Opinion: New Zealand must do more to respond to climate change threat

Climate change requires both adaptation and a fix to the actual problem. Photo / Getty Images

'Steady as she goes' just isn't good enough for the global impact of climate change, Generation Zero's Alec Dawson says.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organisation made up of over 2000 international climate change experts, paints a stark picture of the costs climate change will impose upon the world.

The report's major message is simple: carbon pollution from human activities need to be rapidly reduced in order to prevent serious worldwide harm.

For the first time it referred to likely international conflicts to be caused by climate change, and made the point that New Zealand is under-prepared to adapt to the costs of climate change when they arrive, in the form of increased flood damage and extreme weather events.

The response from New Zealand's government was essentially 'steady as she goes': New Zealand is doing its bit, larger countries than us need to act and we need to start focusing on adaptation as a response to the problem.

There is some truth here, but these claims mask the fact that New Zealand needs to be a much more active global citizen doing its fair share to reduce its emissions.

At the moment, official projections show all our greenhouse gas emissions continuing to grow for the next two decades. The price on carbon pollution through the emissions trading scheme is now far too weak to have any impact, we are spending billions of dollars on large motorway projects diverting funding away from public transport and rail freight, and we are promoting and subsidising deep sea oil drilling rather than putting our money and our effort into the industries of the future.

The government's response is: we will simply adapt. Adaptation - while it must be part of the response to climate change - cannot be seen as the solution to the problem.

Current trajectories see the world's temperature rising by about four degrees by the end of the century and possibly further beyond that if we continue with business as usual.

This would be a world well beyond one humanity has ever known, and the change would occur at a speed faster than anything the world has known (excluding, perhaps, an asteroid impact). The sea level would rise by several metres, industrial farming may become impossible in large areas of the world, and the parts of the natural world we depend on (such as most of the ocean's life) would be seriously threatened.

The only realistic answer is to keep global warming to the agreed-upon two degree limit to avoid catastrophic changes and adapt to the impacts we would face then.

Even if adaptation were the answer, the fair and sensible answer is to have the polluter pay for it. The government could simply introduce a fair price on carbon pollution to put towards both mitigating and adapting to climate change. As it is, government policy leaves regions to fend for themselves without an effective price on carbon.

Prime Minister John Key has stated that larger countries needed to act on reducing their carbon emissions in response to climate change. The problem with his words is that they carry little moral weight unless New Zealand is showing that a low-carbon economy is possible. The prime minister's words suggest he agrees that taking action is doing the right thing. At the moment, that is not what we are doing.

It is important to remember that the alternative world where we do reduce our carbon emissions would also be a good one to live in. Other countries have taken on the challenge of climate change and set out a path to a clean energy world: one example is Denmark, which released a comprehensive clean energy plan in 2011.

If New Zealand was to properly take action and develop a roadmap to 100 per cent clean energy by 2050, we would be looking at strategies to improve our lives, such as better investment in public and active transport.

Similarly, we would be making use of our formidable potential for renewable energy generation and upgrading our electricity grid and housing for energy-efficiency.

Now is the time to make a plan to harness this potential and transition New Zealand to a flourishing low-carbon economy, providing young and future generations relief from the disasters that global climate change will inflict.

Alec Dawson is Generation Zero's National Policy Director. He is in his final year studying an LLB with a BA, majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.