On the Rainbow Warrior, I’ve just been to one of the most incredible places I’ve ever seen – Rakiura/Stewart Island.
Here, the coast is so thick with rainforest it seems impenetrable, and the birdsong – almost deafening. The area is home to a rich variety of rare bird and marine life. Kiwi live here and Hector’s dolphins, southern right whales, humpbacks, sea lions, penguins and sperm whales all frequent the surrounding waters.
These wild places are becoming rare around the globe. They deserve our protection. But Austrian oil giant OMV wants to drill for oil nearby in the Great South Basin, which would put wildlife here at risk from a spill.
Seeing this almost untouched landscape – its forests and wild coastlines – brings home how truly mad drilling for oil in this ocean is. Not only is it wild and unpredictable, it’s also too precious to risk. How could we risk the unique wildlife here, to find a fuel we can’t afford to burn if we want to save our climate? It will not go unchallenged … watch this space.
It’s immoral to continue the pursuit of fossil fuels when the science is clear – we must transition to clean energy now, before we warm the climate to catastrophic levels. That’s what the latest IPCC report says, and it’s what scientists have been warning us of for decades.
This information is available to all – which means big oil companies are making a choice – putting profit and shareholders over the very future of this planet, and everyone on it.
This is no longer good enough. And our message to the oil industry everywhere is that we want them out of our oceans. We want to move to clean energy, protect our wildlife and our coasts, keep global warming to under 1.5C, and ensure we have a future on this Earth.
Join our call on the New Zealand Government to make climate crisis its nuclear free moment by taking the climate emergency seriously, with real action now.