Our Government and civil service are overwhelmed by the complexity of our mitigation and adaption challenges
Opinion: We have created the climate crisis – are we incapable of fixing it?
Many days it seems we are. Every hopeful step seems swamped by dysfunction, conflict, incompetence, and self-interest. Every achievement seems too little, too late.
Yet there are many things we can do, collectively and personally, to make a difference. I’ll offer four broad themes later in the column.
But first, let’s take stock of humanity’s chaotic response to the climate crisis. That’s an immense subject. But one way to get a fix on it is to look at the UK’s experience. It offers us some insights here, as we have some commonality of politics, government, culture, economy and approaches to climate.
The UK was a global pioneer, with virtually every MP voting for their Climate Change Act in 2008. Its stated goal is a 100 percent net reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.
We’ve adopted a similar goal, and we’ve borrowed heavily from the UK on the design of institutional and political mechanisms aimed at achieving it. Most importantly, we’ve closely modelled our Climate Change Commission on its Climate Change Committee, although the latter has more power and independence from government than ours.
The UK has achieved a lot on climate in the 15 years since, most notably massively ramping up renewables while all but purging coal from its electricity system.
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Yet the UK has clocked up a “decade of failure” in its efforts to increase climate resilience through adaptation, its Climate Change Committee said in a scathing report released last Wednesday.
"The government's lack of urgency on climate resilience is in sharp contrast to the recent experience of people in this country," said Baroness Brown, chair of the CCC's adaptation committee. "People, nature and infrastructure face damaging impacts as climate change takes hold. These impacts will only intensify in the coming decades."
Don’t expect National to do better if it forms the next government. It shows no signs of a deep, interconnected understanding of climate responses, or any commitment to the hard work and brave decisions needed to deliver on them.
As for mitigation, the UK’s news on that last week was equally grim. The government billed last Thursday as “Green Day”, the moment it would unveil compressive plans (new, plus revised) to fast-forward the country’s net zero strategy. It was forced to do so by a High Court ruling that its existing plans were deeply inadequate.
But climate-committed business organisations were critical of the hodgepodge of incomplete proposals. Worse, the government’s announcement that it was considering approving development of a large new North Sea oil and gas field was met with derision. It had obviously learnt nothing from the anger at its approval last year of the first new UK coal mine in 30 years.
"The world is undergoing the greatest industrial transformation in 300 years as the race to zero emissions intensifies," said Ed Matthew, campaigns director at E3G, a global climate think tank. "Most of the policies launched today were announced last year and are not bold enough to keep the UK competitive in the clean tech race or put us back on track to net zero. It is underwhelming.”
As for New Zealand, we’re treading the same path as the UK, albeit far behind it. Our Government and civil service are overwhelmed by the complexity of our mitigation and adaption challenges. Though we have a skeletal Emissions Reduction Plan, as I described in this column last May, we (politicians, bureaucrats, businesses and communities) are failing to develop the strategies and programmes we need to bring it to life.
A change of government would bring a different approach but no greater guarantee of delivering on the inextricably linked economic and environmental outcomes
Moreover, the current Labour Government is ignoring some of the advice of our Climate Change Commission (for example, on the ETS, thereby halving the carbon price), has biffed climate programmes with wide political support (such as clean car subsidies), and all but given up on getting even minor climate commitments from farmers.
Don’t expect National to do better if it forms the next government. It shows no signs of a deep, interconnected understanding of climate responses, or any commitment to the hard work and brave decisions needed to deliver on them.
National's announcement last week of speedy resource consents for renewable electricity generation was a classic. National played a popular card but showed no sign of understanding how vast a transformation the electricity sector needs to become a truly two-way, 21st Century system; or how to speed up the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy. The likelihood of any National-led breakthrough on agriculture is even more improbable; and it’s also promising to resume offshore oil and gas exploration.
But here’s the big question we need to ask ourselves: have we lost the ability to solve complicated challenges?
The faltering reforms of the Resource Management Act is a worrying sign we have. Yes, it is a massive task. But extensive, deeply insightful groundwork had been laid 2017-2020 by the Environmental Defence Society and some leading business organisations. That was complemented by the Randerson Review in 2020.
The draft reform legislation, though, has been very widely criticised by business, environmental, legal and other communities. Essentially, it fails in its twin tasks of improving consenting processes to enable economic development, while at the same time improving environmental outcomes.
As EDS noted in February in its submission on the legislation “the reform Bills provide excessive opportunities for seemingly strong environmental protections to be undermined through exceptions, carve outs and unclear drafting”.
A change of government would bring a different approach but no greater guarantee of delivering on the inextricably linked economic and environmental outcomes.
How might we rise to these towering climate challenges? Here are four crucial imperatives. They are not a road map but they can help guide us as we develop and implement one.
1. Stand in the future. Use all the knowledge we have to conceive the world/nation/society/economy/environment we want to be living in by 2035. Then ‘backcast’ from there to today. What bold steps did we take? How did we work together to achieve them? What impediments did we overcome to do so?
Such an approach liberates us from today’s constraints. It helps us see a far bigger, more empowering picture. By contrast, when we forecast from where we stand today we’re always encumbered and limited by our current preoccupations.
2. Embrace transformative goals. Because only those will achieve the changes we need, as quickly as we need them. By contrast, incremental change will only give us slow, minimal improvements in our currently failing systems.
Crucially, we need to set such goals even though we have no idea right now how to achieve them. But we know we need them to focus our efforts, to spur us on to create the future we want and need.
3. Work with others. Learn and innovate with them; borrow from others and give back generously; partner with unlikely and unexpected people outside our usual realms.
4. Take personal responsibility. Each of us can make only an infinitesimal difference. But if we work together, in our personal and professional lives, our collective impact is near infinite.
