Looking for consistency in all things is said to be the hallmark of a small mind. Duly noted, but the Luxon government’s stance on climate change does seem strikingly inconsistent. For starters, New Zealand claims to still be committed to the emissions targets contained in the Paris Accords, but the current government’s plan for doing so largely relies on scientific methods for reducing emissions that, as yet, don’t actually exist.
Regardless, the government was giving every sign last week of embracing advice that claimed – lets be realistic, people – that the state can’t continue to bail out people whose houses get damaged by extreme weather events, given that with climate change, these events are increasing in frequency and intensity.
Meanwhile – and quite unrealistically – the same government keeps baulking at or scrapping any policies likely to (a) significantly reduce emissions (b) treat climate change as an urgent priority and (c) help to mitigate extreme weather events. In an excess of libertarian zeal, the coalition seems willing to treat the costs inflicted by climate change as the outcome of personal choices, and as an individual responsibility.
Yet before the state leaves people in the lurch 20 years down the track, is their plight really their fault alone? True, with the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight, perfect fore-knowledge and the existence of affordable alternatives, people should not build or buy housing that’s located in flood prone, erosion prone areas. Yet the responsibility for doing so doesn’t begin and end with the farmer/home-owner at ground zero. It also goes back up the chain to the vendors and developers, to the local and regional councils that authorised the builds, and to central government – all of whom share responsibility for the less than fully informed choices that landed people in the danger zones.
Instead, the coalition government seems to be preparing to offload the responsibility entirely onto the owner/occupants.
This countdown to 2045 is beginning before there is anything like a comprehensive, accessible and consistent data bank that identifies the vulnerability of certain residential areas – let alone any reliable data on how well (or badly) the integrity of a given piece of land will stand up to the unpredictable weather patterns that climate change will be bringing our way, between now and 2045.
It is dead easy to say people shouldn’t build where risks exist. But think about how that system would operate. To encourage sturdy self reliance and to credibly absolve the state of residual liability, surely the government would need to have first designated certain areas of this country as build-at-your-own-risk zones, with devastating effects on the re-sale value of the homes already there.
Furthermore, what if – next time– the cyclone or drought or earthquake or volcanic eruption hits ten kilometres (or 100 kilometres) down the road? Would people just outside the designated zone get state assistance, while people just inside it would not? Is risk/responsibility to be geographically calculated – and if so how, and when?
Instead, will the entire country need to be designated as a danger zone, such that anyone who builds a house anywhere does so at their own risk, has to build their own stopbanks, and pay for the subsequent remediation of roads and property? Going by the government’s proposed logic, shouldn’t we have stopped the Christchurch rebuild after the first’quake, and left Cantabrians to fend or themselves? If/when there’s another earthquake in Christchurch in 2050 or thereafter, the government seems to be saying – by then it will be your problem, because you should have seen it coming.
Footnote: In contrast, successive New Zealand governments have been remarkably compassionate about bailing out failed finance companies and failed privatisations (Air NZ, BNZ, the rail network etc.) Will the private sector be made to pay for its own bad choices and left to fend for itself after 2045? Probably not.
Your choice, your problem
To repeat: the trouble is we’re about to tell people to make informed choices before we have the information to make the “informed” part of that choice mean anything. Last year, the Parliamentary select committee report into climate change adaptation pointed this out :
… There is a general lack of hazard data, including about the depth of inundation and flow velocity used to estimate the consequences of flooding in many locations. Where only flood-extent mapping is available, the number of assets that would be exposed to floods of different likelihoods can be estimated (for example, a 1-in-100-year flood) but the potential for damage to those assets or danger to people cannot necessarily be estimated. Additionally, there is often insufficient data on how the likelihood and consequences of a natural hazard might change over time, due to climate change.
Right now, the requisite knowledge is scattered, unreliable and publicly unavailable: “There are many sources for measuring and modelling the frequency and magnitude of disasters. Flood maps, drought scenarios, and other information on climate-related disasters are generated by different entities, stored in different places, and variably available.”
Therefore, the same report continued:
We recommend to the Government that it develop an accessible public data commons for data on natural hazard and climate risk, with the aim of improving the data’s quality, consistency, and availability. We recommend to the Government that it prioritise funding research that seeks to improve the data on natural hazard and climate risk.
