The other cost of living crisis

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, August 18th, 2023 - 7 comments
Categories: climate change, cost of living, disaster, election 2023 - Tags: , ,

It’s hard for New Zealanders to imagine this, because we chopped down so many of our trees a long time ago, but there is a town in Canada that has just been ordered to evacuate because a forest fire is expect to engulf the city area by the weekend.

Yellowknife is the territory capital, it has 20,000 residents (think Rangiora or Levin), and the out of control forest fire is 17km from the city boundary. The fear is that the escape highway will be overrun by fire.

The remarkable order was yet another reminder of the disruption wrought by Canada’s worst wildfire season on record. About 1,000 fires are active in the country. So far this year, the fires have burned an area 91 times as large as last year’s entire fire season. At times, smoke has traveled as far south as Georgia and as far east as Europe.

…

On Wednesday, officials urged people to drive south to Alberta, if possible. Escort vehicles had been assigned to guide motorists through some areas because smoke from the fires has sometimes obscured vision along the only southbound highway out of Yellowknife. Officials said extra refueling stations and tow trucks would be placed along the route.

Evacuation flights on commercial airlines and Royal Canadian Air Force planes are scheduled to begin on Thursday. People escaping that way will be limited to a single piece of carry-on luggage; they were encouraged to bring food and drinks, and to limit themselves to five days’ worth of clothes.

Remember New Year 2020? Before the pandemic arrived, we had Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger, and the east coast of Australia was on fire. Those climate fires never stopped. They’ve been burning in the US, Russia, the Amazon, Canada. Maui on Hawaii, a tropical island, lost a town to a wildfire last week. It has an official death toll of 110 people, but 1300 people are still missing. New Zealand barely blinked. We are becoming inured.

While I understand the stress of the neoliberal economy cost of living crisis that many New Zealanders are concerned about this election year (food, petrol, increasing debt, diminishing standard of living), I can only assume now that most people don’t actually take climate change that seriously. Because once we reach the point of ignoring the wholesale destruction of say forests, entities that take more than a generation to regrow (tōtara can live for a thousand years) and which are crucial in maintaining the natural carbon cycle, it’s hard to believe that people have a good grasp of the situation we are in.

Likewise, if we mistakenly think the primary lesson learned from Cyclone Gabrielle is that we have to adapt to climate change rather than mitigate, what has caused the dearth of imagination to see that the long predicted frequent extreme weather events, will at some point overtake our ability to repair to our current perpetual growth economy to BAU standard? There are only so many hillsides, roads, bridges, and settlements we can spend months and years shoring up, before we run out of materials, machinery, workers, time, money.

Napier-to-Wairoa-SH2_CR_NZDF

That’s a lorry carrying goods on a highway of our own. Our bush doesn’t burn (yet), it collapses in mudslides instead.

All of which is to say, the most urgent and most neglected crisis we are in is the one that requires us to drop GHGs very fast in order to keep climate change survivable. I don’t want to hear about how people can’t afford to think about climate when they’re worrying about paying the bills, because many people in New Zealand aren’t in that situation. So putting aside the actual poor for a moment, what say the rest of us?

The option to preserve BAU via green tech has gone. Humans simply don’t have the capacity to replace forests in a meaningful timeframe. And the fact that New Zealand slashed, burned and dairy farmed most of our forested land notwithstanding, the burning of forests globally will take us down as well.

Our descendants will curse us. In the year where New Zealanders has the opportunity to make this the climate election, many of us are quibbling over potholes and the left is getting distracted by its own fears. Yes, the cost of living crisis is serious. But things only get worse from here under our current neoliberal system. The UN talks openly now about the impending collapse of civilisation because of breaching planetary boundaries.

But it’s not like we don’t have a choice. We can get off the fossil fuels, and transitioning is the only viable path left. The timeframe is short (this decade). Even a single term of a Nact or Nat/NZF government will set us back at exactly the wrong time. The current cost of living crisis is nested like a Russian Doll, within the bigger crises of climate and ecology.

For many who experience a sense of powerlessness in the face of this, there are also many who see a way through and are forging a path. We have more choice now than ever before of ways to act, movements to join, things to get involved with. I write about this as much as I can, including what real transition might look like. Stories of proactive hope:

The Powerdown
Regenag
How change happens
What could possibly go right?

Hope Punk

Ways out of the climate catastrophe

For New Zealand in particular, we are incredibly fortunate to have the choice this year to vote Green or Te Pāti Māori, both of whom have the capacity to lead on climate transition. Voting is easy, and both parties also need our support over the next two months to gain enough power to make a difference.

Don’t get distracted by the merchants of doom who say Act, National, and NZ First are inevitable. Put your focus on the ones who know how to save the day.

Green Party: donate or volunteer

Māori Party: donate or volunteer

If you want something to take heart from, this twitter thread yesterday on biodiversity in cities and towns shows how it can be done, and quite simply (it’s inspired despite the tone of the opening tweet).

7 comments on “The other cost of living crisis ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    18 August 2023 at 10:40 am

    This is sad/bad..mad?

