Dear Parliament,

I am an everyday Mum and I am scared.

My youngest child is 4 years old.

In 2100 she will turn 85. What will that world look like? On our current trajectory, it’s not looking great. You have all heard the consequences of every degree that goes up in global temperature, we will face more extreme weather events, floods, fires, food shortages, species extinction, loss of habitable land and homes. Based on our current emissions which are still rising, we are not even close to limiting the serious impacts of a warming earth.

Today is the UN Universal Children’s Day, which is the successor to the 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child to which New Zealand is a signatory. This commits us to protect the rights of all children to health and safety. Our elected leaders are responsible for the health and well being of over one million New Zealand children.

I want to see the people we elected to show just how seriously they take this responsibility of reducing our emissions, so we stay within the 1.5-degree limit set by the Paris Agreement. We can’t wait yet another year for the National Adaptation and Emissions Reduction Plans to be released by the newly formed Climate Change Commission before making some serious changes. I am not alone is this. Standing with me are parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, wider whanau and people who care about the world our children and all children will grow into.

We worry successive governments depending on leadership, may decide to put unsustainable activities and growth above all else. As a parent, I need to feel trust that on this one issue that impacts every single person’s current and future well-being, that despite ideological differences, collaboration on climate mitigation will continue.

It is our hope that our leaders will do the right thing and sign up to a transparent formal agreement to collaborate on progressing climate mitigation. We all need this leadership to help us navigate the upheaval change will bring. People need retraining in new fields, people need support in changing how our food is produced, people need assistance to move to safer areas away from coastal erosion threatening their homes.

Our Open Letter petitioning for a Memorandum of Understanding between all parties to take partisanship out of climate can be found on both Change.org and ActionStation – links below.
http://chng.it/6vwgzRjN
https://our.actionstation.org.nz/p/MOU

One common thread we have connecting across all ideologies is love for our environment and our people within it. We live in challenging times but…
We have what we need.
We have the solutions.
We just need the courage now to demand the change we need to bring about. We need the people we elected to have the courage to bring that change about.

Ngā mihi

Alicia Hall
Founder
Millions of Mothers

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