Instead, the government has cut the funding for climate change scientific research. It has also chosen to put the frighteners on people and told them they better make wiser decisions, and stop looking to central government in their future time of need. All of this before the government itself knows what an informed choice would require in any given part of the country.
May the odds be ever in your favour
Reportedly, we will have 20 years to get match fit and adapt to the climate change hunger games. Yet if you look back 20 years in time to 2005,it is striking to see the climate change denial being expounded back then by the National Party leadership. Chances are, the centre right’s deep scepticism about climate change contributed to the widespread complacency about buying and building in rural and provincial areas now prone to floods and drought. But here’s what Don Brash was saying for instance, in a 2008 speech:
I remain somewhat sceptical about the impact of human activity on the climate, and suspect that within five years many others will have come to share my scepticism. But let me just say in passing that there isn’t the slightest doubt that achieving big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of the kind which both major political parties have committed to will almost inevitably have profoundly negative implications for our standard of living.
It is not as if National has changed its tune in the interim, either. Since gaining power in 2023, these are only some of its actions/inactions that put climate change on the back burner. It abolished the de-carbonising industry fund meant to help companies transition away from coal; it ended the clean air discount meant to make electric cars more affordable, and lowered the Clean Car standards on used cars and commercial use vehicles; it scrapped Auckland’s light rail project; it removed climate change as a factor in transport funding decisions ; it condoned the removal of agriculture from the emission trading scheme; it delayed the implementation of farm-level emissions pricing; it cut the public transport subsidy for young people; and reduced funding for walkways and cycle ways ; it slashed a fifth of the jobs at the Environmental Protection Agency and so on.
There’s a far more comprehensive list of the government’s regressive actions(and inactions) on climate change available here. Apart from laying waste to the modest responses to climate change that it inherited, the coalition government has repeatedly refused to fully commit to our emissions reductions targets by 2030, as contained in the Paris accords. While it gives lip service to meeting our Paris commitments, it has shown no sign of a feasible plan to come anywhere near close to its targets by 2050. (As mentioned, the government’s Emissions Reduction Plan mainly relies on as yet non-existent scientific advances in the capture/reduction of harmful emissions.)
Finally, the government has also re-opened the door to oil and gas exploration and mining. In doing so, it has actively embraced the risk that New Zealand could be paying upwards of $200 million in subsidies to fossil fuel companies, via its uncapped 20% rebate scheme. All of this in order to discover further oil and gas deposits that would worsen global warming. Here’s Resources Minister Shane Jones:
“If the deals continue to flow and they’re credible, in the future there’s no reason that we won’t go beyond $200m. Mr Bishop and I have both agreed, ‘Let’s start with $200m, but as the appetite grows and the quality of the deals [grows], we’ll just come back to the well again,’” Jones said.
Regardless of all the above, it was also being seriously proposed last week that those who benefit from climate mitigation schemes – stop banks etc – should pay the lion’s share of the cost of building and maintaining them. This is the sort of crackpot libertarian thinking that passes for a value system in today’s National Party. No wonder past National Party presidents like Sue Wood are saying they no longer identify with it:
Four decades on from the juggernaut of 1984, Wood no longer recognises the party she dedicated so much of her life to. She describes the Government’s retrospective repeal of pay equity claims as an affront to democracy.
Footnote: To use nerd talk, the proposals to eventually ephase out state bailouts for those hit by extreme weather events ( thus incentivising them to Be Better Prepared) was called the “ Beneficiary Pays” principle in last year’s select committee report on climate change adaptation.
In the very next breath though, the select committee mentioned another factor that it called the “Exacerbator Pays” principle, which it defined as “Those whose activities exacerbate climate change should contribute to the costs of adaptation.” Yet for some reason, this “exacerbator/polluter pays” principle has never, ever been part of the coalition government’s response to climate change. Dairy farming is insulated from the “Exacerbator Pays” principle by National, on principle.
Fishtanking
At such times, this track released last week by Poor Creature (Irish traditional music meets electronica) has the soothing feeling you get from staring at a fish tank. So here we go down, down to the wreck at the bottom of the deep green sea:
And here are some dudes in the same room making music together, and slapping the bass: