New Zealand papers fail to support global climate initiative

11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc.

Today newspapers around the globe published the same front page editorial calling on negotiators at the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen to reach an ambitious, planet-saving agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Fifty-six papers in 45 countries published in 20 different languages joined the initiative, featuring the leader in some form on their front pages. Among the titles taking part were two Chinese papers – the Economic Observer and the Southern Metropolitan – and India's second largest English-language paper, The Hindu.

Some of the world's best known papers, such as Le Monde, El Pais, Russia's Novaya Gazeta and the Toronto Star, have also taken part in the initiative conceived and organised by the UK's Guardian.

New Zealand's newspapers failed to get involved, and two Australian papers, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, pulled out due to doemstic policital changes in the last week.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation.

Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

The editorial can be read in full on the Guardian website.

Comments

[Domestic Executive]

Sometime soon the clean and green is going to turn to something less appealing. Shame on NZ media.