Cause for Climate Hope (a bit more on the topic)

An old tennis buddy, who thinks deeply about a wide range of issues, emailed feedback on my Cause for Climate Hope posting. I won’t name him, but essentially, what he was saying is summarised in these excerpts

“While it is in New Zealand’s interest and worthwhile and an obligation to contribute striving towards zero by 2050, the reality is that the relatively huge effort for a Pea-Nut sized Nation is not going to make the slightest difference ….” and “What I cannot understand is why the Youth are becoming depressed ..”.

I don't buy into his comments about "whatever we do won't make any difference because NZ is small". Although the necessary climate mitigation policy will be decided at a national level (driven by international accords), the problem is world-wide, and knows no national boundaries.

Every person in the world should buy into being part of the solution, instead of just part of the problem. It's especially important for people like us, for two reasons.

Firstly, we've historically benefited from fossil fuel burning far more than the average citizen of the world; and secondly because in our current day-to-day lives we're a much bigger part of the problem than the average global citizen (our carbon footprint is much higher than average - even without the methane part of the story). The picture below, from a recent James Hansen post, tells the grim story. New Zealand’s emissions are about 20 percent less than Australia’s. So, on a per capita basis we’ve emitted more than three times the global mean. We have a moral duty to act.

Cumulative 1751-2020 fossil fuel carbon emissions (in tons of carbon per person).  Horizontal lines are multiples of the global mean. Countries are plotted in order of current emission rates.

Fortunately for future generations, some (not enough?) of the younger generation do take this very seriously. I know couples who say they've even made active choices to not bring new lives into the world.

Of course there may be other unstated reasons, like infertility or knowledge of the financial costs. But they give two main reasons. Firstly, the problem is that the world has too many people, so they choose to do their bit by not adding to the problem. Secondly, they fear for the future world that awaits those future generations. I'm just glad our own kids don't feel that way. We would have been heartbroken if they'd followed that path. But I do sympathise with the point of view, and can understand the despondency some feel - which is fuelled by inaction by previous generations like ours.

We're the lucky generations, and are especially lucky if we were born in a country like New Zealand. Looking at the above graph it’s clearly not fair to ask the average Indian or Chinese to do more than us.

The USA remains worst in both cumulative and current rates of emissions. Clearly, they need to play a leading part in the solution. But they have a lot of ground to make up, especially after the tragedy of trump. And even though it may not be fair, China and India too must be part of the solution because they’re coming 2nd and 3rd in the world race for highest emission rates.

My mate’s correct about one thing. Few individuals will make the necessary life choices without a push in the right direction. History tells us we’re far too selfish for that. That’s where responsible governments of the world come in. Their job is to make it worth our while (preferably without losing their foothold on power). Per-capita emission rates have been falling slowly both in New Zealand and Australia since 1990, but the total emissions have remained virtually unchanged. The present New Zealand government is moving in the right direction, but we need to pick up the pace.