Climate change activists are putting pressure on the All Blacks to cancel the sponsorship deal with the insurance company.

This followed a tip-off from an AIG staff member which revealed that AIG is insuring the on-ground works at the Adani Carmichael mine site, in northern Queensland, and providing Directors and Officers insurance.

14 other insurance companies have ruled out insuring the project after coming under pressure from activist groups Insure Our Future, Market Forces and SumOfUs.

If built, Adani's Carmichael project would open up one of the largest untapped coal reserves in the world.

It has the capacity to produce up to 60 million tonnes of thermal coal every year (on par with the biggest mine in the US).

But at this stage, it's only planning to produce around 27.5 million tonnes.

To put that into perspective, BMA's Blackwater mine in Queensland produces around 13 million tonnes of coal, while BHP's Mount Arthur mine in NSW produces 15 million tonnes.

act.360 reports that if it is built, the mine will pump out 57 years worth of New Zealand's entire annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Anti-coal campaigners SumOfUs and 350.org have launched petitions calling on Rugby New Zealand to "distance themselves from this toxic project and suspend their sponsorship with AIG immediately".

A post on act.360 claims AIG is in damage control.

"It's hoping that another win for the All Blacks will help smooth over the bad PR they've been receiving for accepting sponsorship from AIG."

Adani Australia is an energy and infrastructure company, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's Adani Group.

A petition calling on AIG to rule out any future dealings with Adani now sits at 135,000 signatures and was delivered to AIG offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane earlier this month under a heavy police presence.

Click here if you wish to join the act.360's protest

Source

• act.350.org
• afr.comact.350.org/…/tell-all-blacks-dump-aig-until-aig-dumps-adani
• au.finance.yahoo.com
• scoop.co.nz
• Image: verdict.co.uk

He says they are putting their own economic interests ahead of the need to protect Pacific Island nations from the effect of climate change.

"I won't be going to Paris wearing the usual friendly, compliant Pacific smile," warned Bainimarama. "In fact, I won't be going to Paris in a Pacific frame of mind at all. I fear that our interests are about to be sacrificed."

He said the Pacific Island nations are "Doomed to suffer the most negative impact of the rising temperatures caused by the carbon emissions that have accompanied the industrial age without having contributed to those emissions in any meaningful way at all.

"In fact, we in the Pacific are innocent bystanders in the greatest act of folly of any age."

"The industrialised nations (are) putting the welfare of the entire planet at risk so that their economic growth is assured and their citizens can continue to enjoy lives of comparative ease."

"All at the expense of those of us in low-lying areas of the Pacific and the rest of the world."

New Zealand prime minister John Key doesn't think other Pacific leaders share Bainimarama's views towards New Zealand and Australia.

He said leaders who attended the Pacific Forum meeting, "speak very fondly of New Zealand, they have a strong relationship with us and they want to engage even more with us in the future."

Bainimarama did not attend the Pacific Forum meeting.

He says the Australian government, in particular, seems intent on putting its own immediate economic interests first.

"The ‘lucky country' determined to stay lucky, at least for the short term, at the expense of its unlucky island neighbours.

Bainimarama said the prime minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull should halt new coalmines in Australia and embrace an economy based on clean energy. Such a ban has been proposed by a coalition of Pacific nations in the recent Suva declaration.

However, Turnbull, who lost the leadership of the Liberal party in 2009 over his support for an emissions trading scheme to combat climate change, dismissed the idea of a ban.

"I don't agree with the idea of a moratorium on exporting coal," he said. "With great respect to the people who advocated it, it would make not the blindest bit of difference to global emissions.

"If Australia stopped exporting coal, the countries to which we export it would buy it from somewhere else."

Australia has the highest per-capita carbon emissions of any industrialised country.

It is also a leading exporter of coal and recently approved Adani's $16.5bn Carmichael mine in Queensland, which will extract up to 60m tonnes of coal a year for export to India.

The annual emissions from this coal will be higher than the entire carbon output of New Zealand.

Source

• theguardian.com
• theguardian.com
• 3news.co.nz
• news.com.au

This is a comprehensive and timely book.

Klein says in part one, "If there has ever been a moment to advance a plan to heal the planet that also heals our broken economies and our shattered communities, this is it."

In the introduction she says "this is the hardest book I have ever written because climate change puts us on such a tight and unforgiving deadline."

This book is about our "climate moment" with all its challenges and opportunities.

First, Klein says we have to stop looking away.

We deny because we fear letting in the full reality of a crisis that changes everything.

The need to change everything is not something we readily accept.

If we are to curb emissions in the next decade we need a massive mobilisation larger than any in history.

She quotes the Bolivian Navarro Llamos who suggests it is time for a "Marshall Plan for Earth".

The question is posed: What is wrong with us?

What is really preventing us from putting out the fire that's threatening to burn down our collective house?

The global economy always takes centre stage. Market fundamentalsim has systematically sabotaged our collective responses.

Our economic system and our planetary systems are at war.

We are faced with a stark choice: "either we allow climate change to disrupt everything about our world or we change pretty much everything about our world to avoid that fate".

We need a radical rethink for these changes to be remotely possible.

Our "climate moment" is accompanied by what she calls a "fossil fuel frenzy".

A wild dig is going on in most nations on the planet. Aotearoa/NZ being no exception. Continue reading

• Fr Peter Healy is a Marist priest who lives and works in Otaki.