ROSS GIBLIN / STUFF

Climate Change Minister James Shaw reckons the increased numbers of 40 degree days in places like Central Otago will make people realise global warming is real.

OPINION: The elderly woman stood up at National leader Simon Bridges' public meeting in Wellington this week. She had no time for all these questions about the environment. The sky was going to keep doing what the sky does, she said. The grass would do what the grass does, the sun would keep shining. 

Bridges gave her short shrift. He didn't accuse her of being a conspiracy theorist, but he came close. A man at his meeting in Palmerston North, he told her, had been similarly concerned about what Russian chemtrails were doing ...

He is right to dismiss the climate change deniers: for too long, there have been some in politics who will cynically humour them; who will cultivate their votes despite knowing full well that global warming is a clear and present danger.

Now, New Zealand has an opportunity. For the first time in a generation, all the parties in Parliament agree climate change is a threat, that human industry and agriculture has have exacerbated it, and that we need to act urgently to address it. Their solutions are different – but their determination to reduce emissions is the same.

READ MORE:
* Net zero emission: 10% more of NZ to be forested
* Aussies block Kiwi kids from NZ's Great Walks

On Thursday, Climate Change Minister James Shaw will kick off a major nationwide consultation on a proposed law to reduce New Zealand's net greenhouse gas emissions to zero, by 2050. He knows how daunting that task is. Getting rid of combustion engines even as we try to grow the economy. Covering 10 per cent more of our nation with trees, at a time when we want to make space for more houses and sustainable crops. It will be extremely challenging.

But Shaw is a leading expert on how to reduce emissions. I remember having a beer with him in London 12 years ago: he explained the work his consultancy was doing in advising multinational companies how to emit less, and profit more. 

Back then, he told me how to offset the emissions from my air travel. He'll be doing a lot of that over the next month, as he attends 10 meetings from Whangarei down to Invercargill, he hopes, selling his vision.

(It should be noted that the Greens all carbon-offset their air travel, Ministerial Services offset ministers' air travel, and Shaw reveals he's in talks with Parliament's Speaker Trevor Mallard to offset emissions for all the other MPs, too).

There is a real willingness among Parliament's leaders to find a solution that works. For some, it's the emissions trading scheme. For others, it's a carbon tax. What is agreed by all is that New Zealand has signed up to the Paris Agreement obligations to limit warming below 2C, and to aim to reduce net emissions to zero in order to keep warming below 1.5C – and that means acting fast, and acting together.

Labour, the Greens and NZ First have agreed the Government's position. National's Bridges has been talking with Shaw as they agree on the importance of finding a solution that brings farmers and all other New Zealanders along. ACT's David Seymour wants MPs to put their money where their mouth is with a carbon tax.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said climate change is her generation's nuclear-free moment. It may well be, but it is also her generation's world war, a chance for Parliamentarians to come together in something resembling a 1940s coalition of wartime unity.

Perhaps it's that rhetoric that would resonate with the elderly woman at this week's public meeting.

* Additional reporting: Audrey Malone

 - Sunday Star Times