By Chris Trotter*
There is a lesson to be learned from Cyclone Gabrielle, but far too many New Zealanders are refusing to learn it. From Climate Change Minister James Shaw’s portentous quoting of Winston Churchill, to Jack Tame’s hectoring of Finance Minister Grant Robertson for supposedly moving away from “mitigation”, Gabrielle is fast becoming one of those crises that political actors deem “too good to waste”.
But, if we are, indeed, entering a Churchillian “time of consequences”, then a moment’s reflection should tell us that the “mitigation” ship has sailed. The best we can hope for is a government committed to doing everything within its power to help us adapt to unstoppable global warming.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the climate change debate is how little attention those demanding “action” pay to what is actually happening. From a planetary perspective, all the efforts directed at mitigation – i.e. at stopping and, hopefully, reversing global warming – have not appreciably dented humanity’s consumption of fossil fuels. In spite of all the global gatherings, all the impassioned speeches, all the target-setting, there is scant evidence that more than a tiny percentage of human-beings are willing to renounce the dazzling amenities of the civilisation made possible by coal, oil and natural gas.
The central problem confronting the world’s leaders is a brutally simple one: to combat global warming effectively, four-fifths of humankind would have to foreswear the life that the burning of fossil fuels makes possible; and since no leader would dare demand that his people make such a sacrifice, global warming cannot be significantly mitigated.
Which is why, whether they are willing to admit it or not, governments around the world are focusing their efforts increasingly on adapting to the consequences of a warming planet. The primary lesson which Cyclone Gabrielle delivered to New Zealanders last week is that, domestically, these adaptation efforts have been woefully insufficient, and that much, much, more work is needed if New Zealand is to function (and hopefully flourish) in this “time of consequences”.
Successful adaptation cannot occur, however, while this country’s economic settings remain fixed by the dogma of the 1980s. Practically all of the adverse events unleashed by Cyclone Gabrielle have at their root the unwillingness of successive governments to properly maintain, improve and/or extend New Zealand’s basic infrastructure. The active nation-building overseen by central and local governments in the century following the end of the Land Wars in the 1870s was drastically curtailed by the economic reforms of the 1980s and 90s. The low-tax, privatised and de-regulated New Zealand demanded by the reformers left the New Zealand state weaker and poorer. Infrastructure was ignored until it failed, and then fixed on the cheap.
In a selfish game of pass-the-parcel, competing political parties did their best to bequeath the growing infrastructural crisis to their successors. Our political class understood perfectly well that a day would come when the infrastructural problems could no longer be ignored without sacrificing New Zealand’s status as a First World country. Everybody knew that something had to be done, but everybody also hoped like hell that it would happen on somebody else’s watch.
Their reluctance is understandable, especially when telling the private sector what to do is generally regarded as politically suicidal. According to neoliberal economists, market signals are sufficient to compel private enterprises to behave responsibly. Nobody thought too much about the consequences of the state declining to send the market strong enough signals to produce a change of private companies’ behaviour.
Such “light-handed” regulation was always bound to end in disaster. The forestry “slash” washed down the rivers of the North Island’s east coast revealed the true cost of central and local governments’ failure to make the leaving of unwanted timber on clear-felled hillsides too cripplingly expensive for forestry companies to contemplate. The result, as New Zealanders have witnessed with mounting fury, is environmental and infrastructural damage on a massive scale. Successful adaptation will require extremely heavy-handed regulation – backed-up by extremely painful consequences for those who ignore it.
Adaptation will also require a substantial expansion of the state’s revenue base. It is no accident that New Zealand’s century-long period of nation-building occurred in a fiscal environment that recognised the ongoing and substantial cost of building and maintaining a modern society and economy. To meet the massive costs of upgrading the country’s infrastructure – to the point of being able to withstand significant weather events like Cyclone Gabrielle – new and higher taxes will be needed.
A transport policy that looks beyond roads, roads, and more roads, is another vital component of any serious adaptation strategy. Where possible, a reintroduction of coastal shipping services should be included in the transportation mix. A seriously upgraded rail network would, similarly, help to relieve the pressure on New Zealand’s roads. The increasing severity of rain events generated by global warming may even force a “managed retreat” from the hill- and mountain-hugging roads that recent downpours have sent slip-sliding away.
Cyclone Gabrielle’s severe disruption of energy distribution and telecommunication services has shocked the nation. Their fragility has been exposed in the most disconcerting fashion to a population hitherto unaware that such essential services could be knocked out of action for so long.
Many older New Zealanders will have recalled the “gold-standard” reticulation networks set in place by the “government departments” of yesteryear. Unconstrained by the profit motive, the engineers who designed and oversaw the construction of these services asked themselves only: “How strong and reliable is it possible to make these vital networks?”
Politicians will find it difficult to avoid confronting the all-too-obvious shortcomings of privatised energy and telecommunications companies. Successful adaptation to global warming is going to place public ownership of vital infrastructure back on the political agenda – with a vengeance.
Finally, any successful adaptation strategy to the challenges of global warming will have to reign-in the power of private property developers. With the steadily rising premiums demanded by insurance companies acting as the state’s advance-guard, New Zealand’s developer-driven local government regime will eventually give way to one dominated by civil engineers and urban planners. Decision-makers responding not to the hunger for profit, but to the promptings of utilitarian ethics and dispassionate climate science.
