which is yet to be peer reviewed, includes CO2 from aircraft missions, tanks and fuel from other vehicles, as well as emissions generated by making and exploding the bombs, artillery and rockets. It does not include other planet-warming gases such as methane.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/emissions-gaza-israel-hamas-war-climate-change

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