We have students wagging school. We have councils and even whole countries declaring climate emergencies when, for the most part, the weather is still behaving pretty much as it normally does. I mean – it is winter, so it is cold, right? Yes, it is. Jacinda claimed that climate change was her generation’s ‘nuclear moment’, without even a touch of irony, as that ‘nuclear moment’ never actually happened, and there has not been a nuclear attack since World War II.
Speaking of World War II:
Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter has declared climate change “our generation’s WWII” in her defence of proposed car price hikes.
Genter, also Minister for Women, made the declaration on Twitter while defending the Government’s proposed fees for cars being imported that don’t meet a ‘clean car’ policy tipped for 2021.
Vehicles that emit over 250 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre (CO2/km) would be considered heavy polluters so importing those vehicles would come with a financial penalty of up to $3000.
“The climate crisis is the biggest challenge of our time. It’s our generation’s WWII. We are the first generation to feel its impacts,” Genter said.
What an absolute disgrace. I don’t know where to begin with this.
“New Zealand was too small to win WWII. But that didn’t stop many of our forebears from putting their hand up. They put their lives on hold, and travelled far away, to be part of a larger effort, because it was the right thing to do.”
Newshub.
People went to war to defend their way of life against an evil regime that was racist (particularly anti-Semitic), that tortured and murdered literally millions of people for no good reason, and that intended to take over the whole of Europe and subject all British and European citizens to a similar fate. People didn’t just ‘put their lives on hold’. Many died fighting to give future generations the continued freedoms that they themselves had enjoyed. To say anything else is an insult to the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents generation, who did not just roll over in the face of an evil threat but stood up against it… sometimes paying the ultimate price.
12,000 New Zealanders lost their lives in World War II. Actually, so did a large number of Americans, so I do not intend to denigrate the US effort in the war either. This woman, with her childish, blinkered view of the world just managed to insult the efforts of millions of ordinary people who went to war, not because they wanted to, but because they refused to submit to living under Nazi (or Japanese) rule.
How can you compare that with a bit of weather? Even if climate change is true (oh, sorry, it is an ’emergency’ now) it may mean more storms, it may mean gradual sea level rises, it may mean hotter temperatures. It will also mean that those countries flagrantly ignoring the situation, such as China and India, will be the hardest hit, and life in places like New Zealand will be likely to continue much as it does now, possibly with some adjustments, particularly in low lying areas. It does not mean anyone is likely to have their skin turned into lampshades, or have ink injected into their veins just to see what the results are. Nor does it mean trainloads of people sent off to concentration camps, or killed in the gas chambers.
Climate change is not this generation’s World War II moment, and the fact that Genter could ever liken climate change to a terrible war where millions of people were killed just shows how ignorant, disrespectful and hollow she really is.
When people start comparing gradual weather changes to a global massacre and full-scale war, someone has lost the plot. Who is the climate change enemy? Well, we all know the answer to that, of course. It is the climate change deniers as opposed to the climate Nazis.
All this has come about because Genter received some well-deserved criticism for her proposed taxes on non-electric vehicles.
There is something fundamentally wrong with an electorate system that allows people like Julie-Anne Genter and Golriz Gharaman, who are not elected anywhere, into government. We are being held to ransom by these dangerous fools and we didn’t even vote them in.
Maybe it really is time for another war. I don’t wish for it, but people like Genter need to understand that there is no possible comparison between landing on the beaches of Normandy and a slightly warmer summer.
