‘Hot Air’ from veteran doco makers and archives explorers Alister Barry and Abi King Jones reveals the long-term machinations behind NZ’s lumbering and incoherent political response to climate change.

It shows in excruciating detail how efforts under both National and Labour to build consensus and pass legislation were systematically disrupted and stymied by industry groups, corporate leaders, rich list investors and flocks of lobbyist blowhards.

They blasted officials and bureaucrats with numbers and figures while using emotional, fear-based arguments behind closed doors to persuade politicians and various ‘dial a skeptic’ services to deal with the media.

“New Zealand is a bit like a company town and it’s quite hard for the Government to do things that upset the company.”

The lowered expectations and framing of the Clark and Key years has shaped where we’re at today. Pine to dairy. Dairy to pine. Round and round about we go. https://twitter.com/dvdjhnhll/status/1224832636918456321

Apotheosis of the dairy/pine roundabout is Graham Hart’s takeover of Carter Holt Harvey and the mass conversion of forest to pasture in the mid 2000s, with the public footing a $66M bill for deforestation under the Kyoto Agreement.

All the climate strike teens in NZ need to watch this.

Know your enemy. Understand their utter contempt for democracy. Their wealth seized from assets built by generations of NZ taxpayers, on forests and farmland that was stolen from Māori.