Kiwi scientists join climate chorus
Strong, swift actions on emissions urged to avoid calamitous effects of warming
The world has a fast-closing window to avoid calamitous climate-driven impacts that could displace hundreds of millions of people, while also wreaking havoc at home.
Leading Kiwi scientists have joined a global chorus in urging strong and swift action on emissions, after a landmark United Nations report warned the world has just a decade to limit future temperature rise to 1.5C.
Climate change threatens to bring more frequent and extreme storms, drought and reef-killing ocean acidification, and higher seas that could swamp low-lying coastal communities here and around the planet.
Two-thirds of Kiwis live in areas already prone to flooding, with hundreds of billions of dollars of property and infrastructure at risk.
The report, issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made it clear these impacts were already being felt — but the picture could be dramatically worse if nations were unable to make unprecedented cuts.
If warming continued at the current rate — heating up the planet by 0.2C each decade, and having already pushed temperatures 1C above preindustrial averages — the 1.5C threshold would be crossed at some point between 2030 and 2052.
To keep within that mark, CO2 emissions need to be halved over the next decade, while other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide would also need to be forced down.
If the 1.5C threshold could be held, the world could escape an extra 10cm of sea level rise.
If the world couldn’t hold the line, then the 2C threshold — the ultimate limit the Paris Agreement was built around — could be over-shot only around a decade later.
But even the difference between another 1.5C and 2C would be “earthshattering”, said Kiwi climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger.
“For example, coral reefs would
decline by 70 to 90 per cent with global warming of 1.5C, whereas virtually all would be lost with 2C,” he said.
“With a global average temperature rise by 2C above pre-industrial values, then around 400,000 of the species that we know could go extinct, the numbers for 1.5C would probably be about a third to half this.”
Without deep and unprecedented cuts to emissions now, the world would have fewer opportunities to develop sustainably, and be forced to rely increasingly on unproven, risky and possibly socially undesirable technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere in the future.
“But to avoid climate warming above 1.5C, we have to scale up action in unprecedented ways across all sectors of our economy and everyday life, over the next 10 years,” said the University of Canterbury’s Associate Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a lead author on the report.
“At the very least a world warmed above 1.5C has significant implications for New Zealand national adaptation planning.”
Methane — which makes up much of this country’s greenhouse gas inventory, and mostly sourced from agriculture — would have to halved globally by 2040, when CO2 must be about a quarter of its 2020 emissions.
The Government has yet to determine how or whether methane emissions will be dealt with under its Zero Carbon Act, but recent research found they’d have to be clawed back by nearly a quarter by mid-century to stop any extra global warming.
University of Victoria Wellington climate scientist Professor James Renwick said the report ultimately made a compelling case for rapid decarbonisation, starting now.
“If we want to save even a fraction of unique ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef, we cannot afford two degrees of global warming.”
Given the past trajectory of global emissions of greenhouse gases — nearly a doubling in the past 30 years — achieving the 1.5C mission represented “a truly heroic and unprecedented effort” to turn the global economy around, he said. “Are the Governments, the businesses, and the people of the world up to it?”
Thousands of groups have responded to the report by making impassioned pleas to Governments and business leaders.
“We already have first-degree burns from monster storms, devastating floods, and brutal droughts, and this is just the beginning,” said Oxfam New Zealand’s executive director, Rachael Le Mesurier.
For New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours, WWF-New Zealand senior campaigner David Tong said, climate change was happening now.
The Government has unveiled its plan to improve New Zealand’s waterways, promising a “noticeable improvement” in water quality within five years.
But some industry groups are worried about the pace of the plan and how farmers and irrigators will be impacted.
Environment Minister David Parker, along with Minister for Ma¯ori Crown Relations Kelvin Davis and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, launched the Government’s freshwater working programme in Parliament yesterday.
They are working towards a range of changes, including controls on the excesses of some intensive land use practices, making sure wetlands and estuaries are better protected and ensuring a focus on at-risk catchments.
The Resource Management Act (RMA) will also be amended within 12 months to enable regional councils to more quickly implement water quality and quantity limits.
“New rules will be in place by 2020 to stop the degradation of freshwater quality — a new National Policy Statement (NPS) for Freshwater Management and a new National Environmental Standard,” Parker said.
But Irrigation NZ Chairwoman Nicky Hyslop said 2020 was a long time to wait for policy certainty in this area.
“There are some concerns around whether there will be more changes around current regulations that will mean some of the exciting technology being invested in now to improve environmental footprints may be made redundant.”
Federated Farmers water quality spokesman Chris Allen said the fiveyear goal was “really ambitious.”
He said in the last 10 years, farmers had come “a huge way” when it came to water quality and the pace of work had been increasing.
Asked if the five-year target was a lofty goal, Parker said he was “confident within five years we will be seeing measurable progress.”
Public consultation on the programme will begin next year.