Editorial: The cost of staying on the sidelines

OPINION: In the lead-up to the last election, during one of the televised debates, Helen Clark was asked why her party believed New Zealand should be a world leader on climate change, why it was pushing a bold emissions trading scheme.

She replied along the lines that not to take the lead would damage New Zealand abroad, would hurt its image and brand, and ultimately affect its tourism and the exports of its primary products.

Stories published and opinions expressed in recent times indicate she may have been right.

Late last week, a columnist for influential British newspaper The Guardian slammed New Zealand's slickly marketed branding of "clean, green 100 per cent pure" as a cynical ruse, a "shameless two fingers to the global community".

In defence of his assertion, The Guardian's Fred Pearce claimed that, per capita, New Zealand was one of the world's worst polluters, with carbon emissions 60 per cent higher than those of Britain. He decried our weak, revised emissions trading scheme and mocked our reputation as a global leader in tackling climate change.

You may wonder why anyone would care about the rantings of a columnist halfway around the world, but it follows another recent attack by a respected climate change commentator on the meat industry and, by extension, our producers of world-famous sheep and beef meat.

The issues and science surrounding the climate and carbon emissions may be confusing but the implications for countries such as New Zealand are very simple to grasp.

We make billions of dollars every year on the back of marketing that portrays New Zealand as a paragon of purity, a haven of clean, green living.

Our tourism industry is in great part built around that carefully constructed image, as are our dairy and other primary industries.

If that image is tainted or sullied, the backlash could seriously dent our exports and economy.

As Winston Peters pointed out in the Taranaki Daily News last week, "good environmental practice is sound economics."

New Zealand has made much, and has done very well out of, its anti-nuclear stance, in which we became a genuine world leader, a small nation willing to take on the big guys.

That no doubt helped give birth to the marketing campaign that now promotes our "pure, green" values to the rest of the world.

The challenge now is to show that they are more than meaningless words aimed at attracting a few American tourists to Middle Earth. And to do so without exhausting the public's stamina for change and pain.

We may need to take more of the lead again to prove that our deeds match the words.

Because the cost of not doing so could be a great deal more than the cost of letting others take the initiative – and the rewards.

- © Fairfax NZ News