Rebuilding Better: Experts encouraged by Kiwis’ demand for climate action

Kiwis' concern and acceptance of climate change - now having a clear influence on our weather - has markedly shifted over the last two decades. Photo / George Heard

A Herald-commissioned poll shows most Kiwis think New Zealand should go harder to combat climate change – and little sign the issue is growing as polarised as it is among Americans.

That’s been met with relief by experts concerned over the risk of the climate crisis becoming a deeply divisive issue here.

The polling, recently carried out by Dynata among 1000 Kiwis last month, found nearly 60 per cent of Kiwis thought the country should take stronger action – with around a quarter “strongly” agreeing New Zealand should be bolder.

Another quarter said they had no strong view, while the remainder disagreed (11 per cent) or strongly disagreed (seven per cent).

Although younger people were more likely than older Kiwis to back stronger action – 29 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds, versus 19 per cent of over-65-year-olds – that sentiment fell generally evenly across age groups.

Women, too, appeared slightly more in favour of climate action.

Around two-thirds believed New Zealand should do more – with one quarter strongly agreeing – compared with just about 14 per cent leaning the opposite way.

Among men, just over half backed more effort, but nearly a quarter felt otherwise – including a third of men older than 65.

Meanwhile, around 24 per cent of all respondents believed the issue had brought Kiwis closer together, while 39 per cent thought there’d been “no difference” - with a similar proportion feeling it’d pushed society further apart.

Here, there were similar contrasts among age groups, with 45 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds saw the issue as unifying, compared with just two in 10 over-65s.

And more broadly, the results echoed what successive surveys have been telling the Government: Kiwis are generally worried about climate change and expect action.

IAG’s latest annual poll on climate change showed how it had become a “personally important” issue among eight in 10 Kiwis – while two-thirds said they’d grown more concerned over recent years.

It also found more Kiwis felt the Government should lead our response – but fewer feeling it was doing a good enough job.

Elsewhere, researchers tracking sentiment over time have observed a rise in climate beliefs and concern, along with climbing support for regulation of emissions across the political spectrum.

Given these trends, Waikato University’s Dr Taciano Milfont wasn’t surprised to see similar results in the Herald’s own survey.

Previous studies by him and colleagues had also suggested women and younger people were more likely to hold stronger beliefs on climate change.

Work by other researchers had also pointed to some political differences: one 2020 paper found that, among a minority of climate sceptics, about half supported National, and a third backed Labour.

Still, Milfont said there was still no evidence to show climate change had been swept up in polarisation and identity politics, as it had been in the US.

“There is a danger of ‘importing’ such polarisation to the New Zealand context, and this is problematic for our democratic principles,” he said.

“In the US, only members of two political parties can become president realistically speaking, and voters who identify with one of these political parties are very unlikely to vote for a candidate from the other party.”

Milfont said 2020′s landslide election result for Labour suggested that wasn’t happening here yet.

“I hope this situation remains because political polarisation and unchecked support for political candidates based only on identity politics weakens democracies.”

Professor Bronwyn Hayward – a University of Canterbury political scientist who served as an author on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) last two major reports - agreed.

“What we really don’t want to happen is what we see in the US, with very strong polarisation along party lines in regard to climate change,” she said.

“While 75 per cent of the US population now agree that action should be taken on climate change, 50 per cent are Democrats and about 25 per cent are Republicans, which is a really big problem.

University of Canterbury political scientist Professor Bronwyn Hayward. Photo / Supplied

“Because climate action is a long game, you need consistency of public policy.”

Here in New Zealand, the new poll data came as some relief.

“As a political scientist, I’ve been worrying ahead of the election that there are a lot of incentives for parties to distinguish themselves from others, and campaign to their more extreme edges,” Hayward said.

“But what this data is showing us is the moderating effect of MMP – and a strong centre-ground.”

It was especially heartening, she said, that most of those polled didn’t view climate change as divisive.

“A significant proportion are either seeing that we’re closer together or that there’s no difference – that’s more than 50 per cent of the population, and it’s a precious thing to hang on to in New Zealand politics.”

In 2019, the Labour-led Government’s landmark climate change policy - the Zero Carbon Act and the emissions budgets it established – was passed into law with near unanimous support.

While parties have broadly acknowledged the crisis, ideological division continues over New Zealand’s policy response, with some calling for world-leading ambition, and others favouring a follower stance that aligned with our trading partners.

This week, Green Party co-leader and Climate Change Minister James Shaw told the Herald he’d been frustrated over stalled action on pricing agricultural emissions and “incrementalism” from other parties in tackling big issues like climate change.

While the agricultural sector has blamed the Government for rejecting its own proposal, He Waka Eke Noa, to rein in methane gas emissions and meet climate change targets, Shaw felt the efforts had fallen short of what his own party wanted.

Responding to the new poll, Shaw said there’d been a decade-long shift in views “from ‘is this real?’ to ‘what are we going to do about it?’.

“This year in particular, I think, has been the year in which many people came to see climate change not as something happening to other people, elsewhere in the world, but as something happening to us, here and now.”

This year – quite likely to be New Zealand’s hottest on the books – has brought a slew of damaging extreme weather events, a record marine heatwave and a winter that topped the record books for warmth and rainfall.

In respect to public demand for action, Shaw said the country’s recently-published Emissions Reduction Plan, backed with a $4.5 billion Climate Emergency Response Fund, was “a clear demonstration of the level of our ambition”.

“But I am the first to say we can and should be doing more – if we are to have any chance of maintaining a stable, liveable climate for future generations we need to get our emissions down to zero, and then we need to keep them there,” he said.

“After decades of inaction we are finally off the mark, but there is certainly a long way to go.”