Gary Taylor: One thing's certain - life as we know it is going to change

Opinion

The New Zealand Climate Change Centre is a new outfit set up by New Zealand's Crown Research Institutes and two universities.

Recently it held a fascinating conference that featured scientists from New Zealand, Australia and the US talking about the effects of climate change on New Zealand. The key message was that climate change is inevitable and we will need to adapt to it. The question is the extent of adaptation required.

The conference explained that whatever steps are taken now to reduce emissions, there is still human-induced climate change in the atmosphere. Even with a low carbon future in which emissions were dramatically reduced, we could see New Zealand's climate warm by a 1 degree C by 2100 and sea level rise by several tens of centimetres. We would experience more severe weather events and there would be negative impacts on our biodiversity.

The conference also looked at much more serious impacts for New Zealand under a high carbon future. In this scenario at some point during coming centuries the Greenland ice shelf would melt and sea level rise could exceed seven metres. In the shorter term, New Zealand would see more heavy rainfall and flood events, but also more droughts in the east with heightened stress on water resources and changes to patterns of agricultural production. More species would face extinction because they would not have enough time to evolve to a changed environment.

Under both the low and high carbon futures, although there will be health impacts in the cities, the biggest adaptation challenge will be in rural New Zealand. This is ironic because farming groups tend to deny climate change is happening or argue that they shouldn't have to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions - even though they constitute a whopping 50 per cent of our greenhouse gases.

However, New Zealand is fortunate in being surrounded by ocean. It has a moderating effect and while we are still vulnerable, we will not experience the extremes that face Australia. There, the red centre is relentlessly expanding and the green coastal fringe contracting. The ability to grow food is being increasingly constrained. New Zealand's future could well be the food bowl for an increasingly arid Australia.

In Southeast Asia and in the Pacific some countries are extremely low-lying and face inundation as sea levels rise. New Zealand could well face indirect impacts from those countries as displaced peoples seek somewhere to live: Climate change refugees are coming our way.

The scenarios that were explored at the conference stopped at the end of this century. That is a very short time span for assessing long-lived phenomena such as climate change. Some time it would be good to explore where the trends might lead over 500 years rather than just 90.

During my time at the conference, I read Poles Apart, a new book by Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal. It looks at the arguments about the science and comes down strongly against climate change sceptics.

I can recommend it. For such a pointy-headed subject, it is a rollicking good read and an engrossing journey for the lay reader. Both the conference and the book carry the simple message that life as we know it is going to change.

* Gary Taylor is chairman of the Environmental Defence Society