Our future is fragile - Our earth mother Papatuanuku and our sky father Ranginui are warning us NOW

We value a clean, secure home because it helps us relax to know there is always a safe place for us to return to at the end of each day. Our planet and our environment can be understood the same way: this is the one and only home to us all, that we share with every living thing. Sadly, we stopped making sure it was clean and secure for future generations long ago. So rightly so, young people everywhere can’t relax. The place is a mess and it’s too big for any one of us to clean up by ourselves!

Higher temperatures, extreme weather events, rising levels of carbon dioxide and increasing ocean acidity are all part of what we commonly call climate change. These changes result in many risks to human, animal and plant health. The risks are already impacting us, and the most at risk are people that already experience economic disadvantage and/or poorer health.

Our way of life needs transformational change. It’s time for all of us, individually and together in our communities and our workplaces, to hold ourselves accountable for the impact we have on our shared environment. As a consumer, a member of the community, a member of a workforce, each of us yields real power and influence. If we aren’t wielding it to stand up for our environment and take action, then we might be wasting it and letting ourselves be sucked in by others. Yes, there are those using their power and influence to keep us doing what we’ve always done. They see a profit in it for themselves, and invest in ways to keep us complacent and complicit with the economy just the way it is.

Governments everywhere have to lead with science and sustainable values to stand up against the business as usual model, prepare and work with communities to address our environmental challenges, and the economic and health issues affected by them. Well-planned action can bring new cost benefits and economic opportunities, as well as give hope back to young people, that we’re cleaning up our act and making our place secure once more for the future:

• Ban non-biodegradable packaging

• Clean up and protect our rivers, streams, lakes and foreshores from waste

• Fund cycleways and low emissions public transport systems

• Protect our water and air by regulating high carbon emitting/toxic waste producing businesses and producers appropriately

• Incentivise local governments to be eco-friendly in their urban planning and business partnerships

• Fund and incentivise climate change business and community action initiatives

This election, we encourage all New Zealanders to engage candidates with the following questions,
then vote for those that answer YES!

1. Will you introduce strict regulations that hinder and decentivise businesses from non-sustainable practices such as packaging with non-biodegradable resources, emitting high carbon outputs, or producing toxic waste as a by-product?

2. Do you commit to cleaning up and protecting our rivers, streams, lakes and foreshores?

3. Will you fund cycleways and low emissions public transport systems?

4. Will you give support to local governments to be eco-friendly in their urban planning and business partnerships?

5. Do you support more incentivisation of climate change business enterprises?

6. Will you fund and incentivise community climate action initiatives?