    Illegal tree-felling plagues central North Island conservation forests

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/illegal-tree-felling-plagues-central-north-island-conservation-forests/MTMAELBSMRDSTDHYU6JMXMFISU/

    And "our" history of deforestation..since humans arrived in NZ is pretty sad.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_New_Zealand

    On a more positive note, I linked these yesterday, about Sustainable Public Transport, but here they are again. Each one has many useful positive parts.

    https://www.publictransportforum.nz/

    https://www.publictransportforum.nz/articles/article/connecting-communities-2030-01-02-2022

    • kejo 1.1
      18 August 2023 at 11:39 am

      And in the midst of an online Whanganui Chronicle article on illegal logging there is an ad for a log buying co? Perhaps this is a sting operation.

  2. AB 2
    18 August 2023 at 11:09 am

    Everyone goes on about loss of the Amazon rainforest – but the northern hemisphere boreal forest is vast and the fires are turning it from a carbon sink into a net carbon emitter – accelerating the onset of tipping points.

    • weka 2.1
      18 August 2023 at 11:23 am

      Hard agree. Google is giving contradictory information about how the fires are starting – mostly lightning, but also many human causes like cigarettes. We probably should be looking at removing people from forests and putting in major monitoring and protection. If we were in any way sane.

  3. Shanreagh 3
    18 August 2023 at 11:37 am

    Some of the current madness with felling forests can be sheeted home to the sale of forests managed by NZ Forest Service as part of the neo-lib times.

    Prior to that time NZFS managed a swathe of forests both for protection and production. There were different regimes for both types. NZFS also had the expertise to mamage bits of production forests found in protection areas and vice versa.

    In the neo-lib times the pressure was on to enable as much forestry to be put into the 'suitable for sale' catgeory so the cutting rights could be sold. Tree owners fall back on the argument that 'you leased it to us" so it must have been Ok for felling…….'

    Hekia Parata was asked to investigate the impact on communities in Wairoa and the East Coast.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/489748/forestry-report-urges-immediate-halt-on-wide-scale-felling

    and, the report itself

    https://environment.govt.nz/what-government-is-doing/areas-of-work/land/ministerial-inquiry-into-land-use/

    Weka's post contains good stuff.

    Hekia Parata's report contains good stuff about what to do on a smaller scale. Although HP states the recommendations are specific to EC/Wairoa most of them are sensible enough to be looked as a template for forestry practices that mitigate the effects that ceaseless and senseless clear felling has on our land. And the trite 'they are not making any more land applies'

    There is a role for concerted progressive work on the regulatory background to what is happening currently as we face the impact of climate change. The Parata report said we have 10 years to do the work recommended (p7)

    'We have the opportunity to grow a climate adapted, biodiverse, flourishing environment and economy in Tairawhiti. Establishing the basis for a sustainable approach is possible in the next decade. Over ensuing generations, we can look forward to science and tikanga based relationships with the environment that create quality livelihoods and lives. And reciprocate with transportable models and practices of what can work in other parts of our country, and the world.

    With commitment to this vision for our environment and for the people and communities who live within and with it, the critical ingredient to realising success for Tairawhiti will be strong, shared, selfless local and regional leadership and governance – mana whenua, mana tangata. A modern, forward looking honouring of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, with principles of protection, participation and partnership will mean that quality citizenship for all, can be realised here.

    We have 10 years'

    Please read the Parata report. It is an easy, provocative and soundly based. It is a small targetted companion piece to Weka's post.

    NB the picture is the Devil's Elbow. (Actually not covered by the Parata Report as it is in HBRC territory)

    Little story about how things can be fixed and then damaged again by operation of a an economic regime rather than putting the land or Papatuanuku first.

    As a child the road to Napier from Wairoa was often closed in winter by slips around this area. When the concept of soil conservation planting for the area was mooted, then carried out, it was like a breath of fresh air…..stabilising the hills. And we watched as trees were planted, grew and were managed for soilcon purposes. The wholesale slips stopped.

    Then along came the sale of cutting rights and people selling did not seem to accept that not every last skerrick of forests planted by NZFS could be clear felled. Felling of the areas around the Devil's Elbow took place, instead of having a protection focus and aiming for pinpoint single tree removal if needed.

    Stupid decisions have much more impact when we are facing climate change.

    So in the space of 60 odd years we are back where we started ……

  4. Ad 4
    18 August 2023 at 3:58 pm

    QLDC is installing light poles with heat, fire and aridity detection equipment all around Mt Iron in Wanaka. Precisely for forest fire risk management.

    Probably time Auckland Council did the same around the Waitakere Ranges since it has about 10,000 people living inside its forest.

    We could do with insurance company commentary on this.

  5. Thinker 5
    19 August 2023 at 10:37 pm

    One tool of strategic planners is, with your mind, to totally divest yourself of what we currently have.

    Like an artist with a blank canvas, imagine ourselves with a bare landscape and then consider what our ideal environment should look like. It's a better alternative to being lumbered with the baggage of the past when trying to move to the future.

    If we had a blank canvas, would we choose what we currently have? I doubt it.

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