Cyclone Gabrielle, in all her exogenous fury, has left our political parties with scant room for manoeuvre. The damage inflicted by the storm must be fixed, and the funds to do the fixing must be found. Moreover, politicians who insist Gabrielle’s primary lesson is that the personal and societal sacrifices bound up with climate change mitigation cannot now be avoided, are likely to get a very short shrift from those whose houses, farms, orchards and livelihoods have been destroyed.
The political party that promises to make good the damage of Gabrielle, while offering an adaptation strategy for ensuring that such destruction does not become an annual event, is going to be much more warmly received than one which asks every voter to don a hair shirt and do without the wonders of our fossil-fuelled civilisation. When U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney said “the American way of life is not negotiable”, he wasn’t kidding.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
142 Comments
As is the case with all sprawling cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
People don't seem to realise that all this deferred maintenance and infrastructure spending is going to snowball and come down like a tonne of bricks, eventually sending rates through the roof.
A completely false analogy to equate sprawl to a Ponzi Scheme. In fact, the reverse argument can be put where old parts of central cities need the income from developer fees that councils collect to upgrade aging infrastructure, without which, the infrastructure would not get up upgraded.
But the issue is not sprawl vs higher density, it's the poor policies that are used in some jurisdictions on managing both forms. New Zealand has very poor policies for both up and out density.
If done right, the growth pays its own way, in terms of both Capex and Opex. For example, 50% of the growth of Houston over the last 40 years are been by Municipal Utility Districts(MUDS) where the owners own, manage, maintain, and pay for the total ongoing cost of their suburb/town. This is basically the equivalent of how a Body Corporate runs an Apartment block in NZ. And one we could apply for new projects of any type.
The local council can take over the administration but is not obliged to, and will never take it over unless the development is cover its costs, including holding future funds to allow for depreciable repairs and maintenance.
Here is a good example: https://www.thewoodlands.com/
Yes, very tragic.
The obsession with cliff top views, ocean views, etc have led to housing at risky areas.
I fear for similar cities in other disaster prone areas in other countries. The World has many such clusters. Near the Ocean, On the mountains, near river banks, etc.
A big wake up call, this tragedy.
Will we heed ?
Serious question: If 'new and higher taxes' are required, why should taxpayers have faith that they will be used to actually build things? It's not just going to be things like new roads and bridges and canals for floodways, you'll need rapid transit networks and all the other bits and pieces that taking action on climate change requires to be done. I note Auckland has had a regional fuel tax for close to five years now and is still no closer to having a rapid transit network - infact, a whole swathe of active transport projects had to be cancelled in the Council Covid budget, while Fuel Tax revenues remained unspent.
On the face of it, it no longer appears that governments have that capability anymore. Not sure whether taxpayers should allow themselves to be hoodwinked again, in what could just be yet another jobs-for-wonks policy for the enrichment of Wellington desk-jockeys.
Given the campaign for the 2017 election promised to have it up and running in 4 years, my answer is '4 years'. Unless someone wants to accept my argument that Labour's policy manifesto was basically political 'bait and switch' (which it was) then the answer is 'four years', which is definitely not an insanely short number.
Incidentally I went to the Zoo on the weekend and noted that the trams from Motat continue to run as they have done for decades, presumably with little policy overhead in Wellington. Makes u think...
Do you think there's much difference between rapid transport across the city and a novelty tram that runs between the Zoo and Motat?
Hah, just had a sniff at the light rail website, their progress seems to revolve around consultation and appointing board members. So maybe there will be something in a century.
Well the CRL is still a 50/50 split between Auckland and Wellington, while LGWM is 40/60. So if we got the same deal the Wellington region is getting for their transit network (I'll add they don't and won't have a regional fuel tax either) then it would go a long way to freeing up more funds so some of those active mode projects could be funded by the Council, which has to work this in under their debt ceiling.
And even then that CRL 50/50 split is a bit of a joke because a good 30% of that 50% Government contribution is being funded indirectly by Auckland's economic activity anyway.
Why would we need 'new and higher taxes'? Why can't the Government just set to with deficit spending, with a cost benefit analysis to support the economic benefits of each project? To some respects the government will be doing that now. Not QE, but creating money to fund the activities to restore the damage from the cyclone. I note of the TV news the RSE workers who are now out of work, and wondered that they along with a lot of the others could just be put to work, and be paid by the Government, as labour to start the clean up. A fair amount of just muscle and people will be needed every where.
The planting of pine trees is being incentivised in order to allow 100% off set of pollution over-seas (allowing polluters to continue without behavioural change), yet the same pine trees are going to make the impact of extreme weather events in New Zealand worse. We need to forget these global targets and focus on restoring local biodiversity such as native bush and wetlands. This is the way to build resilient landscapes.
Bloody good article CT. Every media outlet should be reprinting this to gain the widest possible circulation.
Much of the detail in the article has already been canvassed by contributors to the comment streams here, some of them for a considerable period. But even CT avoids what I consider the most important bit of the problem - population size.
All politicians lining up for Government need to put forward a vision and plan to achieve it for the next election. Some how i'm not too hopeful.
Yes, it is - perhaps his best to date. Pity the comments haven't been at that level thus far.
The problem is that without FF, we aren't going to maintain 80% of out built infrastructure (if that energy reduction induces financial collapse, perhaps more). That is hell-and-gone less than we have, and time is up, Limits to Growth-wise, let alone climate-wise.
So massive triage needed, massive addressing of resilience (capacity to continue under duress, more accurately; without outside supply), massive retreat fro vulnerable areas, massive redressing of past bad moves (native forest-removal, ' swamp' draining/building).
