The question of climate change prevention has been buried beneath anxieties about survival. Pat Baskett argues that if mitigation is the answer, we're already losing.
Twenty years ago my climate activist friend, former MP and Greens co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, wouldn’t have a bar of the word mitigation. For her it signalled defeat. The priority was prevention, not strategies to mitigate the effects of an overheated world.
We believed we could make it: the question was how.
Nothing has changed in the answer to that question. It remains the same as when the question was first presented by climate scientists more than 40 years ago. As one UK-based activist group calls it, we have to STOP OIL NOW!
That answer is, and has always been, too hard. We’re in a collective state of denial, but not of the message itself. Surveys show that for increasing numbers of people, climate disruption is a major concern. But we have submerged the question of prevention beneath anxieties about survival. Of ourselves and of this way of life we hope will continue for our children.
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Mitigation has become tantamount to adaptation. It means protecting ourselves against heatwaves, violent storms, the encroaching sea and whatever extreme weather events the climate will hurl at us. It means shoring up eroding coastal cliffs, providing irrigation in drought-prone areas, protecting houses and farms from flooding rivers. It might also mean stocking up tinned food.
The insurance industry is figuring out its response to these changing conditions. What, now, does an 'act of God' mean?
One feature of our lifestyle appears to be non-negotiable. This is our need for mobility. Not just the visits to family and friends, wherever they may be, but the supply global trade brings us of an infinite range of objects on which our daily lives depend.
But do they, really? Jeanette wrote a small book called Enough! The challenge of a post-growth economy. She believed an economy of enough is possible but she knew that achieving it means a change in values, expectations and behaviour.
We are nowhere near such a transformation. If prevention enters our heads we buy an EV - if we can afford one. Those who can’t will increasingly be forced to wait for buses or trains as petrol prices increase. Mitigation hasn’t yet made public electric transport a clear priority over new and more roads.
Is this likely to change when the Government releases its findings from the inquiry into the future of inter-regional passenger rail? I fear not, or not in any way that will substantially enable people to change how they travel.
Meanwhile, the mirage of biofuels diverts money and intellectual energy away from the inevitable demise of the internal combustion engine and with it, of the individually-owned vehicle.
As for flying, we leave aside our guilt in the knowledge that techno wizards are working on zero carbon planes. These are as yet in the same category as coal-fired power plants that claim carbon neutrality through carbon capture and storage techniques.
We haven’t got the time it will take for such fantasies to become reality.
And then there are our agricultural emissions.
Eating less meat and dairy is one way to claim virtue. But is it okay to encourage other societies to adapt their diets to include as many of our exports as they can afford?
We’re concerned with fairness here and much expense and brain energy are being spent to sort out how agricultural producers can pay their share for the carbon and methane their activities produce. How much seaweed would it require to reduce methane emissions? I have seen no mention of dairy herd reductions.
The Canterbury Plains were once a major wheat-producing area. We, and the world, could be grateful for a return to this, and other horticultural enterprises on land whose conversion to dairying has been calamitous in more ways than one.
The Dutch have been bold. Here’s what they’re doing about nitrogen. Three years ago they introduced legislation to reduce these climate-damaging compounds wherever they are produced - on farms, by vehicles and in construction.
- Dutch farmers have to reduce nitrogen levels by 50 percent by 2030 - or lose their farms. They aren’t happy of course and have protested by blocking motorways with their tractors.
- Dutch agriculture is described as having to make an 'unavoidable transition'. To soften the blow, the government has allocated 24.3 billion euros to help farmers drastically reduce animal numbers. This small country of 17.5 million people, 4 million intensively farmed cattle and 12 million pigs is the second largest exporter of agricultural products, after the US.
- Some Dutch scientists and environmental groups propose a gradual transition to a system of 'circular' agriculture: farms should only produce as much manure as they can use for fertilizer; cattle numbers should be limited to the available pasture; pigs and poultry should eat food waste.
- Nitrous oxide also comes from car exhausts and any machinery that is fossil-fuelled.
Thus the Netherlands’ government drastically reduced permits for construction projects and this affected housing. Now, a reduced speed limit on motorways from 130kmh to 100kmh has brought sufficient reductions of N2O to allow permits for 75,000 new houses - giving a 'respite for the housing crisis'.
That last point brings us back home. The amount of oil we used declined during the oil crisis of the 1970s when speed limits were reduced. Car-free days were introduced - with limited success. But digital number plate recognition would make avoiding detection more difficult. We would shop less frequently, more children would walk to school, people would ride-share, and our N2O levels would be lower.
COP27 was a disaster. It destroyed hope for many who counted on the fossil fuel industry being brought to heal. The world is in those greedy hands and COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, will ensure it remains so.
Naomi Klein, whose book This Changes Everything opened the eyes of many people, has declared she will boycott COP28. Many will follow her example.
Three years ago at a public meeting organised by the Green Party in Whitianga, Jeanette said she saw “hope in the joy, creativity and determination of the Extinction Rebellion movement”.
We might not condone all of Extinction Rebellion’s creative actions but they express a sense of desperation most of us have difficulty acknowledging. This is what motivates me to stand at rush hour with a placard on the median strip of our local busy road. The numerous positive waves make it seem worthwhile.
