Transitioning away from burning coal is a step in the right direction.
Transitioning away from burning coal is a step in the right direction.
OPINION
It may not be dead yet, but climate change denial has diminished in much of the world. Denialism has been replaced by those who want to adapt instead of mitigate while embracing market solutions only.
As Matthew Hooton, once a crucial strategist for Act and the National Party, suggests, “It’s too late to avoid climate change”. We need to adapt instead.
This line of defence believes the free market will solve our climate problems by adaptation. In the brave new world of extreme heat, floods, submerging coastal cities, climate wars, and the resulting mass migration in the hundreds of millions, the New Zealand Right still believes in the magic of the market.
Meanwhile, instead of prevention, they would place an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff by accepting only adaptation.
Nasa writes, “Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by 2.5degC to 4.5degC by 2100, according to the latest estimates. But it may not be too late to avoid or limit some of the worst effects of climate change.”
It will require both prevention and adaptation. We can’t guarantee that climate action will alleviate all but the worst outcomes (which is reason enough). Still, we can guarantee that personal and political inaction will bring on the worst.
The market alone is not the answer — as the former chief economist of the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, calls climate change the “greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”.
The price of gas doesn’t reflect the cost of hyper wildfires or floods. Markets have few incentives for businesses to produce or protect public goods. Think roads, fire departments, or city parks. No entrepreneurs rushed to produce protection from the likes of Cyclone Gabrielle. Essential services that aid the market but are produced by the government operate in the background and get little credit.
Mariana Mazzucato, an expert in the economics of government-led innovation, shows that behind our smartphones, the internet, and fast CPUs lies the government. All were initially funded as part of the space race and defence operations by the world’s superpowers. It was the government that took the risk-taking initiative, not the markets.
Now National has accepted token prevention with its new market-driven “electrifying NZ” policy and a new proposal for unlocking new technology to reduce agricultural emissions. Both are red herrings. Studies have shown their controversial biotechnology benefits are marginal at best. We will see nothing close to their audacious claim that “renewable energy generation will double”. Simply reducing safety measures (land consents) to increase the production of solar farms will have slight benefits while compromising safety. We need solid economic support generated by including our highest greenhouse gas- emitting industry (livestock agriculture) in the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) — which National and Act have consistently refused to do so.
They ask this significant greenhouse gas-polluting industry to “self-regulate” instead. We might ask the social media giants how self-regulation worked for them. Additionally, their biotech solution (with marginal benefits for methane) does nothing for the overall emissions of carbon and nitrates. It does nothing for our worst greenhouse-producing asset — the excessive amount of land used for livestock that should be native forest carbon sinks.
As Cindy Baxter writes, the “cost for adapting to 2.7degC would be ridiculous. A low-carbon society is possible, and as scientists repeatedly tell us, will actually be good for our economy. It’s not an either-or situation. It’s both”.
A smoke screen of minor market-driven tweaks masquerading as prevention only breeds complacency for the worst outcomes.
