CANTERBURY FLOODS : THE TENTACLES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The Prime Minister has been in Canterbury to see the damage wrought by the intense flooding this week. But don't expect her Government to do more to fight climate change...

THE OBVIOUS problem with describing the intense Canterbury flooding as a one in one hundred year event -  or what the Government has described as an 'adverse event' - is that it assumes that the weather will continue to behave pretty much as it has done for the past century. Except that it won't. Climate change will see to that.

The heavy flooding that we have just seen in Canterbury will become more commonplace if we allow the planet to continue to warm up. This could be said to the common scientific consensus rather than the view of politicians who talk brightly of rebuilding the damage done by climate change and moving on. As climate scientist James Renwick of Victoria University told the media:  'Unfortunately, the terrible damage we've seen done in Canterbury over the past couple of days is something we are likely to see more often in the future.'

Indeed in Canterbury's case, the floodplains and the low coastal areas leave the province extremely vulnerable to further such flooding in the future. And all the media talk about 'traditional Canterbury grit' and 'community spirit' will mean little when - not if -such a deluge occurs again.  

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was in Canterbury this week and one can only hope - although with little optimism - that the damage she has seen will impress on her that the Labour Government is not doing nearly enough to fight climate change. It was only two months ago that the Green House Gas Inventory revealed that carbon emissions actually increased by two percent in the twelve months to the end of 2019. Even Climate Change Minister James Shaw, who spent the same year talking up the Government's corporate-friendly policies on climate change, was forced to concede that the Government had failed to 'meet the targets we committed to in law'.

If climate change is the nuclear free moment of her generation that Jacinda Ardern claimed in 2017, we've seen precious little evidence of her backing up her election campaign rhetoric with decisive and far reaching policies.

As we look at the television pictures of the Canterbury flooding we should remind ourselves - and get angry about it - that New Zealand's net carbon emissions rose by 57% between 1990 and 2018, placing it among the worst performers in the OECD.

The Canterbury flooding reminds us in stark terms that the climate change policies of this Labour Government are not enough to stem the growing threat we are all confronted with. 'Business as usual' is no longer an option. We need radical action which, by necessity, means transforming an economy that puts profit ahead of the needs of the planet. But we also live in a country where not one of the parliamentary parties, the foot soldiers for the market economy, will support a Green New Deal for New Zealand. Our present crop of 'representative' politicians have neither the political will or appetite to implement the kind of fundamental changes that a Green New Deal requires.

In 2019 James Renwick expressed concern that our politicians did not 'grasp the gravity' of the situation we find ourselves in. So its doubtful that the Canterbury flooding will dissuade the Labour Government from its disastrous market-led course. So, as Professor Renwick also said in his speech, 'Capitalist enterprises are designed to make a profit and not much else, and if we're going to change that, then people are going to have to stand up and make that happen'.