Quick! Save the planet
Despair isn’t the worst reaction to climate change. Complacency might be. Under an avalanche of foreboding news – sea-level rises, melting ice sheets, accelerating species extinction, heatwaves, ocean acidification – despair comes naturally.
The world’s best climate brains – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – recently laid out a new best-case scenario: with ‘‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’’ we might be able to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
Yet despite the alarming evidence of the need for urgent action, climate change still falls victim to a shrugging complacency. The forecasts feel too distant, a blase attitude seems preferable to fear, and even those who care can feel impotent.
Quick! Save the Planet – a long-term Stuff project launching today – aims to disturb our collective complacency. With insistent, inconvenient coverage, we intend to make the realities of climate change feel tangible – and unignorable.
This project accepts a statement that shouldn’t be controversial but somehow still is: climate change is real and caused by human activity.
Mature adults can disagree about the impact of climate change and how we should respond. We’ll feature a wide range of views as part of this project, but we won’t include climate change ‘‘scepticism’’. Including denialism wouldn’t be ‘‘balanced’’; it would be a dangerous waste of time. The experts have debunked denialism, so now we’ll move on.
I’m not speaking from the moral high ground. I’m a middle-class hypocrite. I’m worried about climate change but my family drive two cars, and you won’t catch me on a bike. I eat meat daily. I love international travel.
I’ve been too deaf to the warnings of the Cassandras, and like many Kiwis I need help navigating the required change.
New Zealand’s unique emissions profile – heavy on the methane, courtesy of all those cows – presents its own challenges. In some circles, there’s debate over whether the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions trumps methane emissions. That can’t be an excuse for inaction. The IPCC says to have any hope of keeping rises to only 1.5C, ‘‘deep reductions’’ in methane emissions are required on top of carbon dioxide emission reductions.
For some, climate change might even hold a secret appeal, based on the naive notion of gentler winters and more languid summer beach days. That fails to count the social, economic and political costs of climate change.
The price of global warming will appear in our food supply, our insurance premiums, our transport options, our access to water, and many other facets of everyday life. Some of those bills are already falling due – climate change is not a future threat; it’s a creeping villain already menacing New Zealand communities and our Pacific neighbours.
By 2018, our world has already been irreparably altered by human-induced climate change. For today’s children – those who could see out the end of the century – the prognosis is bleak. Will they blame us for our legacy, or can we give them reason to thank us?
Yet, there are causes for hope. Many New Zealanders – scientists, environmentalists, business leaders, farmers, technologists, activists – have already dedicated themselves to solutions. Our politicians are at the point where a productive cross-party consensus isn’t inconceivable.
Climate change has to be at the foreground of the national conversation. Quick! Save the Planet will contribute through original journalism and by providing a platform to amplify healthy debate. We’ll report the latest science on the local impacts of climate change; catalogue the tools available to mitigate the causes of global warming; examine how people, communities, businesses and governments are adapting; and discuss how individuals can make a difference – even those middle-class hypocrites like me.
Solving climate change – or at least averting cataclysm – isn’t as simple as planting more trees, eating less meat, and swapping your car for a Lime. Individuals can make a difference and inspire a ripple effect of change. But considering the scale of this problem, that won’t be anywhere near enough. We need systemic change that shifts communities, companies and countries.
The classic Kiwi ‘‘she’ll be right’’ attitude won’t serve us here. Without urgent and comprehensive action, she won’t be right. It’s past time to agree that we need to act, quickly, to save the planet.
For some, climate change might even hold a secret appeal, based on the naive notion of gentler winters and more languid summer beach days. That fails to count the social, economic and political costs of climate change.