The House: Climate Change Adaptation – Parliament Asks The Small Questions

Phil
Smith, Editor: The House

Politics
is structurally oriented to focus on the short-term.
Politicians must demonstrate change to stay in office and
only short-term impacts will achieve that.

Long-term
fixes give credit to someone in the future.

Addressing
hidden or future issues, like slowly degrading water
infrastructure, gives little reward to those in power. The
biggest future problem is climate change, even if the early
impacts are already happening.

A recent Parliamentary
debate on the report
from a Select Committee Inquiry into Climate Change
Adaptation indicated little haste.

The debate provides
clues to both current attitudes and possible future action
as well as likely stumbling blocks.

Perfect, not
punctual

National MP Cameron Brewer is the
Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which
conducted the inquiry. Introducing the report he said, “The
timing of this is perfect. It’s important, it’s
critical.”

The timing may be perfect but it is not on
time.

It is now 129 years since the Swedish scientist
Svante Arrhenius warned that doubling atmospheric carbon
dioxide would raise surface temperatures by 5-6°C, a rise
that would threaten the extinction of
humanity.

Arrhenius’ 1896 scientific paper is
surprisingly exacting, showing that his research was no wild
guess. It was so long ago that at the time the main CO2
culprit was coal. Oil extraction was still in its
infancy.

Since his warning, we have massively
increased the planet’s atmospheric duvet, and done so faster
than he could have imagined.

Atmospheric CO2 has
increased by around 50 percent. Additional gases will warm
it further. The heating effects (even without further
emissions), will play out over a long time scale, pushing
temperatures well beyond our current level (1.5°C above
pre-industrial levels).

Beyond prevention, passing
mitigation, moving to adaptation

Having done such a
bang-up job since 1896 of preventing or mitigating climate
change, we are moving on to the next response – adaptation.
This is the “prepare to take a beating” phase.

We have
more incentive now. The recurring theme during the
adaptation debate was recent severe weather events. One MP
who remembered the Auckland Anniversary Weekend deluge of
2023 was Deborah Russell from Labour.

“The skies just
opened and the water flooded down. I sat looking at our deck
and it was just like a tap had opened.

“It wasn’t
rain. I’m sure that was a common experience for many people
here. My neighbours’ houses slipped away, quite literally,
just a few properties down from ours in
Titirangi.

“Roads were destroyed. Horribly, lives were
lost.”

Future
planning, but for the past

As former French PM
Georges Clemenceau noted, “Generals prepare to fight the
previous war”.

The discussion of climate adaptation
feels similar. We can imagine future severe weather events
and flooding because we have recent experience with
them.

It is more difficult to imagine what we have yet
to experience.

As a result, our adaptation plans are
preoccupied with flooding and inundation. Those are “now”
problems that people are already concerned about, and
politics can understand.

The flood-destroyed-houses
theme from the debate is mirrored in the report, which is
strongly focused on how to manage the predicted loss of
private property. Private property is a “now” issue and one
that voters care about a lot.

The report’s main
questions are; Who decides? Who pays?

The answers seem
to be; “everybody should decide”, and “it should cost as
little as possible”.

There are even helpful charts
outlining the different ways that costs might be divvied
up.

The focus is on private property rights and
individual choice. One recommendation is to fully inform
people of property risks (via council LIM reports), and then
let the buyer beware.

Compensation for private
property will continue to be (at least politically)
important, but compensating victims is not adaptation, it is
disaster-response.

That response will inevitably
transition to include compensation for individual retreat
from sea-level rise, but this is still narrow thinking,
concentrating on issues already experienced.

What
about the threats that haven’t raised their heads yet, like
historical levels of drought, wildfires, loss of habitat and
species, new pests and diseases, rising groundwater levels,
the impacts of ocean acidification, stronger winds and so
on?

The really big but politically difficult questions
are missing.

The report couldn’t be expected to
provide answers but it is worth noting that the issues go
way beyond compensation for property loss:

• In the
  future, which cities or towns might need to be
  abandoned?
• Where should replacement urban centres be
  built?
• Will it become too expensive to keep
  rebuilding storm-wrecked roads and bridges in low-population
  areas?
• What will replace lost roads? More localised
  harbours?
• Should roads be built where predictions
  would place future seashores within the road’s planned life
  span, and how far above current sea level is a safe medium
  or long-term bet? Is it 2, 5 or even 10 metres?
• What
  should be farmed where?
• Should plantation forestry
  be allowed close to urban areas?
• Should exotic trees
  that are a wildfire hazard be phased out?

