MP’s ‘moderate’ climate call
Nelson MP Nick Smith says he is focused on climate change, but has told people to ‘‘beware of rhetoric getting ahead of the reality’’.
Smith’s annual speech on Wednesday was a wide-ranging one, including as his ‘‘top priority’’ getting a new hospital for Nelson, followed by improved transport via the Southern Link, and education goals like retaining regional control of NMIT.
However, climate change was the main topic of the day, and Smith said he was mostly focused on a ‘‘moderate’’ message.
‘‘Climate change is a real problem, but I am not in the apocalypse camp.’’
He said that greenhouse gas emissions had over the past 100 years increased global temperatures by 0.7 degrees Celsius and increased sea levels by 19 centimetres, but ‘‘these numbers are not particularly scary’’.
‘‘The bigger concern is what will occur in future, on which there is some uncertainty . . . New Zealand needs to deliver on its Paris commitment of a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, and that this is going to be a big ask,’’ he said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that human-induced warming reached between 0.8C and 1.2C higher than preindustrial temperatures in 2017, and is likely to reach 1.5C higher between 2030 and 2052 if no intervention is made.
Despite his ‘‘moderate’’ approach, Smith said New Zealand’s politics were largely aligned on climate change, including the dedication to a 30 per cent reduction in emissions.
‘‘There are now no parties in Parliament seriously questioning the climate change science. The Government and National are now agreed on New Zealand’s minus 30 by 2030 target,’’ he said.
‘‘There will be a lot of hot air through this election year on climate change, but if you peel back the rhetoric, there is much common ground.’’
Climate Change Commission
Committee member and climate scientist Victoria University Professor James Renwick said it was ‘‘not true’’ that global temperatures had risen by only 0.7C in 100 years, and the global average rise in temperature was now about 1.1C.
He also said the important context for the change was how much even an apparently small change in global temperature could make.
‘‘A whole degree of warming over that period of time is very large. The difference between the sort of weather we’ve got now and the depths of the last ice age is only about 5 or 6 degrees globally. So one degree of warming is about a sixth of the difference between ice age and not ice age – it’s a huge number.’’
Renwick said temperatures now were ‘‘the warmest they’ve been for well over a thousand years’’.
Sea levels – which have risen both because glacial meltwater has increased the amount of water in the ocean, and because warm water is less dense and takes up more space than cold water – was already concerning, he said.
The IPCC found that between 1901 and 2010, the global sea level rose by 19cm, at a mean rate of 1.7 millimetres a year. However, the rate was ‘‘very likely higher’’ between 1993 and 2010 than the mean, at 3.2mm per year. In other words, the sea level has risen, is continuing to rise, and is rising faster than it was before.
‘‘One hundred years ago, global sea levels were going up at about 1mm per year, and now they’re going up by somewhere between 3.5 and 4mm per year, so there’s been at least a tripling of the rate of rise, and that’s just going to keep going up,’’ Renwick said.
He said the rise of 19cm had ‘‘already multiplied coastal hazards by a factor of nine’’, and predicted increases in sea level would increase this by ‘‘at least a factor of 27 or 30 in the next 30-40 years’’.
‘‘These are real, concerning numbers. It’s not innocuous.’’
‘‘New Zealand needs to deliver on its Paris commitment of a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, and that this is going to be a big ask.’’
Nick Smith, Nelson MP