The House: Climate change adaptation - Parliament asks the small questions

Politics is structurally oriented to focus on the short-term. Politicians must demonstrate change to stay in office and only short-term impacts will achieve that.

Long-term fixes give credit to someone in the future.

Addressing hidden or future issues, like slowly degrading water infrastructure, gives little reward to those in power. The biggest future problem is climate change, even if the early impacts are already happening.

A recent Parliamentary debate on the report from a Select Committee Inquiry into Climate Change Adaptation indicated little haste.

The debate provides clues to both current attitudes and possible future action as well as likely stumbling blocks.

Perfect, not punctual

National MP Cameron Brewer is the Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which conducted the inquiry. Introducing the report he said, "The timing of this is perfect. It's important, it's critical."

The timing may be perfect but it is not on time.

It is now 129 years since the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius warned that doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide would raise surface temperatures by 5-6°C, a rise that would threaten the extinction of humanity.

Arrhenius' 1896 scientific paper is surprisingly exacting, showing that his research was no wild guess. It was so long ago that at the time the main CO2 culprit was coal. Oil extraction was still in its infancy.

Since his warning, we have massively increased the planet's atmospheric duvet, and done so faster than he could have imagined.

Atmospheric CO2 has increased by around 50 percent. Additional gases will warm it further. The heating effects (even without further emissions), will play out over a long time scale, pushing temperatures well beyond our current level (1.5°C above pre-industrial levels).

Beyond prevention, passing mitigation, moving to adaptation

Having done such a bang-up job since 1896 of preventing or mitigating climate change, we are moving on to the next response - adaptation. This is the "prepare to take a beating" phase.

We have more incentive now. The recurring theme during the adaptation debate was recent severe weather events. One MP who remembered the Auckland Anniversary Weekend deluge of 2023 was Deborah Russell from Labour.

"The skies just opened and the water flooded down. I sat looking at our deck and it was just like a tap had opened.

"It wasn't rain. I'm sure that was a common experience for many people here. My neighbours' houses slipped away, quite literally, just a few properties down from ours in Titirangi.

"Roads were destroyed. Horribly, lives were lost."

Future planning, but for the past

As former French PM Georges Clemenceau noted, "Generals prepare to fight the previous war".

The discussion of climate adaptation feels similar. We can imagine future severe weather events and flooding because we have recent experience with them.

It is more difficult to imagine what we have yet to experience.

As a result, our adaptation plans are preoccupied with flooding and inundation. Those are "now" problems that people are already concerned about, and politics can understand.

The flood-destroyed-houses theme from the debate is mirrored in the report, which is strongly focused on how to manage the predicted loss of private property. Private property is a "now" issue and one that voters care about a lot.

The report's main questions are; Who decides? Who pays?

The answers seem to be; "everybody should decide", and "it should cost as little as possible".

There are even helpful charts outlining the different ways that costs might be divvied up.

The focus is on private property rights and individual choice. One recommendation is to fully inform people of property risks (via council LIM reports), and then let the buyer beware.

Compensation for private property will continue to be (at least politically) important, but compensating victims is not adaptation, it is disaster-response.

That response will inevitably transition to include compensation for individual retreat from sea-level rise, but this is still narrow thinking, concentrating on issues already experienced.

What about the threats that haven't raised their heads yet, like historical levels of drought, wildfires, loss of habitat and species, new pests and diseases, rising groundwater levels, the impacts of ocean acidification, stronger winds and so on?

The really big but politically difficult questions are missing.

The report couldn't be expected to provide answers but it is worth noting that the issues go way beyond compensation for property loss:

• In the future, which cities or towns might need to be abandoned?
• Where should replacement urban centres be built?
• Will it become too expensive to keep rebuilding storm-wrecked roads and bridges in low-population areas?
• What will replace lost roads? More localised harbours?
• Should roads be built where predictions would place future seashores within the road's planned life span, and how far above current sea level is a safe medium or long-term bet? Is it 2, 5 or even 10 metres?
• What should be farmed where?
• Should plantation forestry be allowed close to urban areas?
• Should exotic trees that are a wildfire hazard be phased out?