We'll be busy. Or should be - but I suspect a Brownlee-type approach; no imagination, no research, pander to out backers replacement like-for-doomed-like.
Yes they are and their existence, that’s not meant specifically, is the main reason why I voted for MMP. Unfortunately though NZ does not seem to have either the electoral size or maturity to harness and benefit from the system. Rather NZ has virtually adapted MMP and accommodated it to its traditional, comfortable two party system. The last election really illustrates that. In an effort to stymie The Greens from being in actual government the electorate swung votes away from National to Labour. Now it has not been proven that this particular input was critical to the outcome but the the mere fact of this action evidences that here the electorate, used the mechanics of MMP to defeat the principles of MMP. Since MMP was introduced I have voted only twice for a major party for the party vote.
That 'Brownlee-type' approach is just the whole Labour policy.
To paraphase the last sentence in Animal Farm:
“The voters outside looked from Labour to National, and from National to Labour, and from Labour to National again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Shaw was genuinely upset over what he probably sees as his own failure to get more action on carbon reduction, and climate change mitigation. Some say he was close to tears.
Imagine how it feels to see the damage done by something you've been warning about(as a party), for 30 years.
The Greens refuse to acknowledge resource-constraints, the need to not just end, bur reverse, growth. As formatted, they're a wasted space.
Better than all the others, but a wasted space.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/thomas-murphy-physics-and-planeta…
Thats where they should use their bargaining chip to negotiate all their wants. Every wise seller in a negotiation puts the heat on the other side leveraging other potential buyers. They blunt their own impact through their stance and Labour only needs to throw crumbs to keep the greens on side.
If you dont believe me, witness the last nearly 30 years of politics. Young greens now see through the veil and are revolting against their own leadership for having no points on the board.
Seymour just told us that napier city spent 68m on stormwater infrastructure since 2020 floods. and... they got off lightly from Gabrielle.
So its better to focus on adaptation than mitigation
Stupid Labour and Greens wanted restaurants to stop using natural gas. How ridiculous.
The Greens are in a perpetual civil war within themselves. Each side battles for its type of green. Sort of a Vegan cannibalism.
One half is of the high density, fifteen-minute compact city ideology, and the other half are small holdings in the country, village-style self-sufficiency ideology.
I know in times of adversity which side I would be on.
The right isn't just about growth. There are many facets to the different parts of the political spectrum. The left has (traditionally) been about class and redistribution, the power of the state. Now it's also about social justice and the environment. The right isn't just about money and growth, there's also a disconnected emphasis on personal responsibility and traditional values. There's also the environment there too on the right. The difference on that point is how to achieve what needs to be done. The various components of the political spectrum aren't also necessarily intertwined - the same conservatives who value personal responsibility may also decry greedy capitalism.
But why am I trying to explain nuance on a comments section on the internet?
No. For him to be that upset because of that kind of 'failure' is just an indication of how out of touch with reality he really is. At less than 1% of the total world's GHG production, nothing NZ did would have made one iota of difference. If we'd been carbon negative 10 years ago it wouldn't have changed anything. The real failure as CT has indicated is the failure of government to prepare for the inevitable. Declaring a climate emergency with out a clear understanding of what that means and a plan to prepare is the same as Chicken Little running around crying "The sky is falling!"
What needs to happen is a comprehensive plan to build national resilience, building in energy options that do not focus on fossil fuels. The Government does need to understand that shifting reliance off fossil fuels will not mean stop using them all together, but changing old prejudices against nuclear power and looking to that as well as all possible alternatives for power that will all the fossil fuel power turbines to be shut down and scrapped. We should also be developing a plan around population size, while developing a plan for economic resilience and independence.
Mr Trotter underscores the reality of Gabrielle is that New Zealand must adapt defensively to the consequences of climate change and that is much more, figuratively speaking, than putting a thumb in the dyke as per the famous Dutch boy. New Zealand must do what it can towards its own house being order but that won’t make any difference physically to the elements and destruction that are incoming and being caused globally by the giant industrial nations.
Shaw thinks Cyclone Gabrielle occurred as a direct result of climate change. He is totally blinded by his own ideology! Weather forecasters have been warning us for the last 3 years that during a La Nina weather pattern there is a significantly increased chance of tropical cyclones moving down over the top half of the country. There is no doubt the climate is changing. Was the cyclone worse due to climate change? We have no way of knowing. But the cyclone was a WEATHER event! Planting thousands more hectares of pines will only make future cyclonic events worse.
Actually, there is a way of knowing. Storms can be simulated in a model with lower temperatures (we are already 1.2 degrees warmer due to climate change). For the Auckland flooding for example it was around 10% due to climate change. However, it is that last 10% that causes the most devastation (when the stormwater system capacity is exceeded).
Explained: What caused Auckland’s wettest day - and where climate change fits in - NZ Herald
CT a climate alarmist. I prefer to seperate the issues. NZ not to waste time and money on the ETS and attempting to eliminate fossil fuels by 2030 or 2050 whichever. Postpone for at least 20 years. No EV rebates. EVs are still too expensive. Rebate for hybrids or PHEV. Improve the storm water systems.
Wairoa stuck right next to a river. At worst scrap it and the State to buy alternate land nearby, compulsory if necessary, and 1000year lease. Otherwise let insurance cover and repair and wait for the next event. If the area becomes un-insurable then back to the State purchase option.
Probably can be done for other residential villages and towns affected by the floods.
