[As published in July/August BayBuzz magazine.]
Thinking about climate change and its future impacts raises –or should – a fundamental moral question. What do we care, really, about the disruption – indeed, destruction – that we are leaving in our wake?
Or for us in isolated NZ, is it just an inconvenience?
The question is especially pertinent to those of us over, say, fifty years of age, for two reasons …
First, we’ve known about the problem, if we bothered to pay attention, for thirty years, right through the window when our age cohort ran the place – businesses, governments, the planet. We held the levers and called the shots.
Second, some of us will still be ‘in charge’ another twenty years or so. With time to assuage our guilt by taking action.
But at the same time, again as an age cohort, most of us won’t live long enough to really suffer the full consequences. Anyway, we’re more concerned with creeping arthritis than creeping temperatures.
I know that most readers of this column are age 50 plus. I address this question to you (myself included) …
So why should we give a shit? Instead, just suppress whatever guilt we might feel and enjoy our golden years.
Where do you come down on this?
My job involves reading about issues like climate change. Rarely does a day go by when my various news feeds aren’t peppered with alarming news about the unfolding catastrophe.
For example, huge changes ahead in terms of what food can be grown where – especially crucial global nutrition mainstays like corn, wheat, soybeans (as opposed to ‘nice to have’ apples and grapes).
For the less developed world with the bulk of the population the consequences of food constraints due to warming climates will be dislocation and starvation, not inconvenience.
A recent study reported in Nature estimates that every additional degree Celsius of global warming on average will drag down the world’s ability to produce food by 120 calories per person per day, or 4.4% of current daily consumption. Already more than 800 million people at times go a day or more without food.
Says one researcher: “If the climate warms by 3 degrees, that’s basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.” We’re already up 1.5 degrees.
The study analysed adaptation costs and yields across 55 countries for staples that provide two-thirds of humanity’s calories – wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, barley and cassava.
It’s the first study to systematically measure how much farmers adjust to changing climate conditions – for example, switching crop varieties, shifting planting and harvesting dates, or altering fertilizer use. Their conclusion: adaptation will offset only one-third of climate-related crop losses in 2100.
In terms of food production capacity for staple crops, the analysis finds yield losses may average 41% in the wealthiest regions and 28% in the lowest income regions by 2100.
In the shorter term, by 2050 the authors estimate climate change will drag global crop yields down by 8% – regardless of how much emissions rise or fall in the coming decades.
♫ Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today ♫
Here in New Zealand, barley seems already hard to find. We probably won’t miss the soybeans. Maybe we’ll miss the bananas in our smoothies and breakfast cereals.
The global trade in bananas is worth around US$11 billion. However, extensive research from another study reported in Nature indicates that as temperatures rise bananas will go bust. They’re already produced in the hottest tropical climates (i.e., no headroom), in unique conditions requiring local port access, irrigation and cheap labour availability, with little scope or technological capability to adapt.
Currently, Central America, the northern and southern borders of the Amazon basin, and coastal Brazil are the most suitable regions for banana production. The total suitable area for banana production is predicted to shrink by 60%. Only Ecuador and parts of Brazil are expected to maintain their production levels.
But hey, my last bunch of bananas originated in Ecuador, so what’s the worry?
How about our Weet-Bix?
Per the first Nature study noted above, global wheat production is expected to fall 13.5%-28.2%. Currently NZ imports about 700,000 tonnes of wheat annually, virtually all from Australia. Under predicted warming scenarios, their wheat production could fall 26%-49%.
NZ produces about 300,000 tonnes for feed use and 100,000 tonnes of milling wheat (think: bread, pasta), leaving a deficit that would require another 30,000 hectares devoted to the milling crop.
But there’s good news. Most milling wheat is currently grown in Canterbury, but the Wairarapa, Manawatū-Whanganui and Hawke’s Bay are also suitable for milling wheat production and could support an expansion of planting.
So what’s to worry? Says this report for the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre: “Most often arable crops are outcompeted for land use based on profitability, and milling wheat is no exception.” In short, cheaper to import.
How inconvenient … less bananas, Weet-Bix and pasta!
