Climate adaptation crisis: From erosion prevention to new ports

This piece was originally published in The Post as part of a series on six crises facing New Zealand.

The climate is changing, more quickly and sooner than many of us might have believed. What makes the changing climate a crisis is the immediate impact weather has on how we live our lives and earn a living. For ten thousand years settled agriculture has depended on relative stability and predictability of weather. The ability to grow grain and grass has determined where we live, how populous and prosperous we became and underpinned the rise and fall of empires.

Small changes in average worldwide temperatures hide the dramatically larger changes in local weather patterns that are now occurring. Climate change shows up as more frequent and more extreme local weather. Humanity faces a crisis because of the speed and impact of changing weather on food production, and on where we can live. People are on the move, land use is changing and that means we must adapt.

Addressing adaptation

Adaptation means change, and change threatens established systems, including distributions of wealth, power and privilege. There is no possibility that all the costs and losses caused by more frequent and extreme weather events can be covered by tax payers, rate payers or insurers. Inevitably those causing the losses will be expected to contribute to costs and losses.

Adapting to the changing climate will require increased spending on erosion prevention and recovery, increased investment in infrastructure to manage inundation from rainfall, river flows, fluctuating lake levels, tidal surges and sea level rise. Increased investment to strengthen electricity distribution networks, irrigation systems, roads, railway lines, bridges and ports. Low lying schools, hospitals and other public service infrastructure will need to be protected or relocated or replaced when lost. Insurance for weather related losses will become less available and more expensive.

If institutional arrangements are unable to anticipate, plan for and implement pre-emptive change, then change will be more chaotic, more disruptive, losses more random, and households and livelihoods more insecure.

Vested interests

While most of us resist change because of the uncertainty and risk we see in changing from what we know, there are some with vested interests in denying the need for change or mounting arguments for delay. In accepting the need for change, we want to understand what the cause of that need is. And that root cause is clear. The increasing abundance of certain types of gases in the air traps more heat on the surface of the planet. One of those gases is carbon dioxide. The civilisation we have built over the past 200 years has been enabled by the combustion of fossil fuels- coal, oil, and fossil gas. The energy produced by burning fossil carbon in the open air has built our cities, powers our transport systems, heats our homes, powers our industries directly and through the generation of steam to make turbines spin to generate electricity. At USD$100 per barrel of oil, the world’s proven oil reserves have a value of USD$150 trillion, about the same value as all the shares listed on all the world’s stock exchanges.

The owners of those reserves have a vested interest in denying that the climate is changing, that a contributing cause is the combustion of fossil fuels in the open air or that there is anything we need to, or can do to change. Admitting the cause and accepting the consequence exposes the fossil fuel industry to a significant liability for past actions as well as the loss of future value. Half the proven oil reserves are directly or indirectly owned by sovereign states or their political elites.

But it is clear that while we must adapt to the climate change already baked in, we must attack the root cause of climate change - or adaptation becomes ever more expensive, damage to the environment becomes irreversible, and social structures are overwhelmed by migration, starvation, and deprivation.

Energy transition

That is why, along with adaptation, the energy transition is essential. ‘Decarbonisation through electrification’ Is a technologically proven, economically affordable and immediately available pathway for New Zealand to use wind, solar, hydro and geothermal generation, along with lakes and batteries, to gain energy sovereignty, reducing our vulnerability to long supply chains we cannot protect, and volatile energy prices we can never control. All the technologies we need to eliminate fossil fuels from home space and hot water heating and light vehicle propulsion, and for medium and low temperature heat in business, are available now.

An all-electric New Zealand household with an EV has a total household energy bill thousands of dollars a year less than a household burning fossil gas and driving a car with an internal combustion engine. The coalition government claims to be helpless in the face of global energy prices and their impact on the cost of living, but its policies have meant thousands fewer kiwi households went electric in the past three years than was likely under policies they revoked. It’s hard to explain those policies on the energy transition other than some of combination of complacency, capture, and even corruption. Complacency includes the assumption markets will get it sorted or new technologies will arrive just in time. Capture arises when stakeholders with vested interests win the ear of elected leaders persuading politicians to ignore evidence and expert advice that threatens their interest. Corruption is the use of public office to promote a vested interest in exchange for political support, financial gain or personal privilege.

The climate is changing; we know its causes, and we need to stop the cause as much as possible, as soon as possible. We need to adapt to the changing climate. We are not helpless, neither is the quest for a just transition hopeless. New Zealand has a pathway to energy sovereignty that is in our own self interest to pursue at pace. Those with vested interests in the status quo deny, obfuscate and delay the transition, making that transition more disruptive, costlier, and riskier, especially for vulnerable people, communities and small businesses. New Zealand will be better off if we get off fossil gas, reduce oil imports and move away from lifestyles and livelihoods that depend on high emissions of greenhouse gases.

Addressing adaptation and advancing the energy transition are in our national interest.

Rod Carr is a former chairperson of the Climate Change Commission. This opinion piece is based on his chapter in the Helen Clark Foundation's latest book, Facing Up to Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand.