If temperatures keep rising ...
Understanding the full impact of our changing climate three decades from now is one of the obstacles to action. In this news report from the future, Harrison Christian details our predicament, as outlined by volumes of research and expert interviews.
Tent cities overflowing with refugees. Quarantine officers combing the ports for mosquitos. Wildfires burning in the heartland.
New Zealand in 2050 is a country divided, with state resources stretched across many fronts.
In a campaign speech today, the prime minister called for an end to civil unrest, and blamed economic woes on the complacency of previous governments.
But critics say the speech failed to mention the root cause of society’s problems.
The world has not reached its target of net zero emissions this year; the failure has led to average temperatures rising by 2 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times.
An agreement was reached to reduce emissions decades ago, but it was impossible to enforce, and countries differed over what metrics to use when tracking global warming.
Leaders were scared of the economic repercussions of taxing carbon, and the fossil fuel industry put all its political power behind disinformation campaigns to confuse the debate.
Developing countries were reluctant to act, blaming the developed world for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions over the 20th century.
Besides, they couldn’t pivot to renewable energy technology without considerable aid from wealthier countries, which never came.
The 2C increase has been enough to cripple the economy and cast uncertainty on our place in a volatile world.
Drought in agriculturalproducing nations like the US has driven up the price of food. The world is looking to New Zealand to produce wheat and other grain crops.
The country is under intense migration pressure, an issue that has polarised voters and led to the opposition calling for an end to our status as a ‘‘life raft nation’’.
Mortality rates are rising, as infants and the elderly succumb to the mosquito-borne virus dengue fever, and antibioticresistant outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli.
The country appears to be failing in its traditional role as a ‘‘steward of the Pacific’’, as politicians scramble to put out fires in our own backyard.
But where one fire is subdued, be it in immigration, health or defence, another seems to spring up just as quickly.
The prospects of the average Kiwi family are defined by these circumstances: high food prices, poor health outcomes, and a strain on social services. Our most vulnerable populations pay the biggest price.
Climate migration a fiery issue
A political rally turned violent last night as the opposition promised to renege on a deal to accept thousands of climate migrants.
The new arrivals, who begin their resettlement at centres in Auckland, Wellington and Otago, were singled out as responsible for rising unemployment and other social ills.
But international critics labelled the remarks ‘‘Trumpian’’ – harking back to the United States president’s hard line on immigration three decades ago – and urged New Zealand to keep its borders open. Climate migrants come mainly from Australia, which is battling drought and mosquito-borne disease; Pacific nations like Kiribati, now half-submerged in rising seas; and Bangladesh, where millions of people have been displaced.
Also vying for climate migrant status in New Zealand are refugees from failed states, and from countries that have descended into resource wars, such as India and Pakistan.
New Zealand is viewed as a lifeline in parts of the world where the direct impacts of climate change have been more acute. The country is relatively safe and stable, and still producing food.
But on arrival, refugees say they have few economic prospects here other than seasonal crop work, and our social system is ill-equipped to help them.
Internal migration from coastal towns is adding to the pressure on big cities.
Since 2020, sea-levels have risen by 30cm. It means an additional 27,000 people and buildings with a replacement value of $6b are exposed to extreme coastal flooding; that is, a one-in-100-year flooding event which typically occurs when a storm surge arrives on a high tide.
Sea-levels are expected to have risen by a further 70cm in 40 years’ time.
The worst-affected area is Canterbury, specifically Christchurch city, which has more people and buildings exposed to extreme coastal flooding than any other area.
Health sector overwhelmed
The opposition has refused to walk back comments linking climate change migrants to tropical disease, despite a consensus from the medical community that the spread of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in New Zealand was made possible by warmer temperatures.
In fact, evidence suggests the mosquito arrived on our shores from Australia, the first in a chain reaction of developed countries now working to eradicate dengue fever and Ross River virus.
Health is an especially fraught issue in in the regions, where small towns have been hit by successive bouts of bacterial contamination in freshwater sources.
The opposition has promised a boost for the sector, saying a combination of warmer temperatures and antibiotic resistance created a ‘‘perfect storm’’ for disease and malnutrition.
It also vowed to introduce mandatory dengue fever vaccinations for children, and to move the country’s main port from Tauranga to Dunedin, where it’s believed lower temperatures will inhibit other pests from becoming established.
Heartland needs help
In the regions, farmers say they’re dealing with water shortages and extreme weather with little government aid.
Farms in eastern parts of the North and South islands are hardest hit by drought and wildfires. The country still has wet winters, but the hot season is longer, now running from October to April.
This year, thousands of firefighters battled a scrub fire in Hawke’s Bay that burned for more than a week, with thousands of residents evacuated.
Elsewhere, flooding and animal disease have hindered dairy production.
Seasonal grain workers, many of them migrants, move from one town to the next without stable employment, and complain of boarding houses infested with disease-carrying pests.
Cities grind to a halt
The opposition is polling well with urban New Zealanders, who feel the government’s response to transport and logistical issues has been lacklustre.
The clean-up after ex-Tropical Cyclone Samantha in Auckland last year was singled out as an example of poorly organised civil response.
Because of warmer ocean temperatures, the storms that reach New Zealand from the tropics are more intense.
Power lines were left in tangled heaps and houses were razed, while coastal flooding shut roadways and caused whole suburbs to be evacuated.
Civil authorities said they struggled to respond because large parts of the transport network were inaccessible.
For days afterwards, roadways remained flooded and some families were without power, water and food.
Worse still was the health risk posed by the standing water left behind from the downpours, which renewed fears of a dengue fever outbreak in New Zealand’s most populous city.
Violence in the capital
Police in riot gear dispersed thousands of protesters in downtown Wellington this week. Demonstrators accused the opposition of trying to usher in a
new era of protectionism and xenophobia.
Many of the people involved in skirmishes with police were student activists, who feel they have inherited a broken New Zealand through the inaction of past generations.
It comes after human rights organisations condemned New Zealand for failing to preserve the language and culture of climate change migrants, with conditions in relocation camps described as ‘‘cultural genocide’’.
Meanwhile, police attempts to curb illegal tent cities have been likened to the dawn raids in the 1970s, when a government bid to crack down on illegal immigration resulted in brutal treatment of Pasifika families.
Defenders say a perception of the camps as hotbeds of crime has been deliberately stoked by politicians in an election year. Residents in the camps are mainly migrant families and their children.
But the government argues it’s trying to clean up the illegal camps so it can focus on consolidating New Zealand’s position in the new global order.
There are concerns our Defence Force has been ‘‘missing in action’’, delivering aid to Pacific nations while foreign vessels poach fish stocks with impunity, drawn here by changing fish migration patterns.
The world’s oceans are in poor condition, after some countries made unilateral decisions to seed them with iron filings.
The geo-engineering projects were aimed at turning the ocean into a carbon sink, in a last-ditch effort to curb warmer temperatures. But they had the opposite effect, and caused a mass extinction event.
Where to from here
It’s hoped this year’s election won’t be disrupted by violent protests of the kind seen in the capital this week. Leaders from both parties are promising to restore calm and crack down on crime.
Police say they have zero tolerance for raids on bolthole communities in the South Island, where international billionaires are reportedly stockpiling resources.
The prime minister blamed tensions on a gap between lowincome families and a small percentage of ‘‘climate profiteers’’ who run risk management and consultancy firms.
There’s a growing tendency for the country’s wealthy to live in gated communities with private security, a stark reminder of the class divide.
An incoming government will be under pressure from day one, with no shortage of crises to address.
The question is, what further impacts await New Zealand as temperatures keep rising, and can our democratic systems withstand them?
This account is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s forecast of a more than 1.5C rise in average world temperatures if net emissions aren’t halved by 2030 and reduced to net zero by 2050. Stuff also interviewed these experts: Niwa climate scientist Petra Pearce, Victoria University climate scientist James Renwick, Victoria University senior research fellow Judy Lawrence, Victoria University lecturer Jonathan Oosterman, Auckland University associate professor Siouxie Wiles and Lincoln University associate professor Anita Wreford.