The truth about climate change that we refuse to accept

Cyberattack targets sea level rise website on the day of launch

A new website showing detailed projections of sea level rise around New Zealand was targeted by a cyberattack on its first day live.

NZ SeaRise was inaccessible for most of the day, coming back online on Monday around 4:30pm.

NZ SeaRise project co-leader Professor Tim Naish​ of Victoria University of Wellington said it was disappointing to be targeted so soon.

The fear generated by the truth about climate change coming out is remarkable and as stubborn as a Qanon anti-vaxxer in a library.

The system has to tell people that we can ‘fix’ climate change because if the terrifying reality was clear to us, none of the worker ants would go to work.

The truth is that unless we develop a technology that can remove CO2 rom the air, there is no ‘fixing’ climate change, there is only rapid adaptation.

You want stats?

Let’s have some stats.

Normally it takes hundreds of thousands of years for C02 to build up in Earths atmosphere to the levels we have now, and when it builds up to those levels we get enormous global temperature changes over the space of decades that make it impossible for species to adapt fast enough.

The truth is that we have increased C02 in a couple of centuries when it normally requires hundreds of thousands of years. We have no real idea what magnitude of damage and speed of climate events that will create and cause.

Th Earth continues to heat, methane releases from the Ocean and thawing permafrost creates an enormous spike in temperatures, all the fresh water of Greenland melts, the fresh water pouring into the Labrador seas shuts down the global oceanic current, that in turns freezes the Northern Hemisphere solid.

We go from incredibly hot from a decade of methane and then we go into a new ice age, most species can’t adapt to that type of change.

The reality is most people don’t ‘get’ how big the climate crisis really is, how enormous the impact of endlessly pumping pollution into our biosphere causes and how much of an existential threat that poses us all as a species.

The IPCC report has always infamously been conservative and underplayed or simply ignored the impacts of naturally occurring feedback loops that once crossed represent  tipping points from which no technological advance can mitigate.

The methane release from melting permafrost threatens to trigger a warming event that we can’t escape and will bring with it catastrophic change for which only radical adaptation can possibly cope with.

What is most concerning about our response to the Covid epidemic (which is exacerbated by overpopulation and bio-habitat collapse), is that these extraordinary events that we are totally ill equipped to cope with are all occurring at a time of relative peace. How would these services cope with a plethora of events erupting at climate crisis speed on numerous fronts?

We can barely cope with the first wave of disruptions, how on earth will we cope when the enormity of events eclipse these small ones?

The ever growing war in the Ukraine being the perfect example.

My contention is that in a future like that voters will throw their weight behind any party promising radical proposals.

That’s why I argue that Fortress Aotearoa is simply a matter of when not if.

The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement Fortress Aotearoa…

• Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
• Immediately ban all water exports.
• Empower local communities to make local decisions and set up resilience programs.
• 5 year Parliamentary term so Governments can actually plan for change.
• Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
• Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
• Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
• Mass limiting of tourism numbers with huge increased tourist taxes.
• Only citizens can vote.
• Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
• Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
• Increase refugee in take to 10 000 per year
• Fully funded public services focused on real welfare of people.
• Mass Green housing rebuild.
• 100% renewable energy for entire country.
• Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
• Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
• Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
• Financial transaction tax
• Wealth tax
• Multinational tax
• Inheritance tax
• Capitalist monopolies in energy, transport and finance have to be brought into public ownership and control. They should be subject to democratic plans drawn up by the whole community. Workers should have much stronger decision making powers within them.
• All economic sectors to be made take steps needed to decarbonise the economy as much as is needed to reach zero net emissions by 2030.
• Free and frequent public transport on electric buses and/or trains in all main cities.
• Health care and education for life should be free and universally accessible.
• Welfare, pensions, child allowances, should be universal wherever possible.
• Public housing at fixed and affordable rents should be a right of all not just the desperately poor.
• All workers should have a right to a job and the workweek reduced with no loss of pay to make that possible.
• Local communes should be supported for control and delivery of as many functions of the centralised state as possible – including housing, education, health care.
• Local communes to support cooperative forms of production of food, solar and wind energy,  electric transport, and media.

On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.

Pretending that we can ‘stop’ the climate crisis cascade is sophistry, we require radical reform and adaptation now.

The inevitability of Fortress Aotearoa and the fierce nationalism it would generate are merely waiting for the spark.

 

 

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