Emissions worse under RiverLink
This year it will be exciting to see RiverLink programme kick into gear. RiverLink includes a climate resilience programme with flood protection designed to withstand a 1-in-440-year flood in the year 2120.
With future sea-level rise and more intense rainfall baked in, that translates to as much as a 1-in-60,000-year flood in the present day.
It is remarkable to see government thinking stretch 100 years into the future and respond through funding, consenting and soon into physical earthworks.
This is highly commendable. Equally remarkable, but considerably less commendable, is the other side of the climate coin – actually emitting less carbon dioxide to begin with.
This has fallen entirely by the wayside in RiverLink’s planning and design process.
The agencies delivering RiverLink each have clear policies to reduce emissions. That should be reassuring. The major source of emissions in Lower Hutt is transport, representing most of our emissions (56%) in 2019.
Reducing emissions therefore means moving quickly away from the embedded car dependence that has characterised our city for all my lifetime.
We’ll collectively need to make about 20 to 30% fewer trips by car within the next decade (called ‘‘mode shift’’), even after transitioning to EVs as fast as we can.
Now RiverLink is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in recreating the transport network – roads, railway, buses, walking and cycling – for the whole of the central Hutt in what will undoubtedly be the largest transport spend in our city this decade.
However, RiverLink’s modelling shows that RiverLink will result in higher emissions and higher vehicle volumes!
This is why RiverLink is such a bittersweet offering – what should by all measures be great climate news is something else entirely.
In the Environment Court the RiverLink team even argued that mode shift was neither an aim nor something they were required to consider.
The judge and commissioners disagreed, stating that, ‘‘We cannot agree with that view . . . taking all reasonable steps to increase mode share is an important factor’’.
Further, completely contradicting their argument in court, the Hutt City Council’s Carbon Reduction Plan states that transport mode shift is a key aim of RiverLink.
Someone has not joined the dots.
It’s straight off an episode of Yes Minister.
It is bitterly disappointing that nearly four years after having declared a Climate Emergency our public agencies continue to invest nine-figure sums into projects which they themselves say will increase emissions, running directly counter to their own policy.
So, what do we need? We need leadership and some honest conversations.
This will be hard at times and involve transformative – in the council’s own words – change.
This is not about someone else doing the heavy lifting.
People want to be good ancestors and do the right thing in their personal lives but collectively we’ve got to get the system right to support that. We cannot let RiverLink be a missed opportunity to do so.