Or whatever reasonable questions there might be. But they need to be difficult questions, or we're not trying hard enough.

Consensus-ish

The Finance and Expenditure Committee's report is an interesting read, but it is not a blueprint. It does not recommend actions so much as provide options and ideas towards possible decision-making frameworks.

Frameworks that might help someone else, one day, make a decision, in the future. Maybe.

Believe it or not, that is progress.

Last year, when the inquiry was hearing evidence, Louis Collins from The House, talked with submitters, including Dr Rodd Carr, former Chair of the Climate Change Commission.

"This is likely to be the most difficult challenge that this country faces over the next century... a critical component of that is cross-party support.

"So we're very grateful that... this cross-party committee [is] inquiring into an adaptation framework."

It's not encouraging when the person appointed to lead the country's thinking on possible climate responses is thankful the MPs will even discuss it.

But there are parliaments where half the MPs believe climate change is a conspiracy.

National Party MP Dan Bidosis began his speech with something of an affirmation.

"I wish to start out by saying that climate change is here. It's real. Businesses know it, farmers know it, our export markets know it, our Pacific neighbours know it, and our communities know it.

"It is a significant issue already, as we've heard today, and I want to acknowledge the anniversary of the floods caused by Cyclone Gabrielle just over two years ago."

That belief might not be universal though.

One farmer present, Mark Cameron, speaking for ACT, was unhappy about references to recent disasters saying, "We can't have extreme examples as being the template of how we work through this. Periodically, we do have extreme weather events, and we can't afford, as a Parliament, to overly politicise them."

Cameron admitted he hadn't "had the luxury of the time to read" all of the report, but seemed to think that climate change was something to do with geological forces.

While there is surely near consensus on the threat, the tougher consensus to attain is on how the government should respond.

The key questions in the report; Who decides? Who pays? Both fall into the deep philosophical divides that delineate political parties.

To what extent should decisions about where to build/retreat be personal, locally or centrally governed, or should they be entirely reliant on market forces?

Should the financial burden fall more heavily on the affected, the polluter, the community, or the nation?

Should individuals, councils, central government, or perhaps banks and insurers decide where it is safe to build housing or buy it?

As you can imagine, parties will have firm ideas - just not the same ones.

They are all keen to contribute to the decision. They just don't agree on how to respond to it.

Not exactly the heavyweights

A special debate like the Debate on the Committee Inquiry into Climate Change Adaptation is planned weeks in advance, not sprung upon MPs with little notice. Senior MPs could have attended or spoken on this topic if they had wished to.

House debates (even special debates like this) are largely ignored by senior politicians though.

The debating is done by the backbenchers, particularly those who are members of a relevant committee.

To save time governing-party backbenchers rarely speak at length, so opposition backbenchers are the most common speakers.

Ministers typically speak only in debates on bills they are responsible for.

There are only a few debates each year that the real heavyweights speak in - set-piece events like the Budget Debate, the Debate on the PM's Statement, and the Adjournment Debate, plus the occasional General Debate.

You might think that an issue like climate change would attract the heavyweights. It requires vision, leadership and courage.

It is something that the populace is increasingly concerned about. As Dr Rodd Carr said, "It is likely to be the most difficult challenge that this country faces over the next century".

Not even the minister for climate change was there.

Those who did speak tended towards both purpose and urgency. Some spoke well, like Nancy Lu and David Parker.

They just aren't key decision-makers.

National Party MPs noted during the debate that a government bill is in development that aims to solidify aspects of the inquiry's suggestions for a framework.

Heaven knows what, as there are few firm guides in the inquiry report.

The minister in charge, Simon Watts is apparently hoping to have it before the House later this year. I understand he is discussing the bill's development with parties across the House.

That is unusual. Good on him.

It would be a brave thing to draw sharp lines of responsibility in the face of an impending disaster. But this bill might merely legislate a framework for future decisions by others - maybe local councils - and kick the can even further down the road, while ignoring all the toughest questions.

Agreeing on lifeboats may turn out to be even harder than agreeing on ferries.

*RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.

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