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Mike's Minute: Ardern exposed as a climate hypocrite

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 21 Sep 2022, 11:02am
(Photo / Mark Mitchell)
(Photo / Mark Mitchell)

Mike's Minute: Ardern exposed as a climate hypocrite

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 21 Sep 2022, 11:02am

The headline was "Ardern hitches ride to New York with Canadian Prime Minister."

What it should have read is "Ardern exposed as climate hypocrite."

She is in good company whether it's Al Gore, Harry and Meghan, or her fellow chardonnay socialist Justin Trudeau, they are all the same. They claim one thing, do another.

Trudeau took his own jet to the funeral despite the fact he was expressly asked not to. Ardern, at least, had the decency to make much of the fact that in London she didn’t have a problem catching a bus to the Abbey.

In fact, she is probably running the same line for New York. She probably thinks of the plane as a ride share, after all it was going any way, wasn’t it?

The thing about the climate debate is it's run by the two faces. On the one side you have the virtuous, earnest preachers of all that is good for the climate. On the other you have the dishonest, they want to save the planet as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.

If you are a climate warrior, which our Prime Minister purports to be, you cannot afford to be found on private jets. Harry and Meghan have become a laughing stock because of the hypocrisy, Ardern is now well on her way to achieving the same goal.

From a personal point of view, none of this bothers me. I'm not against private jets, they are more a symbol of pollution than they are a cause.

China is a polluter, America is a polluter, India is a polluter, plenty of countries are polluters. And I mean real polluters. They outputs that are, if you subscribe to all of this stuff, actually doing damage.

In comparison, whether Trudeau, Gore, Ardern, or Harry ride a few planes isn't really the end of the world. Ironically, if you want to go down that track flying first class is hypocritical if you really value the planet and pollution.

But that’s the point, isn't it? You can't be or do both. You can't lecture and preach and then do the opposite. It can't be your nuclear moment, until you jump onboard flight Trudeau to New York.    

And yet I wonder if those thoughts entered her mind as the champagne was served at 37,000 feet having skipped the queues and settled into the recliner.

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