Coromandel. I thought that was only Jaffa bachs and air BnBs. Didn't know 2nd most visited international tourist area. Could probably let that drop off the list to do a permanent road fixes or new road routes. Any ports nearby? Ferry?
I'm not sure what your point is. Other countries are already doing that. No one is suggesting spending billions in attracting manufacturing here. Your main objection was they were 'too expensive'. Thanks to LFP, they are about to effectively hit parity with ICE equivalents. So, with that out of the way, do you have an actual, evidence-based objection to them that isn't talkback sabre-rattling phrases like 'virtue signalling'?
That's odd because a PHEV vehicle has far more moving parts, complexity and resources going into it than an EV, which is a relatively simple machine by comparison. Seems like an odd basis to prefer one over the other and then advocate for the worse of the two options.
The good news is once you hit parity with ICE you don't need the subsidies anymore.
Mindf**k eh? We got a short-term decarbonisation benefit from what is relatively little spend that can logically be wound back once it's no longer needed. It's a great thing we used that time to build credible alternatives to driving so that people aren't just priced out of personal mobility when the time comes to introduce tolling etc.
Oh, wait, no we didn't.
EVs aren't exempt from regos, WOF or the ACC levies. I've just imported and registered a second hand one and I'm pretty sure it was an exercise in getting fisted to the same extent as any of the other cars I've bought in and registered.
We all know the RUC situation will change, it will have to. That was always going to be the case as engines got smaller and more efficient, electrification or not.
I think a better use of people's energy is asking why central city suburbs with heaps of public transit options are able to limit development through lobbying and abusing the zoning system to try and stall or put off development in their areas. That's going to do far more for reducing VKT than agonising over the ethics of EVs vs. everything else.
So they get a minor, temporary RUC subsidy, which is acknowledged as temporary.
Which won't be there forever. And will disappear,
And then what, at that point, will be the problem?
Might I remind you that everyone else is getting a RUC subsidy in some form or another at the moment, which doesn't seem to be anywhere near as temporary as it was suggested it might be either.
Are tunnels a viable (not talking about $ here) option for the Coromandel? The issues are to do with slips. Tunnels are not affected by slips. At worst the entrances are blocked by a slip, temporarily.
Tunnels are how Korea do roads through their very mountainous terrain. None of this skirting around the edge of a ravine along a former goat (moa?) track
The Coromandel is a two million year old extinct volcanic centre. I'd imagine there'd be some fairly challenging geology to navigate.
As much as I'd love to catch the train from Auckland to Coromandel and sail across or under the Thames, it's probably not likely to be an option any time soon.
Re slash. I have seen the odd comment that its the Greens fault because they got burn offs banned.
Let's not overlook that year in year our top soils are being stripped by farming and forestry practices. The silt, mud and c##p coming down our rivers is a disgrace.
Spare me the tears, but it is time the rural sector woke up and accepted THEY are the problem?
It is a good piece (as far as it goes).
But here is the thing - advocating for a mitigation only approach is to merely ensure global disaster. What we are seeing now is the consequence purely of a 1.2C rise in temperature. When that becomes a 2-2.5C rise we won't be having twice the impacts but multiples thereof (climate effects are not simply linear, they are exponential). And by the time we get to 3-4C rises the consequences are going to be off the scale.
Now you could argue even the 2-2.5C rises will be enough to bring down the burning of carbon (such will be the immense dislocation to the economy). But by then a whole series of positive feedback loops will be in play and it will be a runaway train.
A mitigation only approach is a recipe for complete disaster (and ultimately represents the final 'triumph' of the climate deniers - though it will avail them little enough as their children and grandchildren scrabble in the dust of a ruined planet - such is nemesis).
When you say "we", who do you mean? I repeat my earlier assertion at less than 1% of the worlds total GHGs, nothing we could have done would have prevented this. Even if we had been carbon negative 10 years ago it would not change. NZ's contribution to the climate change problem cause is so small as to be negligible.
What we should have been doing is a planned response towards alternative energy and national resilience including a reduction in population.
100% correct, and that is what annoys me about the Greens and others pretending like us cutting domestic emissions will have made any difference now, or will make any difference in the future. It will not.
The simple fact is that CO2 emissions are 'tragedy of the commons' writ large. General use of fossil fuels brings about such enormous benefits, but the costs are very small and borne out over a long time period - hence why it has taken decades to reach the situation we are now in.
I think that over the coming decades the majority of reductions in CO2 emissions will come about through scarcity (and therefore high pricing) of fossil fuels, not through alternative energy or mitigation strategies.
If you think fossil fuels are scarce and that we can afford to extract and burn what we already know about with lesser environmental consequences, you are barking up the wrong tree. We would exceed our carbon budgets 7 times over if we burned through currently known reserves, which sit at around 3.5 trillion tonnes of carbon emissions. That would have such dire consequences, its not worth even thinking about, but it would result in a very hot world with a lot of energy in our climate system that our civilisation is not even close to being able to handle.
The physics of the climate system doesn’t care about political boundaries. The “too small to matter” argument is logically absurd. We all know that throwing one piece of litter out the window wouldn’t ruin the environment, but if all did we’d soon be surrounded by rubbish. Likewise we do not accept people not paying tax because of the impact of everyone then also refusing to. Meanwhile, other countries are embracing the challenge, and we will be left behind.
the political boundaries are important as they are a tool that can be used for groups to work their local solutions. Without using them, you're effectively asking for a planetary dictatorship to force the change. that would not go well. The thing is the whole of the human population have to be working towards effective solutions. How well do you think that is doing so far?
