Conservation Comment: What if we made some changes?

Yuval Noah Harari (pictured) and Robert Pollin suggest a global Green New Deal. Photo / Getty Images

I understand climate sceptics. I really do.

We have had beautiful weather last summer. The slow boil of rising sea levels and scorched earth are not immediately apparent. There are enough problems in the world to worry about as it is.

Certainly, the experts speculating climate change are human and make mistakes. Science is imperfect. And it is a distant possibility that they might be wrong. The odds are extremely small, but anything is possible.

So, what is the worst that will happen if we heed their advice … and it turns out that they are wrong?

The fossil fuel industry will take a hit. The economy would need some readjusting while we continue the transition to renewable energy. But we would no longer be held hostage to oil-producing nations.

The air would be cleaner. Jobs and economic prosperity would increase with the transition to renewable energy. People globally will cut back on meat and dairy products increasing health and longevity.

But if the experts are correct, and we postpone action until the temperatures rise further, what they are saying is not good.

The New York Times recently wrote in February, "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, released a scientific report warning that the dangers of global warming are mounting so rapidly that adapting to them could soon become impossible. 'Delay,' the UN secretary-general said of the findings, 'means death'."

Indeed, practical and mostly painless solutions in fact exist. Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari in Time Magazine and environmentalist Robert Pollin suggest a global Green New Deal that would create many jobs and economic opportunities in the transition to a green economy.

Specifically, Robert Pollin recommends "(1) a carbon tax, in which 75 per cent of revenues are rebated back to the public but 25 per cent are channelled into clean energy investment projects; (2) a transfer of funds out of military budgets from all countries, but primarily the US; (3) a Green Bond lending programme, initiated by both the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank; and (4) the elimination of all existing fossil fuel subsidies and the channelling of 25 per cent of those funds into clean energy investments."

The social and environmental aspects of these fossil fuel subsidies make up nearly 7 per cent of all global GDP. Putting an end to international tax evasion would save the world a further 10 per cent of GDP.

Here in New Zealand, meat and dairy make up nearly 50 per cent of our greenhouse emissions in New Zealand. As a consequence, our OECD climate rating is the 5th from the bottom in the OECD for all climate emissions. Farmers will need to move away from extensive meat and dairy production to more green-friendly foods that use less land and belch less methane.

As the Guardian stated, "A plant-based diet cuts the use of land by 76 per cent and halves the greenhouse gases and other pollution that are caused by food production."

Globally, less arable hill country would remain for meat products, according to Pollin, while other land needs to be converted for healthier plant-based diets. Although I'm personally a lazy vegetarian (with the emphasis on "lazy"), I am not condoning a mass conversion to soybeans, just common sense.

As Yuval Harari stated in Time Magazine: "The crucial news is that the price tag of preventing the apocalypse is in the low single digits of annual global GDP. It is certainly not 50 per cent of annual global GDP, nor is it 15 per cent. Rather, it is somewhere below 5 per cent, perhaps as low as investing an additional 2 per cent of global GDP in the right places".

Politicians shift that sort of money all the time. And it can … it must be done before it is too late.

Brit Bunkley is an internationally exhibiting artist, retired from UCOL. He has taught various political science courses.