Conservation Comment: Navigating this new world

316.38 is the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as measured at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, the month Rosemary Penwarden was born, February 1959. Mauna Loa's location has made it an important location for atmospheric monitoring of carbon dioxide. Measurements have been recorded since 1958 on the Keeling Curve - a daily record of global atmospheric CO2 concentration maintained by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. CO2 levels for January 2021 are around 415 ppm.

OPINION:

I can clearly remember 2021. You were 3, in a hurry to turn 4. We had a pear tree ready to plant for your fourth birthday. I was a "criminal" grandma by then, with my first conviction for occupying an oil support vessel and another criminal charge pending. We didn't yet have the law on our side but it was turning. Ecocide was coming. The oil and coal barons knew it but their arrogance blinded them.

People still mined coal in 2021, even here in Aotearoa. I'm so embarrassed at the greed of my generation.

I think it was the great coronavirus pandemic of 2020 that shook us into paying attention to the science — at least in Aotearoa. The Zero Carbon Act was in place, the Climate Commission gave their prognosis, all that was left was for Jacinda Ardern to lead us through the transformation. We knew she could, but did she have the balls? (Pardon my language dear, at my age I can't be bothered with protocol.)

A few other things shook us out of our collective stupor in 2020, beginning with darkness on New Year's Day from the first of the great Australian fires. Its black carbon stained Antarctica's white wilderness. Can you imagine Antarctica pure, untouched, white? I'm sorry you will never see it, nor the fabulous coral reefs. I gashed my leg snorkelling once. Ahh, coral. Unbelievably beautiful. And sharp as a butcher's knife.

By June 2020 Siberia was engulfed in wild fires. In August California's mega fires still featured as major news, while a third of Bangladesh lay under water. People still lived in these places when you were 3.

Only the climate scientists seemed to understand abrupt climate change and most of them were too afraid to speak of it. The feedback loops, most frighteningly the Arctic methane belching out of melting permafrost, were accelerating the chaos.

But we in the climate movement weren't about to sit by. We were a tiny bunch of ragtag lawbreakers in 2021 but as the year progressed our numbers swelled until people seemed to finally wake up. I can't put my finger on it. All that blockading of coal, boarding of oil rigs, all those marches and strikes by Greta Thunberg and others. When the lawyers and academics finally got on board, a motivated population were ready to fight for their future. We started moving, thinking and acting more like a swarm than a disparate bunch of self-centred consumers. The corporations were losing.

The last coal mine closed a year later. Everyone helped as farmers transformed to regenerative ways of making a living from the land. A liveable income was available to all and despite cries from the libertarians we didn't all sit home watching Netflix. We wanted to work and learn and be part of the great transformation to save our future. We got smart. City kids learned to plant potatoes, farmers learned to surf. City councils handed their budgets to citizens' assemblies. Emissions slowly, slowly began moving downward. Top of everyone's list was fairness and Ardern's biggest legacy, kindness.

We stopped flying. In between weather events we explored a tourist-free Aotearoa by electric train or charging our shared EVs all the way from Cape Reinga to Stewart Island.
My climate grief has never left me. I grieve daily for the creatures lost, for the humans dying in unbearable heat and 400km/h cyclones.
You will never know the old world in which I gashed my leg on living coral, but I can say with pride that I did my best to help save this one, a fairer, harsher, but liveable world, for you.

Rosemary Penwarden is a Whanganui born and bred grandmother now living on approximately 4ha of food forest and regenerating bush near Dunedin. She is a member of Coal Action Network Aotearoa and other climate activist groups.