A farmer in Hachka, Afghanistan, surveys his barren field where he used to grow wheat to feed his family of 18. Photo / Mstyslav Chernov, AP
A farmer in Hachka, Afghanistan, surveys his barren field where he used to grow wheat to feed his family of 18. Photo / Mstyslav Chernov, AP
OPINION
Our daughter visited us in Auckland for a week over Christmas, driving from Wellington with her family, including our youngest grandson.
On the drive home, SH1 near Otaki was partially closed; the centre lanes barred by road cones. The asphalt had melted in the heat, and cars driving throughhad strewn big gobs of asphalt all over the road.
To somebody like me, long fearing the advance of global heating, this is scary. I know this sort of thing has happened elsewhere. In the US in 2012, a plane trying to depart from Washington DC got its wheels sunk so deep in molten tarmac that it took repeated tries with increasingly large tow trucks before they could pull it out.
I'm aware temperatures have gone up a notch or two during the past few weeks. And, of course, New Zealand shares its atmosphere and climate with the rest of the world. But I had sort of hoped that we would be a bit less severely impacted here in Godzone.
I know we can expect heat in this island nation to be tempered by its surrounding oceans, whereas the big continental masses are predicted to be hit with life-threatening heat waves.
I guess this is why so many people from other countries want to move to New Zealand; they are just the beginning of great waves of climate refugees.
A friend, a builder, told me he's working on a development near Mangawhai, where each package of house and land will sell for $25 million. He and I both thought this figure sounds crazy; but he said the developers are confident, they have lots of interest from wealthy Americans who want to come here.
Is this the future we want, though? Making big bucks by selling our country off to wealthy foreigners because much of the rest of the world will become uninhabitable? How about Te Tiriti? Will our own kids and grandkids have any chance of owning a home near the beach, which some of us Kiwis think of as a birthright?
Speaking of homes near the beach, it seems some people still don't realise that on our current global emissions trajectory, our beautiful beaches will be completely drowned. The $25 million houses are likely to be crumbling impediments to safe navigation around our shores, a couple of centuries on.
Their owners, (grandchildren of the purchasers) will have found themselves another "haven" - if they too can command big bucks. Everybody else will have to sink or swim. (I'm sure there will still be slums for those who wait on the wealthy.)
No way do I want this sort of future. I think it's crazy that we're still heading in this direction, rather than preventing it. I do not want to live in a ruthless, angry world where people's prospects are defined and limited solely by how much money they have.
And I do not want to see New Zealand's beautiful places continue to be debased by being covered with mansions for the rich and slums for the poor. This process commenced decades ago and, to my eye,has given rise to much ugliness, amongst the mansions as well as in the slums.
Excess can be ugly and bad for people, just as deprivation can.
There is an alternative, if we're sufficiently determined to do right for ourselves; for our families; for our communities in Aotearoa; for our beautiful planet; and for generations to come.
Jill Whitmore. Photo / Supplied
We can't leave this mahi to politicians though, we all will have to share in the work of evolving ourselves, our lives, and our human species, which has such a deeply flawed society and economy, but which is actually capable of living in harmony with nature as well as with our fellow humans and all the other life of this Earth.
I'm convinced that our many millions of years as tribal hunter-gatherers evolved us to be capable of empathy, fairness, justice, and kindness. I see this every day. At the ripe age of 75, I'm fascinated to see what happens next.
Do our farmers realise that they have it in their power to sequester enough carbon in their soils for us to become a model for the world?
We need to exert all our efforts to demand a halt to the fossil fuel use endangering our biosphere, cooking our planet.
Only if we can manage this together, with fairness and justice, will we succeed.
It is not either fair or just that Kiwis, with one of the world's highest carbon footprints per person, sit on the sidelines of this effort.
We could make seriously good, even great, contributions to this international challenge – the greatest ever faced by humanity – rather than confining our ambitions to sport. We could actually be leaders in this game, too.
• Jill Whitmore is a former businesswoman, a farmer, a grandmother, and a climate activist.
