Where is climate change’s ‘urgent’ action?
ANALYSIS: There were only 100 months to go until the 2030 deadline when Auckland Council pledged to halve carbon emissions, and achieve a 64% cut in transport pollution.
‘‘Urgent and innovative change’’ was needed, said council officials. All levers needed to be pulled.
That was 18 months ago. Now only 82 months remain. The latest data shows the country’s transport emissions are rising, and the council’s supposed transport blueprint remains behind closed doors at Auckland Transport (AT).
Eight months after that December 2021 council meeting, councillors signed off the Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway (TERP), giving AT six months (until February 2023) to devise an implementation plan of the measures required for at least the first two years.
The goal is ambitious. It involves halving the distance collectively driven by Aucklanders, and a nine-fold increase in public transport patronage, from the levels at the time.
Since then, Wayne Brown was elected mayor – and he has little apparently interest in emissions reduction. He has told AT to do what it can with TERP, within its available funding, which will be cut from July.
Ironically, much of his focus has become dealing with the aftermath of disastrous, fatal, flooding – which he acknowledged was a consequence of climate change.
Brown has publicly questioned, in a Ponsonby News column, the point of trying to avert global warming, writing: ‘‘Vain attempts to fend [climate change] off with hopeful cycling projects are probably a bit late now.’’
Jenny Chetwynd, AT’s executive general manager of planning and investment, said the agency board remained absolutely committed to TERP. However, in outlining how and when it would re-emerge, it is clear many things have changed.
AT is digesting the impact of a proposed $25 million funding cut; the mayor’s message to do TERP within available funding; and the political shift since August 2022 when the previous council and two members of the Independent
Māori Statutory Board voted unanimously to push on with TERP, though four recorded opposition to some of the 11 actions, such coming up with a plan for the first two years.
Chetwynd said the agency was pressing on with completing existing projects in the Regional Land Transport Plan, and evaluating the impact of those on emissions – a stocktake – before new initiatives.
Councillor Richard Hills, who continues under Brown to chair the committee responsible for climate action, said: ‘‘All of what AT is supposed to be doing is on hold or up in the air.’’
AT’s former pro-climate chairwoman Adrienne YoungCooper heeded Brown’s election call for all the directors to go, and quit. Dean Kimpton, an 18-month chief executive has been appointed, and warned that cycling projects will continue, but not the large-scale big-ticket ones beyond those already committed.
Hills doesn’t believe Auckland’s agreed direction is out of line with government policies still in the pipeline, or with what numerous overseas cities are doing, and said Brown had told him he supported TERP.
‘‘I’m concerned there is some kind of climate denial happening in the organisation [AT],’’ he said.
AT’s board considered TERP in confidence at its last meeting and sent it away for more work by the end of May. If it gets the all clear, it will surface at the council’s transport committee in mid-June, by which time the council’s 2023-24 budget will be all but finalised.
AT is looking for clear and strong direction from its political governors, and preferably money – and it is unclear whether either will be forthcoming
Years of saying the right thing about climate action and being part of a global club of climate cities hangs in the balance in the coming months, which could decide whether urgent action has become a ‘‘nice to have’’.