Six Informed Views on Climate Change

Armageddon, meltdown? Scary? Bird lives? Ensnared in emissions? Recommendations? Lead the world? Read on .....

 "a plague of bird-killing pests"  pn321

1. Martyn Bradbury in The Daily Blog asks Armageddon v. Economic Global Meltdown or both? https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/27/climate-change-armageddon-vs-economic-global-meltdown-or-both/

He writes" If climate change as an existential threat to our species refuses to motivate Governments into action, maybe losing money might? The latest research from the Fed spells out how climate change 

 could spark the next financial meltdown…"

2. David Wallace-Wells in The Guardian says he's "scared'; others should be, to.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/03/david-wallace-wells-on-climate-people-should-be-scared-im-scared?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Mail

David Wallace-Wells’s apocalyptic depiction of a world made uninhabitable by climate chaos caused an outcry when it was published in New York magazine in 2017. Based on the worst-case scenarios foreseen by science, his article portrayed a world of drought, plague and famine, in which acidified oceans drown coastal homelands, dormant diseases are released from ancient ice, conflicts surge, economies collapse, human cognitive abilities decline and heat stress becomes more intolerable in New York City than in present-day Bahrain. 

Critics called this irresponsibly alarmist. Supporters said it was a long-overdue antidote to climate complacency. Whatever your view, it was among the best-read climate articles in US history. Now he is back with a book-length follow-up.Read more.

 3. Jamie Morton  in the NZ Herald  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12217313&ref=twitter  writes 

Forest and Bird is warning of "a plague of bird-killing pests in forests this year, fuelled by what it's described as the biggest seed-spreading 'megamast' in nearly half a century (which could result in)  some species being wiped out in parts of the county."

  Yet another consequence made worse by climate change.


4. Brian Fallow also in the NZ Herald says there's no hiding in the forests with climate change
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12217125&ref=twitter

For too long, climate policy in New Zealand has been entangled in the net of "net" emissions.  And the Government's swift rejection this week ... from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, suggests we will remain so ensnared.

We have been complacent about relentless growth in emissions of carbon dioxide, and have met our international obligations, because they have been offset by the CO2 taken up by trees in an expanding forest estate. 

Policymakers have suffered from a kind of collective wilful blindness, an unwillingness to really confront the obvious fact that trees can only provide a temporary store of carbon before they are harvested or succumb to other risks like fire or pests and diseases.Jamie Marton writes of a plague of bird-killing pests in the forests this year fuelled by the biggest seed-spreading "megamast" in 50 years, thanks 

5. Simon Upton, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, makes several key recommendations in his report

  Farms, forests and fossil fuels: The next great landscape transformation.

6. Visiting Oxford scientist Professor Myles Allen in Newsroom was more positive than the other writers. He thought NZ could become "climate change neutral" if ....
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@ideasroom/2019/03/29/510792/a-climate-neutral-nz-yes-its-possible?preview=1.  He says NZ  has a chance to show much larger emitters how climate change policy can be ambitious, fair and above all transparent.

Last week showed me New Zealand at its best. I spent it, at the behest of the University of Auckland, giving a series of public talks, breakfasts and business roundtables, all on climate change policy. 

It was a strange week to be talking about what some call “the most important issue of our time” – clearly, and rightly, not the most important issue for New Zealand in the days following the Christchurch massacre. 

But something else will always be more urgent than climate change, and I also kept reminding myself of your schoolchildren out demonstrating that very Friday, robbed of the headlines that should have been theirs. 

And just as you have inspired the world with your response to that appalling crime, so you re also leading the world on climate change.