Agree with all of the above apart from the last four words. I have lived here since 1987 and been continually amazed at the expectation for first world facilities in a country approximately the size of Japan and the UK, both of whom have massively more contributors to the national coffers. Suffice to say if NZ was a start up company it would never get off the ground because the business case would never stack up.
PS : That's not to say that you personally are clamouring for first world facilities Murray.
The last four words are core Stu. No one is discussing the core issue. Every living thing consumes energy. Humans do it at a rate that the environment cannot support. Many are more or less correct that we cannot get people to accept a reduction in life style, so the only other alternative is less people. But we as a species are lazy too. So even if we reduced the number of people on the planet (painlessly) we'd still be looking at improving our lifestyle, and consuming more energy. Science tells us that when any species becomes too numerous for their environment, the result is an environmental push back of such proportions that the species is set back in numbers extremely dramatically. In nature it is usually a scarcity of food starving off most, but disease can do it too. Why would humans be an exception to this rule? After all we are very good at creating other ways to kill each other off. The planet is tell us now there are too many people.
An ill thought out comment. If you don't understand tragedy of the commons and how international agreements are made, nor how the politics work, maybe its best not to comment.
Lets just say that if we do nothing, China can hold us up as a reason for them not to change. Then our effect is NOT small, in fact its outsized. Whereas the embarrassment factor of being laggards is what drives a lot of change, environmentally, socially and otherwise.
Disagree Blobbles. By your measure then China would follow other international examples in other things. They don't and won't if it doesn't suit them. So the 'tragedy of the commons' is playing out now and has been since the introduction of the 'free market', and China is not the only one. China use us as an example? Rubbish, we should use them as the example. That sword has two edges. But we can take a pragmatic and planned approach towards alternate energy, dealing to the issues practically. I'd suggest you don't really understand the whole picture.
Ba haaa haaa, I knew you didn't get it. New Zealand is already considered a developed nation having used fossil fuels to accelerate us into that club. China is not and says, quite rightly "why are we deprived the very energy you used to get you to the status that you have achieved?". That is why they are very different to us, our development status, and why China can hold us to account in the way I describe, NOT the other way around. That's not a double edged sword, you are simply being argumentative and in doing so revealing your ignorance. But keep digging that hole and revile me with more "wisdom".
Utter BS of swallowing China's childish BS justifications for its position. China is a developed country irrespective of any "official" rating (indeed I recall reading somewhere recently that it is resisting being rated as 'developed' as that would mean it loses entitlement to some protections and privileges). It has got there consuming huge quantities of fossil fuels. If you don't think it is a developed country, then try to explain why and how it has made itself the worlds factory for most consumables? Republican Senator Dan Sullivan says this about the status "Dan Sullivan said continuing to classify China as a developing country was a facade. “China is not a developing country. China is the second largest economy in the world. China is one of the most industrialised countries in the world. China has one of the biggest militaries in the world. The World Bank now even considers China to be an ‘upper middle income’ country. But what China keeps trying to do in international organisations and in international treaties is continue to get the same benefits afforded to truly developing countries.”
You are taking the same stance as you took on Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, and since been proven soundly wrong. Reality is a bitch really as it takes no prisoners as history reveals the truth.
China's emissions are off the charts. That is the point, NZ's doesn't even rate in comparison. But this is a superficial debate and ignores the core issue which is population size on the planet. China is responding to demand. Politics means it is close to becoming a pariah nation, especially if it continues to support Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and continues to consider the invasion of Taiwan. Does it care about it's emission in world politics? On one level it is trying to prove it's acceptability to the world community, and in part of this it is acknowledging the impact on the environment of its industrialisation, but in it's quest for dominance, no it doesn't care and Xi seems to be prepared, like Putin, to achieve that dominance at any cost. This is not a survival of the species issue to them , it is a survival of China above all else. The thing is to take down the rest of the world, it must in the end destroy itself too.
And then there's India, the US and Europe.... So no NZ doesn't rate, any more than Melanesia, which creates the opportunity for us to take a significantly more pragmatic approach to transitioning away from the reliance on fossil fuels.
Yawn, childish and completely inaccurate. I don't expect anything less frankly. Having lived in China, been part of Climate Change negotiations on the international stage and understanding the complexities, I will back my own knowledge and international standards of what constitutes a developed country, rather than relying on random Republican Senators and backwards internet commentators. China is on the way to becoming developed, but isn't there yet, which you would know if you have tried to get medical care there or seen how poor most of the country still is. The East coast is quite developed, everywhere else there are only pockets of developed country. 900m people basically sit in the lower disposable income groups by international standards, around 2/3rds of their population.
Despite this, their electricity is 28% renewable and they are likely to exceed 33% renewable by 2025 as they ramp up. The US (as the worlds largest economy) is at 21% renewable. And the US to reach developed status has emitted double what China has to get there, even though they have 1/4 of the population.
But hey, stay in your fantasy land where you keep worshipping the US if you want, despite them being left behind in many ways.
Not sure what you are on about with Ukraine invasion or why it is relevant? The last thing I said was it's likely to be drawn out, eventually die down into a stalemate and some sort of negotiated settlement. Which still looks on the cards. Since its becoming obvious the US blew up the NORD Stream from one of their top investigative journalists, maybe you will see how belligerent the US has been in the region? Nah, you still think they are honest innocent actors right? And I am guessing you still haven't read NATOs own documents in the leadup to the war explicitly confirming eventual Ukraine membership?
