Opinion: Climate Change Policy Needs to Shift

Cling not to what is unattainable, strive towards what is. 

Climate change is a difficult issue for people to relate to, and it is even harder for our politicians to make effective policy to combat it. People like there to be a single ‘gotcha’ moment to define their beliefs on a subject, but climate change is a slow, invisible, creeping problem. Only recently there have been large scale natural disasters which have been reported as the effects of climate change. These are the massive bush fires, extreme heatwaves, and frequent tropical storms which have killed numerous people and caused untold amounts of damage across the globe. And there have been protests. And summits. And policy goals. And even some laws. But it isn’t enough, the damage has been done and cannot be undone. Reducing the amount of emissions still means that the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere will go up, just more slowly. Net carbon zero is the ultimate goal and would stop the concentration going up, but even optimistic estimates put that at 30 years away, with the human race pumping out carbon right up until the line. And even when we get there, the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere dictates how much the temperature will rise, not how much we are emitting. New Zealand needs a new approach to ensure we weather the coming storm. 

Not to be all doom and gloom, however. Striving for a greener society is the best thing we can do for this planet, and the small investments we put in now will pay off hundredfold for the generations in the future. But we cannot just plan for the future, the planet is going to change dramatically in our lifetimes and we need to mitigate the effects. And the effects are catastrophic, even in the best of cases. 

A 1.5°C rise in temperature is all but guaranteed by 2050 if the current global emissions goals are met, but what actually happens if the temperature rises by this amount? Rising temperatures will lead to more droughts, heatwaves, and hotter summers. Droughts lead to crop failures, which leads to famine, and the effects of a heatwave can be seen with the recent deaths in the north east of the United States. Stronger storms are created by hotter oceans, which will batter our coast which is already struggling with the rising sea levels caused by melting ice. Oceans will be acidified, destroying the already at-risk marine environments which we take for granted, and less fish to catch leads to, you guessed it, more famine. Forests will burn, people will die, and life will never be the same again. 

There has been discourse online, both from the media and from common people about climate doomism, people not wanting to deal with climate change because its already fucked, so who cares. That is not the argument presented here. This problem of human creation is within our ability to fix, it will just take time and within this time we will feel the effects. A boxer in the ring must both protect his face and strike his enemy - our policy makers need to find the same balance. New Zealand is a small country, and us becoming carbon neutral will have little effect on GLOBAL warming. We are at the mercy of those bigger than us and must make decisions with this in mind. Large countries climate policies are often uncertain at best and with this in mind it is not hard to imagine that even the best-case scenario of our future climate might be woefully underestimating the damage we can cause. Therefore, New Zealand needs to make some selfish decisions, deviating slightly from the global effort to stop climate change and diverting some of our resources to dealing with what is inevitably to come. Studies into the effects of a changing climate on our native plants and animals, including those in the sea, need to occur and if the results show a negative effect, then solutions need to be found. Rising sea levels need to be taken into account when planning new infrastructure projects, and current studies into the effects it will have on our coastlines and cities need to be expanded. Evidence-based actions need to be taken when results of these are published. The effects this will have on our people, our society, and our economy need to be predicted and planned for so that we can continue to live with some comfort while we clean up the planet. 

Politicians and the media cling to the ideal of a world which will never be, one which they and their peers have burnt with little regard for future generations like us. And like a child after breaking one of their parent’s dishes, they are attempting futilely to fix their mistake, when no matter what they do the dish will never be the same again. We need to let go of the idea that we can return to the world those before us enjoyed and focus on mitigating the effects of what cannot be undone. The New Zealand Government needs to realise our place in the world and make sensible decisions based upon the factors that are within our control, without relying on other nations to do the right thing. A data-driven and realistic climate change policy is needed, not just so we can fix the planet but so we can live on it while we do.