Last night I went along to this film screening of ‘Hot Air’ (click here for the youtube trailer.) There were countless moments in this documentary when I had to hold my head in my hands, or found myself swearing out loud. Especially when one MP being interviewed said something along the lines of: 'Coal is not a renewable resource. It’s a bit like having money in the bank if you’re dying. So the best thing to do is to mine it, and use it, to benefit the economy while you can. In that way, you could almost say that coal is a renewable resource!’

The documentary follows the tactics employed by the government over the past few decades to deny, spread doubt, and delay any action whatsoever, regarding climate change. This in favour of expanding our coal industry - only marginally cheaper than other energy sources yet entirely unsustainable and environmentally destructive. The New Zealand government’s total inaction regarding climate change - and the 25% increase in our carbon emissions in the past couple of decades, the opening of more coal mines, nationwide deforestation for new dairy farms, and withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol - is absolutely shameful.

Jeanette Fitzsimmon’s talk afterwards was no doubt the highlight of the event. While the film finishes on an unresolved note, leaving the audience shocked and feeling as if the situation is hopeless, her common sense optimism restored my sense that change is possible. But as she puts it, change doesn’t come from the government. That is, parliament cannot - or will not - initiate change, as the documentary proved all too well. As she puts it, the government will be the very last to respond to climate change and they will only do so once the general public have made it loud and clear that that is what we want.

Basically what I got out of this event was the sense that it is my duty not only to make positive change on a personal level, but also to do as much as I can to contribute to the noise.

An interesting concept that Jeanette mentioned was that in traditional Maori culture, the standard of forward thinking was to ask: will this last for the next 7 generations? Whereas our government only thinks three years ahead…