Dunedin Airport Art Protest

Wednesday, 23 July 2025, 12:17 pm
Opinion: Bruce Mahalski

Tuesday July 22nd 2pm at Dunedin airport

Recently I began a small ongoing ‘art meets activism project’ with my colleague, Craig Hilton, in which a person simply stands in a high profile place with a small A3 sign saying ‘It’s a Climate Emergency’.

This well dressed person (me) stands somewhere quietly with a small A3 sized sign around my neck saying ‘It’s a Climate Emergency’ and any interesting interactions with passersby or the authorities are documented by Craig. He is not obviously part of ‘the protest’ but just standing somewhere close by in case something happens which is worth documenting.

Yesterday we went out to Dunedin airport, which is jointly owned by the Dunedin City Council, who declared a climate emergency in 2019 and the government, who declared one in 2020.

You might think someone standing there with a small and uncontroversial sign reminding the airport of its owners stated policy wouldn’t provoke much of a reaction at all? Well, you’d be wrong.

It only took a couple of minutes before airport security and police turned up and asked us to leave. It should be noted that I approached the information desk as soon as we arrived and introduced myself and said I’d be wandering around a little bit with this sign and they didn’t seem to think it would be a problem.

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Our timing wasn’t random – we were there to greet some of the passengers coming off one of Jetstar’s three new direct flights a week from the Gold Coast to Dunedin. These new international flights have provoked a price war with Air New Zealand with both companies offering a greater range of discounted international flights.

Remember that it’s a climate emergency and in 2018 our government committed to halving emissions by 2030 under the terms of the historical Paris Agreement?

The man from airport security he made it clear he wanted us to leave immediately. We hadn’t interacted with any of the passengers coming off the plane and I doubt they even noticed me but apparently we were both causing ‘a problem.’

As a long-time climate activist and artist I can’t help but notice the increasing disconnect between the reality of the terrifying and ongoing ecological catastrophe which is overwhelming the planet and the head down ‘business as usual’ approach which is being promoted by this government, as well as much of the mainstream media.

As a passionate believer in free speech and the right to protest, I find it surprising that an old man standing quietly at the airport with a small sign can provoke a police response. Many people stand at the airport holding small signs to highlight themselves to arriving passengers for ‘legitimate business reasons’ and it’s obvious that my tiny sign wasn’t the problem, it was the words on it.

I elected not to leave until I was trespassed and was duly taken round the corner to the police part of the airport and given a formal trespass notice from the airport for two years. As a climate activist I stopped flying on planes many years ago so this was hardly an imposition.

To be clear – I am not saying I don’t want anyone to ever fly again but I do want people to understand that their holiday choices have real world implications which affect us all.

A return flight from Dunedin to the Gold Coast for one person produces roughly 1.3 to 2.6 tonnes of CO2 per passenger. The average New Zealander individually produces around 7 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (t CO2-e) per year so if two people take a return trip to the Gold Coast then this one return flight will produce up to five tonnes of emissions which is a big whack of someone’s annual total and recent climate models (see – ‘The Mortality Effects of Carbon’ by Daniel Bressler -published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’ in 2021) predict that just four return flights with around 250 people on board could produce enough emissions to kill someone by heat related causes by the end of the century, not counting all of the fires and floods etc.

I would like people to be more aware of their carbon footprints and try to do the best they can to reduce them at a time when people and animals are already dying all over the world from the effects of this ongoing climate emergency. I am not against people making important visits to see their relatives and for other important reasons but I do want people to know the true possible costs of a quick holiday in the sun.