[As published in March/April Baybuzz magazine.]

I’m sorry to say that there’s no good news on the climate crisis.

Global warming accelerates while New Zealand steps backward.

Experts agree that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with the average temperature rise for the entire year, 1.6C – for the first time – exceeding the 1.5C aspirational target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. January 2025 was the hottest January on record.

It actually requires 20 years of 1.5C temperature rise to technically ‘break’ the Agreement limit, but recent studies strongly indicate that 2024 is Year #1 of a pattern unlikely to be reversed.

The question now is will this rate now accelerate, speeding up the direst of predicted consequences associated with a 2.0C rise.

James Hansen, the renowned NASA scientist who identified global warming as a trend back in 1988, terms the 1.5C goal “deader than doornail”. 

His latest study finds that global warming is accelerating faster than expected, and that this has been happening for the past 15 years. The rate of global warming since 2010 has increased by more than 50% over the rate of warming in the preceding four decades, surging more than 0.4C degrees in just the past two years.

This recent surge in large part due, ironically, to new regulations that have curbed shipping pollution (sulfate aerosol) over Northern Hemisphere oceans. That unhealthy pollution had reflected more sunlight away from the Earth. The faster warming, most pronounced in the Arctic, where warming is occurring four times faster than the rest of the planet, means faster ice sheet melt and sea level rise.

Faster ice melt in the Arctic and Greenland could by 2050 trigger catastrophic sea rise along the US East Coast, uncover and defrost methane-laden permafrost, and disrupt the flow of warm Atlantic water northward, creating dangerous climate shifts in the UK, Ireland and northwestern Europe, threatening human health and crops. The Hansen researchers say flatly: “A shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years, unless actions are taken to reduce global warming.” And they’re talking about real actions.

According to Hansen: “We can adapt to more extreme heat waves, droughts, storms and floods, and minimize their impact,” he said. “But the main issue is the sleeping giant, the point of no return, the danger of an AMOC shutdown and large sea level rise.” 

As for the permafrost, scientists estimate that as this organic material decomposes, it will emit carbon and methane at a rate that is comparable to that of industrialized nations.

Not all scientists agree with Hansen’s findings, but no one has been more consistently right. Said one UK climate scientist: “Whether we align with the more conservative forecasts of the IPCC or the more challenging warnings of Jim Hansen, the policy implications are strikingly similar,” he said. “We are rapidly blasting through the 1.5 degree Celsius commitment.”

Meantime, in New Zealand

It’s drill baby, drill, according to the Government Coalition. And go slow on fuel economy standards and farm emissions. Our Government’s ethos depends wistfully on unproven at scale carbon capture technology, unproven technology to reduce methane emissions from livestock, complemented by tree planting and purchasing overseas carbon credits to offset, not reduce, our GHG emissions.

NZ’s Climate Change Commission says New Zealand’s 2050 methane target should be stepped up to a 35-47% reduction and the net zero target stepped up (by 20 million tonnes) to a carbon negative goal.

However the Government claims methane emissions need only be reduced by 15-24%, a setting essentially ridiculed by the Climate Commission as reflecting faulty methodology and simply shifting more of the emissions reduction burden onto the rest of the non-farming economy.

As Newsroom analyst Marc Daalder wrote: “If the Government wished to shift even more of the burden of cutting emissions onto the carbon economy, this would come at steep costs, the commission estimated. Every 1 percentage point reduction in the ambition of the methane target would require the purchase of $1.5 billion to $8.3 billion of offshore carbon credits, the planting of 50,000 more hectares of trees or a one-off reduction of 36 million tonnes of emissions, equivalent to all emissions from energy, transport, industry and waste in New Zealand in 2022.”

As his tenure as Climate Commission Chair ended, Dr Rod Carr told the Select Committee on the Environment: “I think we’re past the stage where any of our elected leaders can afford not to know and understand that human activity is changing the climate … those who continue to promote the combustion of fossil fuels in the open air without permanent carbon capture and storage are, in my view, committing a crime against humanity.”

In January the Government announced its new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for reducing GHG emissions. NDC’s are required of each nation by international agreement, with each nation due to prepare a new one this year.

Climate scientists say all countries’ NDC commitments must be in the 66%-77% to represent credible needed action against global temperature rise. As they call for far more urgent action by governments, the new NZ NDC is a joke.

Despite all the warming acceleration reported above, Climate Minister Simon Watts lifted NZ’s NDC commitment to reducing emissions to 51-55% below 2005 levels by 2035, which is only 1-5% above the current NDC of a 50% cut by 2030. 

Per the Paris Agreement, NDC’s are supposed to reflect each country’s “highest possible ambition”. Advice from the NZ Climate Change Commission was that emissions could be cut by 66% without constraining our economy.

Other nation’s NDC cuts include: UK – 81%, Japan – 60%, Brazil – 59%-67%, Switzerland – 65%. 

Climate adaptation

In the meantime, Minister Watts is also struggling with preparing a national strategy for climate adaptation, the urgency for which arguably should rise inversely in response to our shirking of credible action on emissions reduction.

With adaptation, the question is less what needs to be done than who pays for it.

So that gives huge importance to pending climate adaptation legislation that Minister Watts has committed to introducing this year. He has signalled that ‘who pays for what’ is the central issue to resolve and that this needs to be settled on a cross-party basis. The implication has been that some Government funding will be provided. Watts said to NBR recently: “This is one of the most significant fiscal risks on the Crown’s balance sheets in the decades to come and we need to be prepared for it.”

Hawke’s Bay has crafted an impressive coastal hazards protection strategy with plenty of well-conceived mitigation options, but has put consultation on it on hold, citing the pressure of higher priority business that must also be consulted. For HB too, the issue comes down to who pays. 

Our councils are waiting with bated breath … and that’s probably the real reason for slowing down the public consultation process. 

As you can probably tell, I am determined to promote a greater sense of urgency – in hopes of real action – around the climate crisis. 

I’m genuinely curious as to whether BayBuzz readers share that sense of urgency. The most prevalent argument I hear to ‘cool your jets’ is this: ‘NZ is just a tiny, tiny pimple on the butt of the planet. Nothing we might do – as a nation, region or individually – will matter anyway. So why bother?’ 

What’s your view? 

BayBuzz energy and climate reporting is sponsored by Unison in support of independent local journalism. Any editorial views expressed are exclusively those of BayBuzz. Unison is not associated with those opinions. 

Newsroom reporter Marc Daalder conducted an excellent ‘exit interview’ with departing Climate Change Commission Chair Rod Carr in December. In it Carr provides a brilliant assessment of NZ’s climate challenges, opportunities … and politics. You can read it here.