At last some good news — or maybe it’s mixed news — from the government about climate change, with its decision to set up a cross-party committee to, in the words of Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, "conduct an inquiry to look at how we can help New Zealand prepare for the impacts of climate change".
The wording of the motion is: "The purpose of the inquiry is to develop and recommend high-level objectives and principles for the design of a climate change adaptation model for New Zealand, to support the development of policy and legislation to address climate adaptation". The subordinate clauses include "frameworks for investment and cost-sharing", which implies some measurement of the costs of adaptation.
Dealing with climate change across the world has two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is doing everything we can to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in order to keep global temperate rise at a survivable level. The agreed plan is to stop increasing emissions and then reduce them to prevent temperature increase getting out of control.
The Paris Accords aimed at a target of limiting the increase to 1.5°C, but according to the World Meteorological Association we have already reached 1.45°C.
We are running out of wriggle room. Without immediate and urgent action a 2°C rise is inevitable, and we may be close to reaching tipping points (such as the tundra burning in North America and Siberia) that mean we are unable to prevent a 3°C rise. That would mean a hotter world than at any time in human history. The impact would be catastrophic.
Some scientists think a 5°C rise is not out of the question, which means the planet faces its sixth extinction, and the ones who become extinct this time are us. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (not known for making wild statements) assesses that as a species we are at "risk of ruin" (ODT Weekend Mix, 18.5.24).
This is why the phrase "climate emergency" is so appropriate, something young people understand very well since it involves their future.
Our new cross-party committee is not, however, tasked with mitigation matters, only with adaptation. This fits with the policies of the coalition partners which led to the mitigation policies of the previous government being abandoned. One of their arguments (articulated forcefully by regional development minister Shane Jones) appears to be that mitigation interferes with economic development; it is "economic development", of course, which has caused the climate to change.
Another (articulated by Act New Zealand leader David Seymour) is that we are too small a country to make a difference to increasing temperatures worldwide, so there’s no point in our doing anything. It’s a curiously passive attitude for a government which blames the victims of economic inequality for not taking more action to get jobs, improve their lot and contribute to the country’s wellbeing.
The irony in this is that it is in our own long-term interests to keep temperature rise as low as possible, because it is that which determines the costs of adaptation.
The higher the temperature, the more impact it will have on our own agriculture, on the world trade on which our economy depends and on the size of the extreme weather events we have to deal with.
The more impact it will have, too, on other nations, and on the number of climate refugees from Asia who will look to New Zealand as a safe haven. The bottom line is this: the less we spend on mitigation as part of the worldwide effort, the higher will be the costs of adaptation.
We do need to plan for a future of increased climate disasters and significant sea-rise, but to be able to afford the costs of adaptation we need to have the lowest possible temperature rise.
And the only way to achieve that is to play our part in the worldwide effort to reduce the impact of climate change by acting urgently to reduce our GHGs and shift away from all forms of fossil fuel.
We can’t stop the tundra burning, but we can work harder to bring down and then remove the contributions made by our agriculture and our transport to worldwide temperature rise.
Our goal must surely be to work towards a world to which we can actually adapt.
— Emeritus Prof John Drummond is a musicologist and academic.
