Dear Duncan & co,

Thanks for your comment (and for all the other comments). The 12 points were sent out as a press release - they are not, and not intended to be, comprehensive.

The Sustainable Energy Forum works on a national level on the transition to a sustainable energy system for New Zealand. (On a personal level, I'm also active locally in Wellington, and am a member of TT Wellington.) We have taken this message, in a more comprehensive form that in the "12 steps", to all the political parties represented in Parliament, and also to various Government departments etc. You can see various papers we've produced at http://www.sef.org.nz/papers.html

Is anypne listening? Yes and no. Neither of the major political parties (for non-NZ readers, that's Labour and National) are at all keen to address the issue. They are competing to promise voters more shiny goodies in the leadup to the 2008 General Election campaign, and they don't walk to talk about making do with less! Both parties are still committed to major highway-building programmes, because of their perceived appeal to voters in the mortgage belt, despite the many streams of evidence that building new roads is a highly maladaptive response to the current situation.

The National Party is very keen on digging up South Island coal and turning it into synthetic diesel, a process which has about 3x the greenhouse gas emissions per litre of using fuel derived from fossil oil. As we've seen with the Labour Party deciding to delay the entry of transport fuels into the Emissions Trading Scheme for two years, the major party politicians' only desire at the moment is to placate voters in the centre. Unless fuel prices really start heading north pre-election - $3-4/litre, say - I don't expect National's and Labour's rhetoric to change, at least until the campaign is over. If Labour loses the election, it is likely to be receptive to taking a much more serious stand on the issue.

Behind the scenes, though, there are people in both parties, and many among Wellington officialdom, who aware that we have a serious problem. What such people lack at present is the political mandate to address the issue. In discussions with Transition Towns people, I urge them not to disengage with the political process at a national level, even though their main focus is local. Major party politicians won't start to pay serious attention to the issue until they're convinced of widespread public support for meaningful action (as opposed to the "let's all boycott BP this week" type of knee-jerk response) - given the potential to annoy powerful sectors of the business community, it will take a lot of pushing from behind before politicians step forward.

The Maori Party and the Green Party are honourable exceptions to the general level of denial among MPs and political parties. Both are aware of the looming crisis and have well-worked out policies to address, or at least face, it. The problem is that there's little they can do to advance a useful agenda while Labour chooses to depend on NZ First and United Future for support.

So, in summary - the message is starting to get through, but not far enough or fast enough. SEF will keep pushing for action, in various ways. we need a lot more people to get on board. The needed transition is going to be hard; it will be harder still, at national as well as local level, so long as government money, resources and effort are being put into policies that will only make matters worse.