Chris Cresswell: Take tobacco road to stub out warming

Chris Cresswell

THE human race is like a smoker. As cigarette smoke is to the human body, greenhouse gases are to the planet.

So we can learn lessons from tobacco control programmes and apply them to global warming.

When banning smoking in bars was being considered in New Zealand 1990 many of us thought it would never happen.

But it worked and we have made good progress, reducing cigarette smoking.

While we would like to think we will all change our behaviour regarding climate change because we would like to preserve our beautiful environment, realistically we know that human nature isn't like that.

This is especially true when the effects of global warming are barely visible in New Zealand yet, just as most of the ill effects of smoking are not visible to a teenager.

We know that tobacco control has been slowed by tobacco-harm deniers and powerful pro-tobacco lobby groups. We face the same situation with climate change.

What has worked with smoking is a multi-pronged approach: Education (including educational advertising), banning cigarette advertising, raising the price of tobacco products through taxation, making it harder for tobacco companies to lobby politicians and other legislation as smokefree public spaces.

To have a hope of restoring our climate we will need strong government regulation and action.

We need to increase the cost of greenhouse gases by taxing them, particularly fossil fuels and agricultural methane and nitrous oxide.

This tax could be used to fund mass planting of carbon absorbing forests on marginal farm land. In our district this would also help reduce the risks of flooding and road destruction from climate change. This taxation could also be used to improve public transport and accelerate our conversion to electric vehicles.

Greenhouse gas taxes could be used to assist farmers to convert from ruminant agriculture (cows and sheep) to high-value, carbon-absorbing, organic agriculture.

The demand for the products of this type of farming by overseas buyers will increase hugely in the near future. Currently there is a tea plantation in Waikato exporting organic tea to China making more money per hectare and employing more staff than neighbouring dairy farms.

We need effective public education programmes and advertising about climate change and how to mitigate it.

We need to promote the use of public transport and electric vehicles and ban the advertising of inefficient vehicles and fuels.

Despite climate change being a known critical issue for several years, we have seen no effective measures implemented in New Zealand and so our greenhouse gas production has continued to rise.

We need effective government action, and to achieve this we need more ordinary Kiwis to get active in decision-making in this country; we need more ordinary Kiwis joining political parties that will make a constructive difference to our future.

We cannot afford to leave it to a few to make, or not make, such crucial decisions for us.

■Dr Chris Cresswell is a Whanganui health professional and a member of the Green Party of Aotearoa.