Recent events have shown that tax cuts and all the other election issues pale into insignificance compared with the importance of weather and climate on our lives.

Scientists now agree that climate change is caused mainly by burning fossil fuels like petrol, gas and coal. This poses the most serious threat in history to humanity and the global environment.

Shrinking glaciers, thawing tundra, warmer shorter winters, and more extreme weather events are all signs this phenomenon is already profoundly affecting environments and economies worldwide.

Our’s is the first and only fossil-fuelled civilisation. Our entire economy and standard of living currently rely on the burning of fossil fuels as a cheap, convenient form of energy. This is coming to an end, with recent price hikes possibly partly due to coming global peak in oil supplies.

We have reached a critical crossroad. Either we carry on until change is forced on us, or we begin to wean ourselves from fossil-fuel-driven consumption by reducing demand and switching to clean renewable sources. We urgently need to take full responsibility for our climate-changing emissions. We need leadership to help us take new local initiatives for energy supply and demand management, and the retention of balanced and inclusive laws for sustainable resource management decisions.

We have to begin to take action now. The collapse of past civilisations that overshot their resource base is a warning. We cannot afford to have leaders who turn their backs on the evidence of climate change and refuse to support national and international efforts to address the unprecedented threat it poses to our way of life and that of our children.

For further information on these issues please see these resources:
Climate change: http://www.ipcc.ch
Peak oil: http://www.peakoil.net/
Community Action Options: http://www.4million.org.nz
Political parties on climate change issues: http://www.environmentvote.org.nz
Political parties on science issues: http://nzas.rsnz.org/special/election05.html

We, the undersigned, have helped pay for this advertisement as an expression of our concern. We appeal to voters in the 2005 elections to consider deeply where the political parties stand on climate change and sustainable energy use. In the end, it is how we react to these issues that really matters.