Pretty arrogant and snarky tone there Blobby. Then you explain the 'tragedy of the commons' from the perspective that you apply it? As to your view, then might also like to explain why it is expected that China will be removed from the Article 5 list of developing countries this year and why the World Bank considers it to be a upper middle income nation?
We are considered a developed nation, and look at the stories of people trying to get health care here, and the equity gap is pretty extreme here too. Those factors are more about the political system, rather than the level of development.
You seem to prefer authoritarian systems? You argued quite strongly in favour of Putin for a while, but have gone silent on him as more evidence came out, and now you're arguing for China?
Pretty snarky?
"Utter BS", "reality is a bitch" etc etc
Looks like I will have to explain some pretty simple things to you.
Worldbank isn't the authority on deciding what constitutes a developing nation, they have explicitly said they aren't using those terms anymore since 2015 as they don't think its useful for what they measure. Their measure you are referring to is simply gross income divided it by the number of people, which doesn't include GINI coefficients, HDI and various other measures which you need to include in any definition of developed vs developing. Upper middle income countries by their definition are still almost exclusively developing countries from most definitions. Maybe only Malaysia/Thailand in the group of upper middle income countries could be called developed, but having lived in both, probably only Thailand should be considered so. Next maybe to get into the developed group would be Argentina/Brazil/Russia/Maldives. The rest of those countries are almost certainly developing, so it's a pretty wide net you want to cast if you consider them all developed based on a Worldbank definition which they, themselves stopped using. Do you seriously believe Fiji/Libya/Iraq/Cuba/Columbia etc are developed countries? You are building untenable precepts around limited understanding and trying to bluster that it must be true because you said so.
Try to stay on topic, I outlined why Putin did what he did, I did not express support for any war and never would, at the time I called his actions "horrific". You decided that anyone who wasn't taking your one sided view was therefore supporting the other side, a black and white understanding of a grey situation. When you can see both sides from their point of view, then you can understand a situation better. However your inability to do so means you will continue to get things wrong.
I am simply pointing out that China is installing far more renewable capacity than the US who is the largest contributor to climate change so far. And that it is hypocritical of developed countries to push developing countries into not using the same tool they used to become developed. I also only care about governments that work for the people they govern, whether that is authoritarian/democracy/dictatorship or otherwise, if they help their people to advance, they have my support. That's called being open minded and understanding the real world through living under lots of different places and understanding lots of different ways of thinking.
You don't mention China's level of industrialisation? I'm not the one making the definition as to whether China is developed or not, but I do consider it at least as developed as NZ is, and likely significantly more so.
You outlined why Putin did what he did. What you mean is you parroted him, when his justifications were very clearly false. Indeed even the US Ambassador to Russia has come out describing Putin's duplicity. But I do agree that the US is fairly corrupt, but Russia and China don't really work for their people. They work to preserve the power and privilege of the ruling elites, and they are not alone. In the Seymour Hersh wouldn't last 10 minutes in either country. But at least the elections in the US pass the scrutiny of international and internal observers. Neither Russia nor China's would.
Industrialization does not necessarily make a country developed, much like incomes also isn't the single indicator. Indeed high service based economies these days are where the manufacturing economies often want to be, then they don't have to deal with land use/environmental issues and generally have higher energy intensity (which includes GDP as a component). See Hong Kong/Singapore/UK etc.
I never parroted Putin, I quoted US senators, Henry Kissenger and various others. Just because they said the same thing as Putin has said, doesn't mean they parroted Putin either. But it's convenient for lazy thinkers driven by nationalistic tendencies to create enemies by pretending everyone who doesn't think like them are enemies.
The Chinese Communist party has bought 100s of millions from being dirt poor into middle income wealth, and as you have described, they have gone up in income rankings and very quickly. That's not fantasy, that's reality, no matter which way you want to spin it. That's a government that has worked for its people, whether it will continue to do so is unknown under Xi. The US is now failing its people as a government, as you say, mostly due to corruption, leading to serious discontent and falling standards. Lee, as de-facto dictator, made Singapore into probably the wealthiest country on earth in around 70 years. And there are quite a few glaring examples of non-democratic economies working for their people. Do these countries tend towards democracy? Likely, yes, but democracy can usually only be afforded by those that have security/education as a population etc (move up Maslows hierarchy). Until they get to certain levels of comfort, then they can democratise their systems. Before that, democracy is often a luxury they can't afford.
Different countries with different types of government can work and do work, no matter what you believe or how you want to spin it.
Good article, but a little shallow regarding our infrastructure.
It's easy to point the finger and say 'we under invest' in infrastructure because society is quick to say 'they are gold plating'.
There is a balance between resilience and cost - NZ literally cannot afford to have all our infrastructure 100% immune to natural disasters.
Society as a whole needs to decide where that balance lies - like we do for all other types of risk
Excellent article
After the storm had knocked down many trees in our town out came the trucks and contractors to start clearing the mess
Not a council truck to be seen,they were all private contractors who were no doubt charging top rates to the council
And of course the next day the council was talking about a big increase in rates due to rising costs.
