In withdrawing from the Paris agreement, Donald Trump is breaking with a tradition of political leadership and the best of humanity. But others are surging forward, writes Green Party co-leader James Shaw.

At the height of the Cold War, President John F Kennedy proclaimed that all of us should have “the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence.”

When Barack Obama, Xi Jinping and Angela Merkel joined with world leaders to sign the Paris Agreement in December 2015, they lived up to Kennedy’s proclamation. They showed the best of political leadership and the best of humanity, committing their countries – our world’s largest economies and most significant contributors to climate change – to take action to ensure a stable climate for future generations.

This week, President Trump stepped in the opposite direction. Though we have known for a while that it was coming, the announcement that the US is taking steps to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement will be heartbreaking for the millions of people whose lives tenuously depend on a stable climate and steady sea levels. 

But I am not heartbroken. I know that while President Trump is stepping back, others are surging forward. The global tide of political momentum cannot be stopped. It is driven by young people taking to the streets to demand action. It is driven by organisations investing in rapid changes to the way they do business. And it is driven by political leadership across every continent, striving to do more and do it faster to reduce emissions.

This momentum cannot be stopped, even in Trump’s America, at city and state level. Despite climate denialism at the top, at the grass-roots Americans are acting. New York City, for example, will require that new buildings have solar panels to generate clean energy or roof gardens to grow local food and cool the city. California’s ambitious attempts to reduce carbon emissions are seeing it sued by Trump’s backward-looking federal government. Several US states are doing as New Zealand has done and moving to ban new offshore fossil fuel exploration.

Despite Trump’s rhetoric, the US is actually reducing its emissions. From the Midwest farms to Puerto Rico, Americans understand the seriousness of avoiding a climate crisis. I have faith that many will continue to take action in their own lives, in their communities, and in their cities and states to reduce their contributions to climate change.

In the meantime, the rest of the world will get on with things. At COP 25 in Spain later this year, we will continue negotiating the Paris Agreement “rulebook” – the guidelines that will make the Paris Agreement work. We will get on with switching our transport fleets to clean fuels, and replacing coal and gas with renewable sources to generate electricity. For New Zealand, we will continue research and development to help produce food in more environmentally sustainable ways. 

We will share knowledge between communities and nations, building a web of partnerships to ensure a stable climate for future generations. We have the tools we need to avoid a climate crisis, now we must learn from each other how best to use them, and move fast.

President Trump is choosing to cede America’s position as a global leader. But we do not need to rally behind a Kennedy or a Churchill: in fact, if we are to rally behind anyone it should be Greta Thunberg and the young people who take to the streets to demand more of their political leaders or the holders of indigenous knowledge from who we can learn much about how to practice kaitiakitanga. The 21st century will be defined by leaders who rise to the scale of the climate change challenge. Those who choose to step aside will be left behind, not least by the people they purport to represent.

James Shaw is the co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The 60 wise delegates of Botany chose their next National Party candidate last night, and they picked the man touted as a future leader to take on the blazing, unpredictable incumbent, Jami-Lee Ross. Toby Manhire was there to watch the anointment.

As the sun disappeared over the fairways, upstairs at the Pakuranga Golf Club last night the five contenders for the 2020 National candidacy in Botany went turn-about from the stage, making their last pitch to party faithful. But among the 150-odd members and the posse of high powered National MPs, the two people that filled the room most weren’t in fact there at all. Jami-Lee Ross and Simon Bridges hung in the air, whispering in the ears of the 60 voting delegates.

Each of the would-be Botanists delivered 10-minute speeches and took a pair of identical questions. I can’t tell you what they said – a condition of attendance was not reporting on this part of proceedings – but suffice to say that it was no huge surprise that the 60 voting delegates chose Christopher Luxon, on the first ballot, albeit after an excruciatingly long tallying period – I can only assume scrutineers held every yellow ballot form up to the moon to check it – during which National MPs Dan Bidois and Paula Bennett had to dig very deep into the standup back-catalogues to keep the crowd awake.

The result was no surprise because Luxon is a former CEO of one of New Zealand’s most celebrated companies, and an impressive, accomplished speaker: fresh from Seat 1A at Air New Zealand, he’s at ease before crowds. He’s polished, but like the man he’s most often compared to, usually flatteringly, not too polished.

