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New Zealand was one of the first of the Green Party start ups.

Perhaps it was the geo-locale, the green world, the blue waters, the challenging mountains that loomed...

Today, the New Zealand government is showing the way to a sustainable future. #PlanetCitizens @work. Local and global vision.

Thank you Jacinda Ardern for your vision and your leadership. Thank you James Shaw of New Zealand's Greens who is building coalitions and is out in front of NZ's climate action in Parliament. When we read how you and your government are seeing the big picture, we are inspired to join in. Thank you for providing a model of how green values and ideas can work across the political spectrum, in one nation and across borders to motivate all of the nations of the world, some 200 countries looking at ways they too can join up and make a positive difference.

"We’re role modelling for other countries. And actually, countries do look at each other and go, where are we relative to the pack?" -- James Shaw

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/08/we-are-a-role-model-how-james-shaw-pushed-new-zealand-towards-a-zero-carbon-future

'We are a role model': How James Shaw pushed New Zealand towards a zero-carbon future

Via The Guardian / November 2019

When James Shaw’s zero-carbon bill passed with bipartisan support in parliament on Thursday, New Zealand became one of the first countries in the world to enshrine its climate change targets in law. But for someone at the centre of a landmark piece of legislation, Shaw is a reluctant politician.

(T)he Green’s co-leader has been a party member since his teenage years... the former management consultant – now climate change minister – sits at the centre of government...

When he left the world of management consultancy and became an MP in 2014, politics was a means to an end, he says: “Even some of the largest, most powerful, most moneyed-up companies in the world still operate within system constraints.”

“And the place where those constraints occur are actually things to do with regulatory and pricing and tax and that kind of stuff. In other words, it’s political.”

Now he’s at the centre of New Zealand’s zero-carbon push as a key coalition partner in Jacinda Ardern’s government.

It’s no coincidence that Ardern’s opening speech at the United Nations climate summit in September, closely echoed his views. The world faces a “stark” situation she said, urging those listening that with the necessary changes, progress was “within our grasp.”

“I wrote a lot of it,” Shaw says.

Shaw, 46, is – unlike Ardern – an unknown on the world stage, but he is he is the architect behind some of the most ambitious climate policies that anyone in the world is trying to enact.

“I think sometimes a domestic audience undervalues or underestimates the impact on global action of action by other countries,” he says, of the oft-cited fact that New Zealand is responsible for just 0.17% of global emissions. “Part of what we’re doing is we’re role modelling for other countries. And actually, countries do look at each other and go, where are we relative to the pack?”

On whether global heating can be curbed, he says: “I think the chances are slim.” But there’s no reason for not trying, he adds. “In fact, that’s all the more reason to try.”

It is an optimistic view for a man who is reluctant to use the word “optimism.”

As well as being New Zealand’s climate tsar, statistics minister and associate finance minister, Shaw, has co-led the Green party since 2015. The party’s eight MPs support Ardern’s governing Labour party, giving her the majority she needs to stay in power, along with New Zealand First...