So the new government, further endearing itself to the letter-writing Ayn Randians in the audience, has announced major cuts in the Environment Ministry. Initially signalled at being about two dozen jobs gone, but at a meeting of Ministry staff yesterday the message was that up to 86 of the 300 staff would go.
That translates to major cuts to enviro programmes, particularly public recycling bins and a support and advice service for households becoming enviro-friendly. A political point is being made in publicaly repudiating the Labout government initiative to makethe public service move towards carbon neutrality; Nick Smith said “I’ve heard awful stories of senior public servants … spending an hour on how they might reorganise their rubbish.” Well, Nick, those guys must have been morons because I had a desk in the public service when that change came in and the extra demand it placed on workers was about the same as asking people to clean up after themselves when they used the staff kitchen. It was a non-issue in terms of productivity, but it was really important as a proof-of-concept that simple changes in an institution could have big consequences for the enviro footprint. Axing this programme is just petty.
But what scares me the most is this: Prime Minister John Key said yesterday that the Government had its own plans for home insulation and the ministry’s scheme did not fit within that.
Somehow I think this home insulation plan is not going to help NZ improve its shockingly poor housing stock. A huge chunk of NZ’s energy use, and hence its carbon footprint and Kyoto costs, comes from home heating; our housing stock has suffered from decades of poor regulation that means it costs a huge amount to keep an internal temperature at a healthy level. This is a really important issue in terms of health and environment both, and I can’t see any solution springing from the Nat cabinet that will deliver the kind of change we need.
Overall, things do not look promising for us, environment-wise. How unfortunate that our major trading partners finally start getting their acts together in this area just as we start to tear up the work we’ve already done.
Category: Sustainability
Climate Change Committee: Submit!
Okay, it’s not the climate change committee, its the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee. But those terms of reference mean those in denial about climate change will be out in force, trying to convince the committee not to do anything rash because, after all, people who think anthropogenic climate change is real are just crazy religious fanatics really.
That’s why it’s a good idea to submit. You don’t need to have the kind of detailed opinions about the relative merits of carbon tax vs. ETS that, say, Idiot/Savant or Gareth Renowden might muster. All you need is a conviction that something should be done. There will be lots of submitters following Rodney’s lead with cranky claims that we should sit back and let things go on their merry way; for a good result in this committee, we have to match that with ordinary Kiwi voices saying “Oi! We need to sort this!”
I just posted my submission off ten minutes ago, and now I get home and find (via NRT) they’ve pushed the deadline out another two weeks.
So that means you can do something too. My main points were:
* get it done. John Key has promised it’ll have a scheme in place by Jan 2010; stick to this deadline.
* risk management common sense is that we should be prudent in the face of uncertainty, i.e. we need to be working with negative scenarios, not best-case scenarios;
* don’t get too focused on NZ’s economy and competitive situation, because climate change will shake everything up; a global frame is required.
Take a few minutes to tap a few lines, print, put in envelope, send. Postage is free to Parliament, remember. There’ll be two weeks worth of extra crank letters; consider being part of the two weeks of extra sanity.
Australia and the future
Every time I look at a news outlet I am horrified by what’s going on in Victoria. Wild fires destroying whole communities and leaving hundreds of people dead – this is incredible and deeply disturbing. I truly hope that the local police are wrong, and these fires weren’t deliberately lit. If this was all the result of a thoughtless – let alone malicious – action by a person, I will be even more upset than I already am.
Of course, I can’t help but view these events through the lens of global climate change. While it is impossible to say something simplistic like “global warming caused these fires”, it is entirely true that climate change is shifting the ecological balance so events like this will be more likely. See also the floods elsewhere in Australia; more extreme events like this are our shared future.
I still strongly advocate personal change and personal responsibility for one’s carbon footprint, but it is increasingly clear that there isn’t time for leadership to grow from the grassroots. There needs to be a political shift, and a rapid one. Paradoxically, I think that might best be achieved by personal change and personal responsibility. We don’t have time to create new leaders out of our communities, but if we change the communities around our leaders then hopefully they will take the hint.
Ethel bounced this link at me the other day – the Toronto Star writing on the exact field I spent the last 18 months working on for my masters, about deploying social norms to facilitate change. Notably, that linked to Canada’s One Million Acts of Green network, which came on the scene only 3 months ago and has already achieved its target. This is not an impossible task; we can change in time to avoid disaster. But we all need to take some responsibility, more than we currently have, even folk like me who already flatter themselves with their green credentials.
That’s kind of intimidating, but it’s empowering too. Back in the 80s when I was a schoolkid and nuclear war was the unspoken baseline fear under all our media, all our politics? That was worse, because all we could do was look at the lines on the maps and pray. This time we can do much more. And because of that, we have to.
Monbiot on Marshall on Climate Change
In his fascinating book Carbon Detox, George Marshall argues that people are not persuaded by information(15). Our views are formed by the views of the people with whom we mix. Of the narratives that might penetrate these circles, we are more likely to listen to those which offer us some reward. A story which tells us that the world is cooking and that we’ll have to make sacrifices for the sake of future generations is less likely to be accepted than the more rewarding idea that climate change is a conspiracy hatched by scheming governments and venal scientists, and that strong, independent-minded people should unite to defend their freedoms.
He proposes that instead of arguing for sacrifice, environmentalists should show where the rewards might lie: that understanding what the science is saying and planning accordingly is the smart thing to do, which will protect your interests more effectively than flinging abuse at scientists. We should emphasise the old-fashioned virtues of uniting in the face of a crisis, of resourcefulness and community action. Projects like the transition towns network and proposals for a green new deal tell a story which people are more willing to hear.