Or
whatever reasonable questions there might be. But they need
to be difficult questions, or we’re not trying hard
enough.

Consensus-ish

The Finance and
Expenditure Committee’s report is an interesting read, but
it is not a blueprint. It does not recommend actions so much
as provide options and ideas towards possible
decision-making frameworks.

Frameworks that might help
someone else, one day, make a decision, in the future.
Maybe.

Believe it or not, that is progress.

Last
year, when the inquiry was hearing evidence, Louis Collins
from The House, talked with submitters, including Dr
Rodd Carr, former Chair of the Climate Change
Commission.

“This is likely to be the most difficult
challenge that this country faces over the next century… a
critical component of that is cross-party support.

“So
we’re very grateful that… this cross-party committee [is]
inquiring into an adaptation framework.”

It’s not
encouraging when the person appointed to lead the country’s
thinking on possible climate responses is thankful the MPs
will even discuss it.

But there are parliaments where
half the MPs believe climate change is a
conspiracy.

National Party MP Dan Bidosis began his
speech with something of an affirmation.

“I wish to
start out by saying that climate change is here. It’s real.
Businesses know it, farmers know it, our export markets know
it, our Pacific neighbours know it, and our communities know
it.

“It is a significant issue already, as we’ve heard
today, and I want to acknowledge the anniversary of the
floods caused by Cyclone Gabrielle just over two years
ago.”

That belief might not be universal
though.

One farmer present, Mark Cameron, speaking for
ACT, was unhappy about references to recent disasters
saying, “We can’t have extreme examples as being the
template of how we work through this. Periodically, we do
have extreme weather events, and we can’t afford, as a
Parliament, to overly politicise them.”

Cameron
admitted he hadn’t “had the luxury of the time to read” all
of the report, but seemed to think that climate change was
something to do with geological forces.

While there is
surely near consensus on the threat, the tougher consensus
to attain is on how the government should respond.

The
key questions in the report; Who decides? Who pays? Both
fall into the deep philosophical divides that delineate
political parties.

To what extent should decisions
about where to build/retreat be personal, locally or
centrally governed, or should they be entirely reliant on
market forces?

Should the financial burden fall more
heavily on the affected, the polluter, the community, or the
nation?

Should individuals, councils, central
government, or perhaps banks and insurers decide where it is
safe to build housing or buy it?

As you can imagine,
parties will have firm ideas – just not the same
ones.

They are all keen to contribute to the decision.
They just don’t agree on how to respond to it.

Not
exactly the heavyweights

A special debate like the
Debate on the Committee Inquiry into Climate Change
Adaptation is planned weeks in advance, not sprung upon MPs
with little notice. Senior MPs could have attended or spoken
on this topic if they had wished to.

House debates
(even special debates like this) are largely ignored by
senior politicians though.

The debating is done by the
backbenchers, particularly those who are members of a
relevant committee.

To save time governing-party
backbenchers rarely speak at length, so opposition
backbenchers are the most common speakers.

Ministers
typically speak only in debates on bills they are
responsible for.

There are only a few debates each
year that the real heavyweights speak in – set-piece events
like the Budget Debate, the Debate on the PM’s Statement,
and the Adjournment Debate, plus the occasional General
Debate.

You might think that an issue like climate
change would attract the heavyweights. It requires vision,
leadership and courage.

It is something that the
populace is increasingly concerned about. As Dr Rodd Carr
said, “It is likely to be the most difficult challenge that
this country faces over the next century”.

Not even
the minister for climate change was there.

Those who
did speak tended towards both purpose and urgency. Some
spoke well, like Nancy Lu and David Parker.

They just
aren’t key decision-makers.

National Party MPs noted
during the debate that a government bill is in development
that aims to solidify aspects of the inquiry’s suggestions
for a framework.

Heaven knows what, as there are few
firm guides in the inquiry report.

The minister in
charge, Simon Watts is apparently hoping to have it before
the House later this year. I understand he is discussing the
bill’s development with parties across the House.

That
is unusual. Good on him.

It would be a brave thing to
draw sharp lines of responsibility in the face of an
impending disaster. But this bill might merely legislate a
framework for future decisions by others – maybe local
councils – and kick the can even further down the road,
while ignoring all the toughest questions.

Agreeing on
lifeboats may turn out to be even harder than agreeing on
ferries.

*RNZ’s The House, with insights
into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with
funding from Parliament’s Office of the
Clerk.

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