Searching for good news
Applauded by Federated Famers, the Government has announced a package of measures intended to boost use of solar power on farms. The package includes real life energy data for different types of farms, feasibility studies and technology demonstrations, and a partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Finance to accelerate access to finance.
Energy Minister Simon Watts says: “Early modelling tells us that if 30% of Kiwi farms installed larger solar power systems – of the size we see on some farms already – they could generate as much as 10% of New Zealand’s current electricity demand.”
Even without this package for small scale solar, in our own region, CHB currently has three major ‘solar farms’ on the drawing boards, all in Ongaonga, which seems to aspire to be the solar capital of Hawke’s Bay. The latest, covering 35 hectares, recently received $8 million in Government loan support and is driven by Centralines.
That’s all commendable. However, supporting solar is an easy call.
Much more difficult and imperative are policies that will significantly improve NZ’s carbon footprint and confirm our commitment to the global community.
So for us 50-plus year-olds (and NZ), I ask again: Is global warming a mere inconvenience, threatening our breakfast of Weet-Bix with banana slices, or a survival issue for which we bear moral responsibility?
Yes, global warming is a survival issue for which we bear moral responsibility. But growing really good bananas in NZ is currently viable and increasing. We can free ourselves from buying them from huge US corporates such as Dole.
Sounds like you are trying to have your cake and eat it here Tom! Rather than writing this weak equivocation that appeases fence-sitters, please put your skills to better use promoting the hard moral case that everyone HAS to do one hell of a lot more than we are now.
Yes!!!
Such a big issue. Which way to go?
Food aspect is serious. Let’s not cover good growing land with houses, or solar – which in itself is questionable in terms of the ‘unsustainable’ processes to create it, minerals required, waste to landfill when damaged or outmoded, child-labour used in countries selling minerals, etc, etc,
It is all a very big question mark?
Very good questions.
Oxford University’s Faculty of Humanities says that there is a 19% chance that humans will be extinct by 2100 so we need to step up our act, here and globally. NZ’s carbon footprint is high per capita because of our wealth, so we are not excused.
We do indeed have moral responsibility; the pain will be within our grandchildren’s lifetimes.
Good writing Tom. but we don’t need to be equivocal about this. The crisis is upon us. Ocean temperature measurements, show that not only is our world getting hotter, but the rate of heating is also accelerating.
Cyclone Gabrielle-type events are becoming increasingly frequent in our country and imposing enormous costs on taxpayers and ratepayers, but by comparison we are spending next to nothing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some crazy politicians are wanting to restart oil and gas explorations in the name of energy security.
The only security that really counts is to accelerate the move to renewable energies. What about tidal power? We have some great spots where that would work really well.
A simple change in the way electricity is priced, called “net metering” where homeowners are paid the same price for exported power as they power they buy, would greatly incentivise the installtion of home solar.
5kW home solar panel installations on each of a million homes could create a generating capacity of 5000 MW. These panels could produce around 6000 GWh per annum, which is about 15% of the 39,718 GWh consumed nationally in 2023.
The generating capacity of these panels would be almost twice the generating capacity of Benmore, Huntly and Manapouri combined. More importantly, from a climate change perspective, this generation could eliminate the need for the present coal and gas powered generation. Having more power available, and eliminating the coal generation (which disproportionately affects the wholesale price through the bidding process) will bring prices down for all consumers and alleviate business closures.
We should be going gang-busters on getting the fossil-fuel burning monsters off our roads. Perhaps we should be looking at ways to make internal combustion engines run on green ammonia made from electricity, water and air.
How about making public transport free and green and frequent and reliable so that most people have a strong incentive not to use (or even own) cars?
Why was the Lake Onslow hydro storage project abandoned? Saying that it was expensive is just silly. This is the least cost form of energy storage we know of, and we are going to need it for the times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
There is so much we could be doing now–and we are not even having a debate about it. We are already discovering that 1.5 degrees of warming is causing horrendous and very costly damage. 2.5 degrees is going to be much worse, and has anyone even thought about the huge wave of climate change refugees that might come flooding to our shores.
Wake up New Zealand. The time to act is now!