Simon Wilson: The appalling folly of the ‘only adapt’ climate argument

OPINION

Suddenly there’s a clamour: The climate crisis is not only real, it’s so distressingly real we have to stop “wasting money” on reducing emissions and put all our effort into adaptation. Better stormwater management, better-protected houses, bigger and better roads. Seawalls and managed retreat.

“Only adapt” advocates have burst into print and filled up some of the airways to proclaim that this is no time to be thinking about carbon from cars or methane from cows. Or cycleways.

Not that anyone who argues for lower emissions has ever said adaptation and mitigation (getting emissions down) should be an either/or debate. Climate scientists and the planners, activists and politicians who listen to them have always pushed for more resilient homes and communities. They’ve been ringing that bell for years.

Some only-adapters say we shouldn’t worry about emissions because New Zealand will reduce them anyway, without our having to give anything up.

One of them tweeted over the weekend, “Mitigation to net0 in NZ will happen when all road vehicles are electric – as long as we build more hydro, solar & wind capacity – and when GM solution solves the methane problem. No additional policy response will make that happen sooner or later. It’s a technology question.”

There’s a lot wrong with that argument, including the weird faith that technology will lead us to a promised land without Government policy or regulation.

But fundamentally it’s a bad-faith argument, because today’s only-adapters are often the very people who have slowed the introduction of e-vehicles, sped up the expansion of dairy farming and undermined the prospects of low-emissions agriculture.

They don’t promote a tech revolution. Their real message is that fossil-fuelled vehicles are fine and farming doesn’t have to change. “Only adapt” and “leave it to tech” are little more than current forms of the old climate denialism.

Besides, nothing is ever just “a technology question”. It’s also about who uses it, how it’s used, who benefits and who misses out.

There are some basic questions to ask in this debate.

How do you see the world in a few decades?

If you think there will be fewer threats from wild weather and some semblance of species diversity – if you think the world will remain recognisably similar to today – you have to hope for mitigation.

If you don’t, you’d better make sure you’re very rich. The wealthiest people in the world are not hell-bent on lowering emissions, which they could do. They’re trying to make life safe for them, while extracting all the money from the crisis they can.

The global exemplar of this is the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia. They talk a big game about a low-emissions future, while maximising their profits from oil and building a vast, fully enclosed city in the desert, in which they will be able to hide. Forever.

Others fancy the idea of living in a colony on Mars or the moon. Or perhaps inventing a way to shield the planet or sequester all the carbon.

That asks us to believe we can keep on making the climate crisis worse, because one day, Big Tech might, just might, be able to protect us from the ravages. Who’s “we”?

This way of thinking is not in the interests of the planet or humanity and we can reject it. Democratic governments, responsible businesses, science-based NGOs, protest movements, ordinary consumers. We’re all citizens.

Not that it’s easy. Eleanor Catton has a lot to say about this in her superb new novel Birnam Wood, in which a group of guerrilla gardeners stray into the orbit of a ruthless tech billionaire. And just like The Luminaries, it ends with an astonishing wallop.

Novelist Eleanor Catton. Photo / Ebony Lamb

It is true technology will help. Solar and wind, electric vehicles, more productive food sources, low-emissions concrete, there’s a long list and it’s getting longer. But all of the useful technologies assume we will do our best to preserve a world worth living in. They assume we will lower our emissions.

And actually we can do that, with the technologies we have already. As the Auckland urban planner Cam Perkins likes to say, we have all the tools we need.

Why does it matter what NZ does?

The generous interpretation of the only-adapt position is that its adherents do not see the point in New Zealand reducing emissions, because our contribution to global greenhouse gases is just 0.17 per cent. We cannot stop the storms, they say, whatever we do. We’re tiny.

Per capita, though, we are among the worst emitters in the world (fifth, by one count, after Australia, America, Canada and Luxemburg). The lifestyle we enjoy created the crisis we have now and our emissions are still rising.

If we don’t change that, we’re effectively asking the rest of the world to pay for the damage we do. To exempt us from responsibility.

New Zealand is no tinier than Los Angeles. Should Angelenos be exempt as well?

It’s a bit like saying it’s okay to throw away rubbish in a national park. It’s a big park, probably no one will see it. But that’s not the point.

Isn’t adaptation too urgent now?

Even with all the urgency, we don’t have to choose between adapting and lowering emissions. We can do both.

We can, for example, stop putting pine plantations all over the countryside and revert to permanent indigenous forests. Better for the climate, because native bush is a better carbon sink. Better for erosion and better for communities living in the way of slash.

The same policy mitigates and adapts. And will create jobs.

I mentioned another example last week: Building more flood paths into our stormwater systems. That means daylighting streams instead of putting them in underground culverts, and making sure they run through parkland designed to hold and then soak up floodwater.

To do this in urban areas, we also need to build more densely near the parks. Otherwise, the city will keep sprawling, eating up productive farmland and causing more emissions and more congestion on the roads because of all the extra driving.

Again, it’s adaptation and mitigation, from the same policy of putting urban greenery and density together.

Take it further: Convert Auckland’s wide roads to mixed use, by narrowing the carriageway and planting trees, grass, flowers and, yes, vegetables all along their lengths.

And if our stormwater systems are to be upgraded with daylighted streams and runoff areas, and bigger pipes underground too, it should be a no-brainer to add cycle lanes. The marginal cost will be tiny.

Having larger networks for safe cycling introduces another way to combine mitigation and adaptation: Subsidies for e-bikes.

Only-adapters talk about the inevitable rise of EVs, meaning cars. But the biggest-selling class of EVs, here and in many other countries, is the e-bike. In Europe, where subsidies are available, they outsell e-cars 3:1.

Any serious commitment to adaptation would take every chance it could to mitigate at the same time. Encouraging safe cycling throughout our communities does that.

Mayor Wayne Brown and Waitematā ward councillor Mike Lee will be interesting to watch on all this.

Waitematā councillor Mike Lee. Photo / Alex Burton

Narrower arterial carriageways will require more buses, which should be e-buses, but the mayor’s proposed austerity budget, now open for public feedback, puts the purchase programme for e-buses at risk.

And last year, while Lee called for an end to proposed cycleways in his ward, Brown told Auckland Transport (AT) it needs to “deeply understand what the community wants and listen to local boards”.

Since then, the local boards for both Waitematā and Albert-Eden, with the support of close to 50 community groups, have called on Auckland Transport to build the inner-west cycling projects it already has the plans and funds for. That’s mainly Great North Rd, Surrey Cres, Garnet Rd, Meola Rd and Pt Chevalier Rd.

Lee has said he accepts there is strong local support for Meola Rd, but is quiet about the others. AT, however, seems paralysed. Brown has said nothing. Perhaps he could remind them they are supposed to listen when the community speaks.