Cover Story
Hitting Home
by Matt Nippert
In Orua, on the southern head of the Manukau Harbour, is a bach like any other. This one, made of matai, is owned by Bill Bayfield’s family. Each day, the ocean sweeps in and out, cutting off the property for six hours at a time. Bayfield says, “the seclusion is treasured”, it’s a time for reflection. On stormy days, salt water lashes the front windows, which are 1.5m from the high-tide mark. With each passing year, that mark creeps inexorably closer.
“Two summers ago,” says Bayfield, “my brother and I sat in the front room and began to think.” He had just taken a job as general manager of the Climate Change Office, and thoughts of global warming and the associated rise in sea levels started to play on his mind. Forget the country, would the bach, which had been in the family for 25 years, be around for the next generation?
Beneath the big pohutukawa, next to the barbecue, lies a stack of ground-treated 4m-long posts. They’re piled, he says, “ready for the day that we have to jack up the house.”
“It gets real,” he says, “when you are starting to think, not might – but when and how.” Looking into a crystal ball, you could be forgiven for thinking that the future seems very uncertain for this bach, the neighbourhood and the whole planet.
Alarm bells are ringing in apocalyptic tones. In February, the Observer was leaked a copy of a Pentagon report. “Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020,” ran the startling introduction. “Abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies.” Credibility was given to this military scenario-planning when it was revealed that the author, Peter Schwartz, is a former head of planning for Shell Oil.
In July, the Guardian reported a speech by Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the British Government. “You might think it is not wise, since we are currently melting ice so fast, to have built our big cities on the edge of the sea where it is now obvious they cannot remain. On current trends, cities like London and New York will be the first to go.” With King predicting a sea level rise of 110m when Antarctica fully melts, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin should be added to that list of soon-to-be dearly departed great cities of the world.
Then, closer to home, speech notes by Professor Peter Barrett were splashed on the front page of the Christchurch Press. “We know from our knowledge of the ancient past,” the 40-year veteran of Antarctic studies wrote, “that if we continue our present growth path, we are facing extinction. Not in millions of years, or even millennia, but by the end of this century.” After a storm of controversy, Barrett told his audience that the “end of civilisation as we know it”, not “extinction”, was due in 2100.
Then there was the recent Hollywood offering, The Day After Tomorrow, that showed an ice age, occurring in one week, entombing North America in a spectacular ball of ice. Climate change, substituted for those other Jerry Bruckheimer disaster staples (meteor strikes, alien invasion and faceless terror attacks), has clearly entered popular culture.
In the other camp, away from those who proclaim the end of the world, are the global warming deniers. If climate change is occurring, argued botanist Professor David Bellamy in the Daily Mail, it is merely part of the great “yo-yo” of nature that will continue regardless of human activity. He wrote, “Global warming – at least the modern nightmare version – is a myth.”
Bellamy’s views are endorsed by Alasdair Thompson, Northern head of the New Zealand Employers and Manufacturers Association. There is no point trying to tackle global warming, he argues. “Along with evidence of Kyoto’s impotence, we could also suffer a greater loss: respect and care for the environment would likely diminish as misrepresentation surrounding climate change increases our levels of cynicism.”
Which headline – “Global Warming? What a load of poppycock!” or the poles-apart “Climate change ‘to reverse human progress’” – to believe? The truth lies somewhere in the middle. “Both camps seem to be wrong,” says Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. “It’s certainly indisputable that there is global warming, and that it is partly caused by man.”
Andy Reisinger, New Zealand’s representative on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – a scientific body whose views are respected by Lomborg and Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons – says Barrett’s views were overstated. “Civilisation is quite resilient to all sorts of changes, but it’s pretty clear that climate change could change the way civilisation operates.”
Mostly, debate over climate change centres on the causes – and in particular who will pay for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the Kyoto Protocol. IPCC consensus is that such gases are contributing to a subtle, but significant, temperature increase.
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