Editorial: Election 2023 and climate change - the uncomfortable truth

Damage in the Esk Valley after Cyclone Gabrielle.

EDITORIAL

This week, the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ released their three-year update on the state of New Zealand’s atmosphere and climate.

The report outlines the threats a warming world poses for New Zealand’s environment: the effects on our flora and fauna already in evidence, the future risks to our biodiversity and the impact on humans.

On land, it shows the effects on our alpine environments, where our glaciers are disappearing and our snowlines are retreating; and in the bush, the timing and intensity of natural events such as seed-masting of trees, which will increase pests that predate on our birdlife.

In our marine environment, it shows our oceans are warming, rising and becoming more acidic, affecting marine species.

And the report explains how climate change is “making extreme weather events more powerful and more frequent”, giving rise to stronger cyclones, hotter heatwaves and more frequent droughts and wildfires - causing loss and damage to nature and people that “will only worsen unless we take actions”.

This year alone, New Zealand has experienced first-hand the damage to Auckland in the anniversary weekend floods, to Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay in Cyclone Gabrielle, and to Westport yet again.

The billion-dollar cost of insuring and repairing infrastructure, of protecting and future-proofing communities, of relocation and rebuilding, is evident. Then there is the cost of failing to meet obligations under global carbon agreements, and the potential cost as citizens take action against governments around the world - including in New Zealand.

The report shows annual average temperatures have climbed by 1.26C over the past 114 years, and the window for action is narrowing alarmingly: “The globe is very likely to blow through the 1.5C warming threshold [the Paris Agreement goal], and may well go through 2C [of] warming as well,” Victoria University climate scientist Professor James Renwick says.

July was the hottest month on record - not just in decades, but in an estimated 120,000 years. As temperatures continue to rise, an increasing number of people will die from heat stress alone.

And yet climate concerns appear to have featured little in the election conversations of politicians or the public.

However, this week, Aurora Garner-Randolph, a 17-year-old who is too young to vote, and a friend took to the street to protest in Christchurch, challenging Act Party leader David Seymour on his party’s policies, which she said would reverse “the meagre climate achievements we’ve got so far”.

Her voice is a reminder, as Greta Thunberg’s continues to be, of the threats facing our children in a rapidly-warming world if adults continue to kick the problem down the line.

There is inevitably much hot air in an election campaign, and cooler heads must prevail amid the responsibilities and realities of government. For the good of all, climate must stop being a political football.

Collaboration is possible, after all.

Former National leader Todd Muller, in his valedictory speech to Parliament in August, described how he, as climate change spokesman, negotiated National’s support of what became the Zero Carbon Act, meeting with Climate Change Minister James Shaw to thrash out a deal. He urged politicians of all stripes to maintain the structure of that legislation and follow the advice of the Climate Change Commission.

“I believe the Climate Commission must mature into an institution that this House respects. But that respect will come from telling truth to power. That truth will be uncomfortable for us all.”