It followed her Environment Aotearoa report where she pointed out climate change “will impact on the health of our sea, land and freshwater, our unique and precious biodiversity and our economy”.
She added “we must plan and develop our cities so that they are low-carbon as well as affordable”.
I supported that statement, because everyone else blames farming, game set and match for global warming.
The issue is there are 9000 homes at threat from even a minor rise in ocean levels.
The cost of those homes, assessed by the Insurance Council, is between $3 billion and $20b and that’s a lot of money.
More than that, however, is the cost to farming. June this year was the hottest since 1863. June had the wettest hour in its history with considerable damage done.
So the climate is changing. I don’t believe anyone can argue that. The problem is aside from a lot of meaningless statements coming out of government we’re not doing anything about it.
In fact the Minister of Finance, Bill English told, us the government was not intending to put money aside for any future demand from rising sea level.
For that comment read “I won’t be around in politics when the flack hits the fan on climate change”.
The international Natural Resources Defence Council said in its report the economic cost of global warming would be equal to 3.6% of GDP annually.
What that means is for many years we’ll have negative growth.
The Council claims in just four impact areas – hurricane damage, real estate costs, energy costs and water cost – the annual bill comes to $US1.9 trillion.
Wright says the government must take leadership because dealing with sea level rise is too complex for individual councils.
I’d agree.
She said rising sea levels were like “an unfolding red zone” with a massive contingent liability for future NZ governments.
I agree with Wright but the issue is bigger than just 9000 glitzy houses on the coast.
Droughts in North Canterbury are a result of climate change.
Severe weather events that are occurring with increasing frequency are also a result of climate change.
What we need is some acceptance that the climate is changing and then a national strategy to do something about it.
We certainly need an agricultural strategy backed by solid research.
My gut feeling is we’re going to have to change a lot of our farming methods and quite quickly.
We need a strong and credible scientific analysis of the issue and then guidelines for the future.
The reality is that we’ll just lurch along ignoring our worst environmental issue.
