Whether we fight or adapt, climate change is here
EDITORIAL: Its easy and even appealing to think of any organised national response to a threat or a problem as a war. It focuses our attention and reminds us of its seriousness. We might be at war against Covid, or poverty, or terror, or anything else we want to see removed from the world. Its harder to talk about a war against climate change. There is no end to it. It is less a war than an adjustment. But there is no question that the threat is existential. That it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. A tornado sweeps through the United States in December, rather than the traditional tornado seasons of spring or summer, and kills at least 88 people. READ MORE: * COP26: Can we pay other countries to save the climate for us? Should we? * Greta Thunberg takes another swipe at Jacinda Ardern's response to climate change * Flood-affected Canterbury farmers wary of new climate recommendations Christchurch has its biggest rain event in decades in what is supposed to be summer. Fires rage on the west coast of Australia while floodwaters swamp the east. While we cant attribute every example of unusual and destructive weather to climate change, nor can we ignore the connections. Scientists tell us that even though tornadoes are perhaps the hardest of those freak weather events to link directly to the warming planet, there is circumstantial evidence at the very least. The connection with fires and flooding is more obvious. Scientists have explained that the rainfall that brought devastating floods to Canterbury in May was 10 to 15 per cent more severe than it would otherwise have been, due to climate change. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern famously declared climate change to be her generations equivalent of the anti-nuclear cause that inspired Labour in the 1970s and 80s. It was good rhetoric but one wonders if she ever regrets being quite so definitive. The Government has since declared a climate emergency. That too was predictably dismissed as an exercise in political marketing and virtue signalling. This has been a year of small gains as well as delays in our response to the climate. Cop26 in Glasgow was the dominant international event, but locally, we could look at the first report from the Climate Change Commission, which appeared in June, and the non-appearance of the Governments Emissions Reduction Plan. Instead of the plan, which is now expected in May 2022, we got a consultation document . Critics of the Governments delays couldnt help but notice that the Climate Action Tracker, which analyses global climate statistics, evaluated New Zealands response as highly insufficient at the same time. That was in September. Two months later, the Climate Action Tracker was marginally more impressed by the Governments Nationally Determined Contribution to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, although it had concerns about the accounting. The Climate Change Commission has outlined a carbon-cutting roadmap , based on shrinking carbon budgets that New Zealand can spend every year. As an independent Crown entity whose advice can be disregarded, the commission must find solutions that are politically palatable yet significant in their impact. It doesnt help that reasonably simple and clear solutions are easily mocked and misrepresented, whether it was the possible end of the great New Zealand barbecue, according to some critics earlier this year, or alarmism about electric vehicles and a ute tax. Social cohesion became more fragile in New Zealand in 2021, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic and organised anti-Government protests by farmers. There is no guarantee that it will get any easier for the country to unite around meaningful climate action.