The scientists have done their jobs with their stark warning on climate change, now it is up to all of us individually and collectively to act, writes Rod Oram
Humanity knows how to prevent the climate crisis it has created. But its response so far is grossly inadequate and utterly irresponsible. The chasm between what we must do and what we are actually doing is vast and deadly.
We can’t delay or dodge for a moment longer. Scientists tell us this is the very last moment we can act to prevent the climate crisis escalating out of control. Starting right now we must slash our greenhouse gas emissions aggressively, rapidly, and widely to get to net zero emissions within a generation.
If we don’t, the irreversible damage we are causing to the climate will make life increasingly worse for all of us; and for the rest of nature, which is quite simply our life-support system.
This is the stark verdict of the United Nations in its latest scientific assessment of our climate crisis. “This is hell and highwater writ large,” said Dave Reay, a climatologist at Edinburgh University.
But much of humanity is using its usual excuses for inaction. Crucially we still see this narrowly as a climate problem. We believe it will only affect some aspects of our lives. We are carrying on the best we can, hoping we’ll suffer less than others. As individuals, we excuse ourselves as inconsequential. Instead, we argue its big emitters, big countries that must clean up their act.
Above all, we have yet to grasp the truth. This crisis will affect everything in the life of every one of us. So, we must make every aspect of our lives climate compatible. Then collectively we will minimise the damage we’re doing to the planet, and together we will improve our well-being.
There are many reasons we’re failing to act. For example, the crisis seems so hard and complicated; vested interests keep fighting against change, as this recent report on oil and gas companies by InfluenceMap, a British NGO, shows; and there is a tsunami of false or deceptive information from many other organisations.
Now there is absolutely no doubt about the science and evidence of the climate crisis, such hostile forces are attacking instead the economics of the solutions.
Last month, for example, some UK organisations opposed to climate action picked up on one figure in the report by the government’s Office of Budget Responsibility. They argued its £1.4 trillion ($2.8 trillion) estimate of the investment needed in the UK to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 was ruinously expensive and impractical.
But that was only the gross investment cost. It did not include the economic gains generated by the likes of business activity, jobs, wages and profits. Even just counting fuel savings reduced the OBR’s net cost estimate by 75 percent to less than 0.4 per cent of GDP a year. Even then, the OBR didn’t include the enormous cost of not acting to reduce the damage caused by floods, droughts, heatwaves, premature deaths and other mayhem.
The fullest analysis yet has come from the UK’s Climate Change Committee, the statutory oversight body equivalent to our Climate Change Commission. It estimated the cost of getting to net zero by 2050 would mean a mere four-month delay in economic growth over 30 years, even without considering the wider benefits to society.
Given the alternative of climate chaos, “I would argue we can’t afford not to do net zero,” Chris Stark, the climate committee’s chief executive, said.
There is only one way we will overcome this deadly inertia. Each of us must get involved. The best way is to take responsibility for our carbon footprint and chip away at it. If we each achieve an 8 percent a year reduction, we’ll halve our personal footprints by 2030, a crucial milestone on the way to net zero. The more we learn about low-carbon choices, the more encouraged we are to act and the more we benefit.
The easy way for us to start here in New Zealand is with personal and household carbon calculators and emissions reduction advice offered free online by the likes of Toitu Envirocare, part of Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute, and Gen Less, part of the government’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. And an excellent NZ app to helps us make low carbon consumer choices is Connecting Good.
Each of us can make only an infinitesimally small contribution to New Zealand’s emissions reductions. But collectively as citizens we can make significant cuts. Far more importantly, we can encourage others to act among our families and friends, and in our neighbourhoods, workplaces, social and other places we gather.
Then together, we must urge our businesses and politicians to act very boldly on climate, and work with them to deliver on the climate goals we must achieve as a country.
We’re only a tiny nation by population. But there are plenty of like minded people and organisations for us to reach out to in countries around the world. Together we can overcome the naysayers, the agents of despair, and the self-serving preservers of the status quo.
It makes absolutely no sense to do little or nothing in the coming years then turn round a decade from now and say we wished we’d acted sooner or boldly. It will be far too late then. We have no excuses. We know exactly what we must do now.
This week, the UN’s report made that starkly clear.
And the message was reinforced by many others too. For example, Dr Stephen Cornelius, chief advisor on climate change at the World Wildlife Fund said:
"With the world on the brink of irreversible harm, every fraction of a degree of warming matters to limit the dangers of climate change. It is clear that keeping global warming to 1.5C is hugely challenging and can only be done if urgent action is taken globally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect and restore nature."
We must be completely clear the responsibility to act lies with us; and not with the scientists who write UN reports or advise us in other ways.
As Gus Speth, a former head of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, founder of the World Resources Council and head of the United Nations Development Programme 1993-99, said in a BBC radio programme in 2013:
“I used to think that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
