!It's about the Environment!

Yesterday was World Environment Day, and, although per capita we're one of the highest emitters of carbon in the O.E.C.D, the conferences and celebrations to mark the day were held here. I attended the 'How do we Decarbonise the World?' conference yesterday at Rutherford House. I was slightly detracted early on by two things; firstly the woman handing out sandwiches for conference attendee's assumed myself and Anna to be students and told us we weren't allowed anything to eat (and i was hungry!) and secondly, and by our own fault but still totally annoying, we arrived late and were put into the 'overflow' room which meant rather than being in the presence of the speakers we were in a lecture theatre (blast from my international relations papers past) watching them via video link.

Anywayyyyy...there were four speakers, Achim Steiner, the Director of the United Nations Environment Program, the President of Kiribati, Atone Tong, Dr. Ragendra Patel, head of the I.P.C.C and Hon. David Parker, Minister for the environment.

I wanted to hear: what are the problems, what can we do about them, what will happen if we do nothing. From the first two speakers I got: no-ne's listening to us telling everyone that there's a problem. I understand that yes, the world community has been generally slow, as a result of the perceieved impact on the economy, to pick up and run with the fact that we need to sort our environment shit out. But the conference is being held in New Zealand, and we're been pretty good at acknowledging the problem and have initated steps to sort it out; Kyoto Protocol and the Emissions Trading Scheme to name a couple. STOP TELLING US WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW.

Holy Shit; Kiribati is going to be underwater by the end of the century - without doubt. Forget polar bears becomming endangered (although they are amazing), an entire culture and country is going to be gone. Forever. Tell us what we gotta do...

Dr. Ragendra Patel totally did. The I.P.C.C have just released their fourth report on Climate Change and totally outlined the goods;

1) If we realise the need to act, the world community has the a) economic capabilities, b) technological abilities and c) organisational abilities to ease the consequences.

2) The two major things that the fourth report proved unequivocally were that a) there is, without doubt, systematic warming of the earth's climate system and b) the warming that has occured in the last half century has been caused by human interference rather than naturally.

3) We are experiencing minor consequences of climate change now particularly in regards to precipitation levels, which in high latitude locations means increased rain and snow and in low latitude locations means exacerbated drought, flood and heatwave, and more extreme storms. The heatwave in Europe in 2003 that killed 35, 000 was a direct result of climate change, as is the devastation Myanmar is currently experiencing.

He also outlined the issues to do with natural disasters that we need to combat to minimise their impact; longer warning times for disasters, education of what to do in the event of a natural disaster and working to create suitable infrastructure in the places where these natural disasters are occuring.

It's about the economy though. Global conglomerates and big business HAS to get on board to reduce carbon emission and work towards environmentally sustainable methods of business for any change to be realised. Dr. Patel pointed out that the loss to GDP as a result would be less than 3%, and that this was an exaggerated figure as the economies that were created as a result of environmentally sustainable products would offset this cost, as would the reduction in negative externalities caused by climate change.

Is New Zealand doing their bit? Legislatively, the Emissions Trading Scheme is great. There's a scheduled 12% increase in investment in public transport which will cause the carbon emissions from transport to level off. Furthermore, 66% of our electricity currently comes from renewable resources, which is projected to reach 99% by 2020. Ultimately New Zealand aims, under the E.T.S to be completely carbon neutral in electricy by 2025 and in electricity and transport by 2040. Sweet Deal....BUT...you guys still need to suck it up and do your bit. Two things only; use energy efficient light bulbs AND blah blah blah, RECYCLE. Do it.