George Monbiot column: “A beardful of bunkum”
Meanwhile, the Don’t Be A Rodney campaign has ended. A bunch of letters got sent. My feeling is they did have an effect, in that John key has clearly given a quiet steer to committee chair Peter Dunne to slap down Rodney’s nonsense. Ultimately, though, we have to wait and see how it goes down.
Climate change at STS forum
On 20 November I went along to see the dean of the science fac here at VUW, Prof. David Bibby, speak about his visit to the Science and Technology Forum in Kyoto and the climate change discussion there.
Some notes from what he reported:
- No debate whatsoever about whether climate change was real and caused by human activity. 2 degrees of warming was seen as guaranteed, again without dispute.
- Needs to be a complete systems change to bring about deep, deep cuts in carbon emissions. The upcoming (2009) Copenhagen conference was seen as the crucial moment by delegates.
- Nuclear power was talked about as a done deal by delegates – there was no discussion, it is seen as necessary for baseload power. This means there needs to be massive reinvestment in this technology. (I find myself oddly sanguine about the potential shift to nuclear – my perception of the risks and damage of nuclear power is unchanged, but it is now very clear that conventional power generation is even riskier and more damaging.)
- Carbon capture technology was seen as about 20+ years away from viability, tidal and 2nd gen biofuels tech about 10-20 years away, but wind, photovoltaic etc sources are available and viable now
- Related: there is a serious choke point coming where we have to stop using current tech but switchover to new tech is incomplete – seen to be about 2030 to 2050. This will be a rough time.
- A key issue will be poverty, which will skyrocket as oil price rises make food expensive, exacerbated by first-gen biofuels which also drive up food price
- Disease will be another key issue – tropical diseases will invade the temperate world, but almost all medical drugs are for temperate-world diseases because that is where the research/development money has been over the years. (Basically, our failure to distribute our medical expertise evenly around the world is about to bite us in the arse.)
(check out the STS final statement here – it’s a small pdf)
The STS recommendations don’t carry any particular weight – basically they feed into the general conversation. Still, it is encouraging that heavyweights in the science and tech fields are united around the need for radical changes to enable environmental security. (Also, kinda scary.)
I sent a letter
Don’t be a Rodney!
That conversation last week went somewhere:
Don’t be a Rodney, John Key!*
I’m a believer in the power of paper. This is a campaign to get people writing letters to John Key, telling him to put Rodney’s barmy climate denialism in its place, and get NZ up to speed on its climate change obligations. Write a letter. Bureaucracies run on paper; governments are bureaucracies; therefore paper works.
Thanks to the circle of advisers and geniuses and busy bees who helped pull it together – you know who you are.
Anyway. That’s what I did last night! So if you’re a Kiwi, make with the clicky and see why you should write a letter.
* also available in Facebook
Participating in democracy
Democracy ensures that there are levers waiting to be pushed, but we have to get off our backsides and do the pushing ourselves. In this post I’m soliciting suggestions about where we can find the most useful levers. (Overseas readers are encouraged to contribute – how things work in your neck of the woods might suggest something useful about ours.)
In an earlier post on the ominous climate change policy signals out of the new government, Karen commented: Can we submit something? Start a petition? Idiot/ Morgue?
idiot replied: I expect the inquiry will be open to public submissions, and it might be worth drafting one. That’s good – but I want to take these ideas a bit further.
What can be done to steer John Key and his National government away from the harmful climate change denial of their ACT partners?
* start a petition and submit it to the new government
* make a submission to the inquiry, when it happens
* write a letter to Prime Minister-elect John Key or to other National MPs
? write a letter to the newspaper (:P)
? call your local MP and express your concern
? write a letter to a Ministry (which one?)
I am a total believer in the value of letters from members of the public.
Which are the best ideas in here in terms of delivering change? What am I missing?
In particular, it is worth noting that there is a very clear business incentive to pursue the Emissions Trading Scheme, as pointed out by Gareth at Hot Topic:
“The uncertainty created by the shelving of the current emissions trading scheme legislation is already having a significant impact on the New Zealand economy,” he writes, then details several examples. This should give us even more levers to push. We know that business leaders have the ear of National and ACT – can we put pressure on them with letters, for instance? Who would be worth writing to?
New Govt Down On Climate Change
John Key’s new National govt hasn’t even been sworn in and already the signs are bad for one of the most crucial policy areas. In the agreement with pseudo-Libertarians ACT Key and co. have agreed to put climate change responses on the table. For over a decade climate change legislation has been painfully ground out in the face of massive opposition from the Nats and ACT, and now that the Emissions Trading Scheme is finally in place they have committed to stalling it and reviewing it.
The ETS isn’t perfect, of course, but we can’t afford to start the process of building new climate change regulation from scratch. We need to get moving on this – not just for the sake of the environment, but as the world readies itself for post-Kyoto economics we’ll get seriously stung if we’re left behind. It’s the ideology tail wagging the pragmatic dog, here.
Most frustrating thing: ACT has put forward in its proposed select committee terms of reference that the scientific basis of climate change will itself be reviewed. Unsurprising from a party in the thrall of crank science and climate change denial, but it appeals to the same tendencies lurking beneath the surface throughout the National party. The idea of a select committee in the halls of government giving a platform for the shouting madmen of the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition fills me with dismay.
This could all go very badly for New Zealand.
the right motivation
See, we all know that anthropogenic global warming is gonna make things rough, but its tough to actually get ourselves making changes. This is because humans are rubbish at responding to distant, nearly abstract motivations.
So I’m all in favour of this as a new way of motivating action: if you don’t stop climate change, a tiger will bite you in the scrotum.
Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world’s largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers’ natural habitat… “”We were trying to catch the tiger perched on a tree of our village with tranquiliser shots,” said the 47-year-old villager. “But it flung on me after falling on a net and bit my loins.”
I’m feeling more motivated already.