This year is the 10th anniversary of the Paris Climate Change Agreement in which 192 countries, including New Zealand, committed to the task of keeping the rate of global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2050.
Each country announced its plan: ours was to reduce our emissions by 50% by 2030. This was pretty well in line with other countries. It was, of course, assumed by everyone that targets like this would be worked towards on an incremental basis – emissions would be reduced gradually year by year in order to meet the required target at the appointed time.
Unfortunately, no-one did this. Many countries thought the climate scientists were exaggerating, or even making up the problem. Others kicked the ball down the road in the hope another group of politicians would deal with it.
The consequence of these reactions is that instead of being reduced, emissions have increased over the past 10 years (except for the Covid period) and have increased at an ever faster rate year by year. As a result, last year we hit the 1.5°C target 26 years earlier than planned. Scientists are now telling us a 2°C rise in temperature is not far away (we increased 0.5°C between 2020 and 2025) and, unless we do something drastic starting now, a 3°C rise is inevitable.
That kind of rise isn’t trivial. It means massive changes to the way we grow food, even more devastating forest fires and floods, and many of the cities of the world becoming uninhabitable. It means mass migrations, it means we lose access to many of the things we import, and it threatens social collapse even in sophisticated countries like ours.
Given this information, you would think a responsible government would now, 10 years after the Paris Agreement, take serious action to ensure its citizens’ future. President Trump, of course, won’t because he only has an interest in his own ego. He proclaims climate change a hoax and walks away from the Paris Agreement and the IPCC, which is trying to get everyone together to save the planet and humanity. He’s the Rhett Butler of climate change: he doesn’t give a damn.
But surely our own government is more responsible than that? Surely it has plans to contribute to the worldwide effort to ensure a future for the human race. Well ... if you’re expecting that you’re going to be disappointed.
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Act New Zealand leader David Seymour are now signalling their interest in taking us out of the IPCC and the Paris Agreement. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is resisting this idea at present, but his record in stopping his coalition partners from doing stupid things is not impressive.
Our 2015 contribution to the Paris Agreement was we would reduce emissions by 50% by 2030.
On January 30 this year we submitted our plan for the next 10 years: our government is taking the enormous step of planning to reduce emissions by an extra 1% to 51%, and that excludes methane emissions which make up nearly half of our total emissions. Duh?
It's not surprising, then, that our civil servants (who actually understand what climate change means – and Treasury said another Cyclone Gabrielle would cost us up to $14.5 billion) have told the government this was "less likely to be considered sufficient by key partners and the global community".
What that means is that our plan is so inadequate as a contribution to the worldwide attempt to control global warming that our international reputation is going down the plughole .
The government’s justification is we can’t afford to do more.
If we were a developing country rather than a developed one, this might make sense, but given how wealthy we are in world terms it is ridiculous.
What "can’t afford to" really means is the government is unwilling to give any priority to addressing climate change.
In terms of the world community, and in terms of our own children’s and grandchildren’s future, that is deeply, tragically, irresponsible.
You might want to tell them that.
• John Drummond is an emeritus professor at the University of Otago.
