My doctor tells me I am in good health, but that the health system in New Zealand is in dire straits.
I believe him on both counts because he knows what he is talking about. He’s a health expert.
The climate scientists on the United Nations International Panel for Climate Change tell me that our climate future is in dire straits. They are climate experts and I believe them.
Why wouldn’t I? There are thousands of them, highly trained, dedicated human beings, and they’ve been working on climate change for longer than my doctor has been in practice.
I can’t in all good sense believe my doctor and refuse to take any notice of what the climate scientists tell me. That’s why I read their reports: after all, they are doctors reporting on the health of the planet I live on.
Of course, like other people I am tempted by climate denial, because who wants to think bad things might happen? Like other people I am also tempted by avoidance — none of us wants to have to face up to unpleasant or inconvenient truths — better to pretend they will all somehow just go away.
But climate change affects everyone on the planet.
In May, a poll was conducted worldwide to ask these climate scientists how high they believe the temperature will rise, given the responses made by governments in accordance with the Paris Agreement of 2016 to keep the temperature increase to 2°C and preferably 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The means to achieve this goal, it was agreed internationally, was a 50% in emissions by 2030 and zero emissions by 2050. If we could reach these goals, then the impacts of climate change would be serious but not unmanageable.
So what are the climate scientists telling us? Firstly, they tell us that last year the global average surface temperature was already 1.44°C above pre-industrial levels. The Paris target of 1.5°C is history, even if we stopped all carbon and other emissions tomorrow. Oops. We’ve missed that one.
How about the 2°C target? The scientists are not, I’m afraid, optimistic. In the poll conducted in May, 77% of them believed the global temperature would reach at least 2.5°C and almost 50% thought it would reach 3°C.
Does that matter? Environmental writer Mark Lynas tells us 3°C of warming makes the planet hotter than it has ever been in human history. We are not designed to survive in a planet as hot as that.
The minimal impact is the collapse of agriculture, sea-rise flooding the major cities of the world, and enormous human migrations. We here will not escape these impacts.
How has this happened? Who is to blame? Seventy-five percent of the polled climate scientists say it is lack of political will, and 60% say it is vested corporate interests. Lack of political will? Presumably that’s my government they are talking about, among others?
Yes, it is. The coalition government has stepped back from the commitments made by the Labour government to address the climate emergency. Those commitments were in fact minimal to meet the Paris agreement, an agreement that has already been overtaken by events.
Only nine years since it was signed, the Paris target of 1.5°C is now unattainable, so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, or even a climate scientist, to realise that action to limit warming to only 2°C requires a greatly increased effort by governments. To tone down our efforts and postpone our own targets, which is what our current government is doing, is at best irresponsible and at worst insane.
The recent 2024 National Party conference included panel discussions on health, education, justice, agriculture and infrastructure, housing, building and construction. Where was the panel on climate change?
At the moment this is a Nero government, behaving as Nero reputedly did, fiddling while Rome burned. Kicking the climate-change ball down the road by saying we can’t hit our targets but hopefully we’ll manage something in 25 years’ time is a prime example of the ostrich mentality which is making the climate-change emergency worse.
What is sad is that this National-led government actually has the power and the opportunity to act. The minority partners are deep into denial and avoidance, so leadership from the majority party is essential, and that leadership could not only give heart to the rest of us, but signal to the world that we are the people we claim to be.
Forget denial. Forget avoidance. Every year we don’t act boldly merely worsens the future. It’s not surprising that the young people who will have to live through that future have stopped saying climate change is responsible, and started saying that government inaction is responsible.
Like most of us, I don’t ignore my doctor’s advice on how to stay alive. Can we please have a government that pays attention to the climate-change planet doctors?
— Emeritus Prof John Drummond is a musicologist and academic.
