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Media Release
For Immediate Release December 6, 2008

‘John Key’ and ‘Rodney Hide’ play Climate Change Deal of the Century

In honour of the Global Day of Action on Climate Change, ‘John Key’and ‘Rodney Hide’ played the Climate Change Deal of the Century in central Auckland today, spinning a giant roulette wheel and wreaking havoc on the lives of people in the developing world who are already feeling the effects of climate change.

The masked actors playing Key and Hide clapped with game show glee as the wheel landed on such dire outcomes as ‘Billions more people without water’, ‘Stronger cyclones hitting vulnerable people’, and ‘Disappearance of Pacific Island nations’.

“The New Zealand government appears to be reversing on climate change,” said Oxfam spokesperson Jason Garman. “At a time when developed countries need to be cutting their global warming pollution deeply and quickly, the New Zealand ETS is being put on hold and the global peer-reviewed scientific consensus on climate change is being questioned.”

“This backtracking is damaging New Zealand’s reputation. Worse still, our failure to act on climate change will play out not just in dollar figures but in human lives,” added Garman.

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Climate change is affecting poor people in developing countries first and worst. This is a triple injustice: they didn’t cause it, they are the most affected by it, and they are the least able to afford even simple measures that could help protect them. Impacts such as worsening droughts and floods, unpredictable weather, decreasing food harvests and stronger storms are hitting vulnerable communities already.

The UN climate change negotiations are happening December 1-12 in Poznan, Poland. This is a crucial moment on the way to the UN meetings in Copenhagen in 2009 when a global deal needs to be agreed that will take effect when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Oxfam is calling on the New Zealand government to work within the UN process and push for a global climate change deal that is both fair to people in the developing world and strong enough to prevent global warming from reaching a tipping point.

“The New Zealand government delegation is at the UN climate change conference in Poland as we speak. The international community is beginning to recognise New Zealand as part of the problem,” said Garman. “We’re calling on the government to be part of the solution, and that means to ensure the needs of the world’s poorest people are at the heart of the new climate change deal,” he added.

ENDS

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