Our planetary emergency ignored

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Rapidly increasing “events” are largely treated as isolated and unusual. However, the patterns show the opposite: more wild weather fluctuations with massive downpours, increasingly powerful winds, extreme temperatures, uncontrollable “wild fires” and much more. Rising sea levels, changing sea currents and air streams, with some parts of the globe turning to deserts that were once productive lands while others become too wet or suffer inundation from the sea. Glaciers and ice caps are melting at an incredible rate. Man’s activities are wreaking havoc on the environment and the natural flora and fauna of the world.

Pollution of the air, land and sea goes on unabated and remaining fresh water, which is less than 1 percent of water on the planet, is diminishing by the day.

For far too many years the warnings have been there but ignored by the public and the politicians — as the problems grow exponentially.

Politicians worldwide have received official warnings for decades, mainly from scientists, but have paid only lip service to the problems. As evidence has increased, they have held international talk-fests which have produced pretty nebulous declarations, with long-term aims, so that they can leave the problems to their successors to wrestle with.

There is not time for long-term targets — there is a “real and present danger”! It is with us now and it isn’t going away.

Strong and effective action needs to be taken urgently.

The near future is not the nuclear war that Kim Dotcom is preparing for. It is a worldwide environmental tumult in which humanity, as we know it, could be destroyed.

If a world war was to break out tomorrow, many countries would invoke “emergency powers” imposing all sorts of restrictions on the populace, which we would have to accept. There would also be a coalition of all main parties to form a “government of national unity”.

Simon Bridges has suggested that the parties in Parliament should work together on matters of climate change. That would be a start, but it needs to be put together quickly. There is no time for political games and one-upmanship. This is a matter not only for the Minister of Climate Change but, critically, the Prime Minister and her deputy along with the leaders of all parties.

A re-focused government of national unity dealing with the threats of climate change would likely have to restrict our freedom of movement, introduce rationing of necessities, and require compulsory labour to undertake various national works linked to assisting environmental needs, such as massively cutting pollution of the air and water. Two key targets would be petroleum and farming.

Such a government would also need to implement advice from scientific bodies (national and international) about urgent steps needed to help reduce the problems that our activities are creating.

Internationally, governments would need to take similar steps, with a free exchange of information about problems, methods and scientific assessments, together with agreed programmes.

Worldwide, political leaders have failed those they are responsible for.

Far too many people have ignored the issues, often preferring to focus on much narrower and unimportant matters, or calling those who have been raising concerns alarmist, or worse.

The time for doubt and inaction is well past. Urgent, co-ordinated national and international action is required across the globe, and it’s needed now.