Dear NZ government, we need to adapt now or risk dying out

Tuesday, 30 April 2019

A protester, with half of her body covered in body paint, faces police during a protest in London's Parliament Square by the group Extinction Rebellion.

OPINION: Dear Jacinda, Winston and James,

I've lived in the Tasman District for 30 years. I am writing in support of Extinction Rebellion's protests and demands of our government in the face of a climate emergency, and how to act.

We are in serious trouble, along with all other species, and have a difficult choice to make.

A report from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) explains how our climate has already now been kicked out of the million year-old ice-age cycle, what dangerous positive feedbacks are just around the corner initiated by anthropogenic global warming, and how we are currently crossing the irreversible threshold towards another old stable planetary state scientists call the 'HotHouse'.

* Sir David Attenborough: Climate change is 'our greatest threat in thousands of years'

* 'Many parts of Earth could become uninhabitable': Study's grim warning**

The last 'HotHouse' was the last major extinction event, the PETM, 55 million years ago, caused by large-scale methane release and is a reliable precedent for what we have initiated with all our engines. There is plenty of information on current exponential methane release in the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Arctic Shelf on Youtube.

We have little time left to turn this around, so little it may already be too late. Governments must act.

The IPCC report is widely known. Scientists say, to have any hope of keeping to 1.5C (and maybe avoiding the positive feedbacks of the PNAS report), we must all reduce our fossil fuel emissions by 45 per cent within 12 years, and this is conservative. Extinction Rebellion (XR) and many scientists are demanding carbon zero by 2025. A 2C rise is just too dangerous, which is something I wrote about two years ago.

It is becoming very clear we need to find sustainability without any combustion, and be stewards of our planet rather than just taking, burning, polluting and stretching for growth. It is way past time for governments to take this seriously, and what individuals do or don't do, anywhere, is irrelevant, it has become a matter of urgent governmental policy.

The recent XR protests and school strikes, along with years of other climate protests and 30 years of warnings from scientists, demand governments act. XR and young climate change activist Greta Thunberg are calling time.

What does 'act' mean? Clearly 'act' means to create policies that achieve radical and ongoing reductions in emissions from fossil fuels, by far the worst offender of the climate emergency. We have arrived at the fork in the road, Hobson's Choice. Accept (and vote for) radical change now, or have uncontrollable chaos soon. The wind has changed, the storm is coming.

To take responsibility we need a way to reduce and adapt quickly. 'Adapt now or die out' has always been a classic feature of evolution.

16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg accused British MPs of failing to prevent the likely 'end of our civilisation'.

We need a workable price signal everywhere on all fuels to persistently discourage their use and find alternative ways. Tax is the obvious vehicle, with funds used to facilitate the transition away from fossil fuels, subsidise renewable electrical infrastructure and changes to all machinery (removing all FF subsidies and exploration of course), and assist those devastated by extreme weather events.

My suggestion to the NZ Tax Working Group last year was a workable system to achieve this reduction in New Zealand, and it is technically usable everywhere.

Emissions trading, offsetting and simple carbon taxes have been proved wholly inadequate. We need a rising price signal, a carbon tax ramp or a rising license to emit any carbon at all. The price signal I proposed is a transparent carbon tax ramp (or 'license to emit' ramp), a climate tax.

A base price needs to be chosen and fixed about the current retail cost of each fuel now, and a new tax levied at say a two per cent rise every month for several years, (transparent and app-driven). This tax would apply to petrol, diesel, jet-fuel, LPG, bunker-fuel, and of course coal. Every fossil fuel that can be burned.

A two per cent rise per month would cause a doubling of cost in three years and be a strong gradual incentive to adapt behaviour. Half this tax would go to support the electric transition, the other half to a fund to assist with calamity from coastal storms, river floods, droughts and fires, to help people affected. If either fund were insufficient the tax could be raised faster.

As in other countries now, some of the tax raised, or perhaps a third percentage, could be returned to poorer people in the community through benefits or raised income-tax thresholds, satisfying a need for social justice.

XR is motivated by grief for the natural world, as we erode its ability to heal from the persistent degradation humans are inflicting on it, land, air, rivers, sea, and all nature's creatures, and subscribes to the fearsome possibility of 'imminent extinction'.

We must rebel for life! Physics is telling us we are out of time - no more delaying the reduction, or we cross the threshold into widening and out-of-control extreme-weather trauma and bequeathing this scorching Earth to our unlucky descendants. Hence the school strikes.

Greta Thunberg is right when she says only one number matters now - total global CO2 emissions. GDP is too damaging. Every nation has to reduce. Too expensive? Nothing like the storm coming.

Please pass the zero carbon by 2050 bill, it is a good start.

Hobson's choice: painful adaptation now, or risk dying out.