The AMOC is collapsing, why that should concern you

We have ‘disaster inertia’ now…

‘Disaster inertia’: why must NZ keep relearning the same lessons from extreme events?

In the aftermath of another summer of weather disasters, there were headlines about a “growing gap” between recovery efforts and preparation for climate change impacts.

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There were calls for a rethink of how New Zealand approaches natural hazards and for decision-makers to learn from the lives and homes lost in landslides and floods.

If this sounds all too familiar, it is because the country has become locked in a state of “disaster inertia” – one that has existed for longer than we might think.

Our analysis of New Zealand’s post-disaster reviews over the past decade shows the same problems – some dating back to 1986 – have been repeatedly identified but rarely translated into meaningful policy reform.

Successive warnings from the scientific community about the country’s exposure to extreme weather similarly go unheeded.

With each disaster, we found the country’s response and recovery system reacts in a largely ad hoc way. The capacity and finances of local authorities, which are often already grappling with major infrastructure deficits, are strained as they lurch from one event to the next.

Put simply, New Zealand keeps patching up damage while failing to address its systemic issues – leaving lives, livelihoods and property increasingly at risk as climate impacts intensify.

RNZ

…it’s going to get a lot worse.

The AMOC is collapsing pushing NZ closer and closer to the realities of Fortress Aotearoa styled polices…

Collapse of key ocean current may release billions of tonnes of carbon

If the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation shut down, the knock-on effects could release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2, raising global temperatures even further

New Scientist 

…the knock on effect of that would be the melt of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica, a jump of 10 degrees of temperature in a decade and the freezing over of the Northern Hemisphere tripped into an ice age by the end of the century.

It’s all very, very, very bad.

But all within our kids life time so we really do need to start thinking about our planet in a very different way.

Fortress Aotearoa is a domestic policy set focused on hyper regionalism and self reliance, using the tyranny of our distance as a giant moat.

There is a point where our denial on what is happening to the climate shatters the current political spectrum.