Key was a mentor, he told media afterwards, but he was his own man: he wasn’t on a beeline for the leadership, he was eager to learn, he was keen to play whatever role he could – you get the idea.

Christopher Luxon is the second reason that Botany will be a media priority in next year’s election. The first reason is Jami-Lee Ross, the now-independent member for the constituency and the man who departed National as decorously a nuclear meltdown just over a year ago. He’s the one, you might recall, who attempted to politically disembowel Simon Bridges. He failed to do that, and on balance probably made Bridges stronger.

He hasn’t given up trying, however, and the arrival of Luxon – who wasn’t by any means “parachuted” into the seat, he insisted last night – just trains another floodlight on the south-east Auckland electorate. The words “media circus” were uttered more than once.

Luxon has been a different sort of thorn in Bridges’ side. The appearance of an advertisement in weekend newspapers playing on Dick Frizzell’s Mickey-to-Tiki image, with John Key’s face morphing into the Air New Zealand CEO’s, commissioned and funded by a payday loan merchant, was fundamentally weird. But it also pointed at the time to a distinct dissatisfaction with Bridges among National supporters. That wasn’t helped when Luxon, before he’d even committed to jumping aboard the National bus, popped up in the preferred PM stakes in a Colmar Brunton / TVNZ poll.

At that moment, the idea of Luxon getting the nod in Botany would have looked very bad for Bridges. It’s a measure of how much firmer Bridges’ footing has become – despite making little gain in his own personal poll numbers, National’s are rock solid – that the headlines this morning aren’t aquiver with speculation about how long Bridges can hold on.

Luxon batted away media questions about his appetite for leadership adroitly last night. In fact he dealt pretty well with everything thrown at him. Simon Bridges was “an awesome leader”, he said, Keyishly. He avoided any temptation to take potshots at Jacinda Ardern, whose Business Advisory Council he until recently chaired. He didn’t even want to “be mean” to Phil Twyford. When pushed on his religious conservative commitments – against abortion, against cannabis legalisation, against euthanasia reform – Luxon, an evangelical Christian, ran the line that while personally he felt strongly on these issues he’d “listen to constituents”. (God was unavailable for comment on this time honoured politician’s fudge.)

Things didn’t go so well this morning, however, when RNZ’s Susie Ferguson got Luxon in a tangle over his position on National’s mooted social welfare reforms. Tacking to the draconian right of National Party’s policy discussion documents, he found himself supporting the idea of cutting Working for Families payments for parents who failed to immunise their children.

For the National leader, it couldn’t have been scripted better. All this making him look like the reasonable centrist. Nothing could be sweeter than seeing a Herald headline reading, “Simon Bridges quick to defend Christopher Luxon on his first day as candidate”.

“He got Susie’d,” chuckled Bridges, in reference to the interrogation of RNZ’s Morning Report star Susie Ferguson. There may yet be a day when Luxon appears a threat to Bridges’ status, but today his stumble made him look like just another novice. Bridges got to look assured, unflummoxed, leaderly.

But for all that, there remains the unknown of JLR. Yeah, he’s a long, long, long shot to win in these blue-tinted suburbs, but if we know nothing else it’s that he doesn’t go down without a blazing, all-toys-overboard fight.

Ross seemed to enjoy the announcement on Twitter, saying, “welcome to the jungle”, a presumed reference to the Guns N Roses released in 1987, when Ross was one year old, and presumably already scheming the political conquests to come. On November 5, on any day of the year, Ross is the Catherine Wheel of New Zealand politics, liable to fire balls of fire in any direction. Luxon’s main task, at least as far as the National Party is concerned, is to operate as a flame retardant.

And if the National Party Botany branch and the senior MPs in attendance were in any doubt about what awaits them in the seat next year, there were about a dozen reminders stapled around the gate of the golf club. Freshly erected yesterday, the billboards were unmissable, three-deep across the street, reading “Jami-Lee Ross for Botany, General Election 2020”. Just a few minutes’ walk down Botany Road, sites Lee-Ross’s freshly painted constituency office, just next door to Hell.