Skara Bohny
Aplan for Nelson’s transport future was ‘‘virtually silent’’ on climate change policies, a submitter says.
Submitters to the Nelson City Council Regional Land Transport Plan brought their concerns to the council’s transport committee at an all-day hearing on Wednesday.
A number said the plan was too short-sighted, focusing on traffic congestion and cycling but giving little or no thought to bigger issues such as climate change.
Submitter David Jowett said New Zealand, in accordance with the Paris Agreement, had committed to being carbon-neutral by 2050, so planning for more traffic was counter-productive.
‘‘Transport emissions are around 20 per cent of the country’s total.
‘‘The implication is traffic volume reducing, means congestion ceases to be a problem, and the need for a new arterial route disappears,’’ he said.
In his written submission Jowett said the minimum reduction in emissions to meet the Paris Accord was 3 per cent per year from 2021 onwards. He suggested that by 2030, internal combustion engines would have to be entirely abandoned.
Jowett was unconvinced electric vehicles would be enough to solve the problem, as the carbon footprint of producing an electric vehicle was considerably greater than that of an average petrol car, and if the electricity used to power the car came from fossil fuels then the cars ‘‘could not be considered green’’.
Rob Stevenson, representing the Tahunanui Business Association, spoke in support of the Southern Link, and cited the resilience, or lack thereof, of Rocks Road in storms.
He said there had been three major storms this summer, and in each of them the sea crossed ‘‘well over’’ the road.
‘‘Tropical revolving storms get their energy from warm seas, New Zealand is very vulnerable to them. The world is getting warmer and we are likely to get more of those events,’’ he said.
‘‘You need to take into account these events and the effect they will have.’’
Lindsay Wood, of Braemar Eco Village, said the plan ‘‘falls a long way short on climate change’’.
What coverage there was for climate change focused on resilience, which Wood likened to having an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.
‘‘Resilience is what you need when your system fails,’’ he said.
He urged councillors to include plans for mitigating climate change, and adapting ahead of time to predicted effects. He said these were widely accepted as the first steps that needed to be taken to address changes to the environment, but the plan was ‘‘virtually silent’’ on those fronts.
‘‘It ignores the two first priorities and gives a little bit of attention to resilience,’’ he said.
He said the plan also ignored the council’s own Nelson 2060 strategy, as it did nothing to address the goal to stop using fossil fuel.
‘‘Transport in cities is the make or break in climate change ... [the plan’s] emphasis should be on getting started, not waiting for it to be perfect.’’
Wood said leaving climate change out of the plan made everyone ‘‘duffers’’.
‘‘It makes us all climate change duffers; me, with respect the mayor, and the councillors, and the officers, and the are all failing,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s big stuff, this climate change thing, you can’t just say you’ll get to it later or you don’t need to attend it.’’
This summer was the hottest on record in New Zealand, which has been attributed primarily to the effects of climate change. The hottest month of record, January, was 3.1C hotter than average.
Statistics New Zealand shows
Critics say a plan for Nelson’s transport future lacks vital elements. reports.
that, in 2015, road vehicles produced 37 per cent of all carbon emissions.
To achieve carbon neutrality, those emissions must either be offset, or stop.
The Paris Agreement stipulates that keeping the global temperature increase below 1.5°C would ‘‘significantly reduce the risk and impact of climate change’’ –
The risks for the Nelson region, as predicted by the Ministry for the Environment, include potential increased coastal erosion and inundation, increased storminess and sea-level rise, and more frequent droughts.
Nelson resident Jenny Easton said any major infrastructure should last for 100 years or more, so it was important to get it right.
She brought maps produced from Nelson City Council data demonstrating predicted flooding patterns for a ‘‘once-in-100-year’’ event, which showed central Nelson from Hastings Street to North Rd at risk of flood even at ‘‘sunny day inundation’’ levels in the year 2100.
‘‘We have to stop discounting future events and overreacting to current events,’’ Easton said. ‘‘I think the council needs to think about how the city will change over the next 100 years before finishing the transport plan, which includes planning for which areas need to be retreated from and which should be defended for a time.’’
She called for the council to be ‘‘prudent, proactive, and precautionary’’ in their planning.