Many years ago the council workers could be seen clearing out drains and had diggers clearing all the rivers and streams of debris so if there was a flood at least they would all be clear
A friends son is a private roading contractor and his mother says she is ashamed by how much money and toys he has, two holiday houses boats etc
Perhaps we need to reinstate the ministry of works, all the houses and infrastructure they built are still in pretty good shape compared to the leaking homes and crap roads they build nowadays
Our capitalism has failed us in many ways, not that I want communism but we need to have a big rethink ,all I am hearing is (The govt will have to pay)
We need to raise tax somehow and clear out all the unnecessary Bureaucrats in our councils and government and replace them with real workers
that get things done
Chris is of course right about the a re-think about where we live and what we maintain to do do so. Surely there is some low hanging fruit re new developments on flood plains and relocating people from flood plains to flood safe areas. As others have noted th Australian modle of the government buying the land from flood prone homeowners as well as them being compensated to re-build/relocate elsewhere is a imple one to follow. A humanitarian approach as those people simply built on the recommendations of qualified professionals.
Where to house these refugees is the next issue. Perhaps this is one of the costs to mitigation where many of us habve to accept living in multi-level appropriately designed apartments/townhouses within existing city boundaries where the infrastructure is easier and cheaper to maintain.
One last thing is the restoration of our native forests and where possible wetlands where the environment itself can absorb a hell of a lot of water and release it slowly. Not the slash (pun intended) and burn policies we have been pursuing of late.
Many of the same statements here were made after Cyclone Bola in 1988 - inappropriate land cover for soil type, need to adapt transport networks etc. Climate change was a developing concern then too. A real Labour Government would effect the massive changes needed while ensuring affected are appropriately compensated. Not this Government though, bereft of the big ideas and capability to carry them through. So we will revert to the usual NZ solution of applying a sticking plaster and kicking the can down the road, as we did 35 years ago.
Bailey bridges I suppose?
Adaption and mitigation are both hugely important. Those politicians who favour one over the other haven’t taken their own arguments to their logical conclusion.
The earth only stops getting hotter when net emissions decrease. So the cost to adapt gets higher and higher and eventually unaffordable until the root cause is adressed. Thinking any different is short sited in the same vein that this article criticises.
"The earth only stops getting hotter when net emissions decrease."
Note quite. There is a 10-50 year lag in climate systems from emissions to full effects, baked into the system and accumulating. So what we are getting now is the pollution from decades ago effecting us now. In 10-20 years time it will be what we have done up to this point with a hell of a tail.
Basically if we stopped polluting tomorrow, the full effects of what we have already done aren't felt yet, temps will keep rising even as CO2 levels stabilise, then they would eventually start falling, maybe, as the planet found a new balance.
"Jack Tame’s hectoring of Finance Minister Grant Robertson for supposedly moving away from “mitigation”". Who is Jack Tame? Not the Jack Tame I remember sitting in as mini "Mike" on TV1s Seven Sharp some years ago and uttering the dishonest line to the watching nation, "There is no climate change". What? No one remembers? Well I do! Hypocritical little s...!
Chris didnt mention or glossed over a couple of issues
1. NZ Govt has become more of a fund transfer agency rather than a nation building one - and this has been going on for longer than the "neoliberal" changes -and when these changes started the cupboard was bare as funds had been spent propping up the likes of railways, post services and farmers that didnt deliver goods people actually wanted. So we need our govt to get back to being a nation building agency
2,We have had plenty of regulation - having run a business operating in different regions I can tell you that the planning regulations are written in inches thick manuals. My observation is to much focus on the trivial - colour and height of my boundary fence - and not enough on the really important stuff - now would be a good time to change but the new RMA legislation isnt it
Gabrielles lesson might be that her victims wont appreciate being hassled by checklist charlies from census 2023.I thought it was postponed but they doorknocked me on saturday.easy enough to take the online option and maybe they will just extend the finish deadline.
Maybe its a good idea to have more people knocking on peoples doors in these areas at the moment? with 1000's unaccounted for , having someone asking who is in the house may find some people who haven't even realised they are listed as missing.
also , some people may just want to interact with someone, people with minor damage are been overlooked in the justified need to help those most in need , but it can be traumatising for elderly etc , who may not reach out for help .
Labour is fast resorting to podium politics - Chris Hipkins was sounding very Ardern like yesterday - same speech writers, same podium!
As bodies of our fellow countrymen are still being dug out of silt, James Shaw and Kiri Allan are trying to score 'climate points' - legacy media are the most revolting for this!
Minister for Emergency Management, Kieran McAnulty, well.. he comes across as a sociopath.
Bread & Butter my a**, the spectre of Jacinda Ardern is still floating round parliament and Kiri Allan is trying it imitate/invoke it!
PUBLIC MOOD SHIFTS FAST! The only thing Labour and PM Hipkins have going for them is Christopher Cuckon!
Brilliant article Chris.
We knew exactly what had to be done in order to combat climate change, and when it needed to be done by. We didn't do it, mainly because we are a species of shortsighted and self-serving individuals, only capable of focusing on "me", and "now". Change on that scale would have required an enlightened collective capable of empathy and long-term thinking, and willing to work together for a common cause.
Instead we're left with dead ends like EVs and ETSs; things we desperately want to believe are the solution to everything, because they don't involve any personal sacrifice or major changes to the way we live our lives.
Ultimately, we'll all be left standing standing ankle-deep in water on the roofs of our Teslas, cradling what's left of our belongings in a reusable supermarket bag, asking ourselves "How could this happen? I almost always washed my clothes on cold".
It's not 'us as a species that is "shortsighted and self-serving individuals, only capable of focusing on "me", and "now"", that's western culture. Humans lived for tens of thousands of years in more sustainable ways, before we cooked up our current culture with short sighted and narrowly focussed economic models.
