Protesters gathered at Wellington's harbor to show protest on deep-sea oil exploration in New Zealand. Men and women in kayaks, boarders, wakas and surfers chanted their opposition to deep-sea oil exploration.
Wellington's local group, Oil Free Wellington, planned the protest on the harbor with the Paris Agreement. It has been allying with other environmentalist groups around the world to stage the protest. It is not technically celebrating the milestone pact.
"I think, by and large, it's lipservice, which is what we expected. The United Nations has proven for 21 years that it's incapable of delivering climate justice," the groups' spokewoman Jessie Dennis quipped. Their message is largely stopping oil companies in exploring the region for oil. The oil companies should "expect resistance" once any of the oil companies decided to push through a deep sea oil project.
"The Government has made it clear whose side they are on and it's on the side of big business," Dennis added. This is after the controversial law that was passed in 2013 designed to stop high seas-borne protesters from interfering with company equipment or vessels.
"The Government's efforts to make protest illegal makes it all the more important to come out and keep on protesting against fossil fuels," Dennis elaborated. Zoe Deans from the Oil Free group in Wellington said she doesn't believe generating oil will help Kiwis in the long run. "It will create fewer jobs then the government thinks it does, and basically it's taking more carbon out of the ground and we are putting it into the atmosphere and it's contributing to climate change," Deans added.
The Paris agreement to keep global warming below two degrees is targeted to come into fruition by 2020. But many global warming protesters all over the world are not impressed with the target and the programs government all over the world are planning.