MW - not true. Every - and I repeat EVERY - rearing-up of the human endeavour, otherwise known as civilisations, has collapsed. They did so because the y drew down their local resource-base, those adjacent, sometimes those further away than adjacent. But every time, the diminishing EROEI beat them. The rates were different, and you can identify the physics of why that was, but the end results were all the same. Lower-energy cultures never built major infrastructure (the Inuit couldn't do skyscrapers or pyramids - not enough surplus energy going into their system) so the default is that to be long-term maintainable, we can't have it either.
To support 8 billion on this planet, at ANY level, is long-term impossible. 2 billion? You're living maybe good-peasant level. 600 million, our level.
It took until 1800, for the whole species to reach 1 billion. 2 by 1930ish. 3 by 1950ish. 8 now. Never compare as if linear.
Go well
Try these two sites. Unfortunately things are much worse than most people understand (combination of population overshoot, energy and minerals blindness, ecosystem collapse, etc).https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episodes
What recent natural disasters are telling us:
1. Keep plenty of fossil fuels in your emergency kit.
2. Hang on to that old landline phone you don't use anymore and plug it into a jack point when your cell phone is no use.
3. Keep plenty of cash - it's king in a natural disaster.
Although I love EVs and the tech is the way of the future, you will nonetheless need to pry the keys to my old V8 Landcruiser from my cold dead hands.
Only last year, the roads in and around the subdivision I live in flooded to the point where the council just came and put down road closed signs ... but old faithful just waded on through no dramas (for my sins I ride an eBike - the even more eco-friendly form of electric transport - 90% of the time).
That being said, the EV's ability to reverse some power back to run your laptop/phone charger etc would be invaluable.
Trotter is a frustratingly inconsistent writer. Sometimes superb, sometimes abysmal, and sometimes in between.
This article is in the superb basket.
Doesn’t put a foot wrong.
Unfortunately, like most of humanity, kiwis are pretty self-centred and short sighted, and struggle to put two and two together (ie. lack of investment and poor short-termist decision making results in disasters being worse than they could have otherwise been).
Nothing will meaningfully change.
While we are at it. In the last week or so at some UN council meeting.
"Mass exodus on a biblical scale’: UN warns New York, London, Shanghai to be impacted by rising sea levels
...."
"Mr Guterres said rising waters will cause a new type of conflict where people, companies or countries will be fighting for land."
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/mass-exodus-on-a-biblical-scale-un-…
No doubt, rising sea levels will cause a mass exodus from London, New York and Shanghai, and “ever fiercer competition” for resources.
Now's our chance to relocate parts of Wellington and a few other places because the sea level rise will affect these places in the next 30, 50, 100, 200, 500 yrs.... time
spent some time looking up the 1938 esk valley flood, same problem nearly 100 years ago so to think our councils and governments can learn and adapt and build for the future events just will not happen, in no time at all economics and politics will come into the frame and cheaper short term options will be chosen. people will lobby councils or governments to allow building and businesses to be built and operate in places and ways they should not.
for example kianga ora took out houses on piles on 1/4 acre sections on a flood plane in mangere and built high density housing (on concrete pads) and lots of concrete and tar seal and what happened not long after it was all built we got the auckland floods and they all got flooded out, all in the name of progress and making space to fit in more people at the cheapest price they could. why were they not built up with garages underneath so any flood only destroys some processions not the housing,
there is example after example even now christchurch is talking about converting some red zoned land back to housing, memories are very short when it comes to money and politics
What a frustrating article. Gabrielle had nothing to do with the global warming scam and likley had a lot to do with the Tonga eruption last year. There’s practically no such thing as man made global warming anyway because the CO2 sensitivity parameter is low and keeps getting revised down over time. Heck we've just had three cold weather pattern La Nina's in a row and this year we may have a fourth. CO2 is an essential gas for plant growth and we should be thankful that it’s concentration is going up. Stupid green party took the burn out of slash n’ burn for farmers, so all those dead pine trees that took out the bridges – well thank’s green party. This is just like covid debacle we just went through. Retarded policy decisions are being made on the basis of false logic and they'll lead to terrible outcomes. Even when the mistakes are painfully obvious they keep doubling down on the same false logic.
Read that article the other day when you linked - a really interesting read.
It's being followed up - good to see;
Trotter often writes a reasonably logical article for an old School Leftie, I recall him during the Rogernomic Labour years in DN and his string left Student aspirations. However, his Climate views are certainly out of touch with the actual reality of how much NZ can actually influence global climate outcomes via Co2 etc. We are but a rounding error in this in a global scenario. Trying to stop dairy farming in NZ, or driving EVs and riding bikes will not stop major flooding events hitting NZ sadly!
Additionally CT has ignores the "Elephant in the Room" when it comes to big Climate change issue that all Greenies and Neo Liberals all ignore, Global Overpopulation. We have hit 8 billion population on the planet early, and will hit 10 Billion by or before 2050. Each additional person produces approx 60 Tons of Carbon equiv according to some experts. So I guess we need a Pram Tax, not a Ute Tax! But this will continue to be ignored, not trendy with the Greta's of the world!
Nothing to do with "climate", it's weather!
You know, the stuff you see out of the window.
It's mis-educated, fear-driven (or money-driven), to ride the "climate change" agenda. Those who drive this are unwittingly allowing the contruction of a technological prision around them aimed at their restriction of freedom.
In just three or four years, their promotion of this agenda will result in a lifestyle akin to the covid lockdowns. It's no theory! What do you think a 15-minute city is!
Ever notice than those that mention climate change as the cause, never mention the role the Tongan volcanic eruption might have played, even to dismiss its possibility?
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