Burning Truth

Road cones and climate change.

It’s the burning truth we can’t deny.
Rising higher than the sky.
From the ashes of the lies we knew.
We stand together. Me and you.

Song Damian Marley and Sia.

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Road Cone Hotline.

Aotearoa has a road cone problem, if you’re to believe the local and central government politicians who have claimed it’s a sign of wokeness gone mad and the reason that things cost so much to build. I saw it for myself on Sunday.

We’d gone to visit Fi’s mum and were passing the new overbridge where Ti Rakau Drive meets the South Eastern Highway. I’ve got to say I’ve never seen so many road cones in my life; there must’ve been hundreds of the things, and it made me chuckle, being that they were just a few hundred yards from the office of Simeon Brown.

Our former Minister of Road Cones, before he was demoted to something he cares much less passionately about, Health, with Brooke van Velden taking over responsibility for clearing the dreaded orange menace from our streets, and it’s not going very well. This from Stuff:

So far, the government’s hotline has received around 800 phone calls, but has only removed a couple of hundred cones.

You read that right: all the hoopla trumpeting the crackdown on these road cones that the government claimed were unnecessary has only resulted in a reduction of just 204 cones in total—less than a tenth of the cones used in those roadworks outside Simeon Brown’s office.

So what’s the problem? There is no shortage to be found. Heck, there are two sitting on my deck which have been liberated by a certain member of the household on his nighttime sojourns. Surely the power of the state can manage more than a couple of hundred?

Green MP Teanau Tuiono said the focus on road cones had been a waste of time. He said, “This is a distraction for the staff at WorkSafe as well, when they need to be focusing on keeping workers safe.

Green MP Teanau Tuiono says WorkSafe should not need to manage a road cone tipline. Photo: Adele Rycroft/Stuff.

“We know that these are there are real issues out there, because we have about 70 people, 70 workers, who don’t go home to their whānau every year as well.”

Brook van Velden said, “Our initial analysis shows that most road cones are compliant with traffic management plans.”

So, rather than rogue cones arriving from who knows where, like on my deck, most of the cones reported were being used correctly as per traffic management plans. Or, in other words, the whole exercise was a pointless gimmick that sounded good but achieved almost nothing. Not unlike other policies this government has implemented,

Brooke van Velden. Image: BeFunky.

We’re in Hot water.

Just like Road Cones, our government deemed current plans to reduce agricultural emissions by as much as half as too woke and, through the use of pseudoscience, has decided that a cut of half as much will suffice.

Instead of a 24-47% reduction in biogenic methane, primarily from agriculture, below 2017 levels, the target will be just 14-24%. The news has not been well-received overseas, where many of our customers reside. This from the Guardian:

The timing of Sunday’s announcement wasn’t just to appease farmers who might be concerned about reducing emissions at a time when they are one of the few groups benefiting from this government, and therefore still likely to back the coalition. It also came on the eve of the Adaptation Futures conference.

This week Ōtautahi is hosting what is described as “The premier international climate change adaptation conference series, which enables practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and academics from across the world to gather to network, collaborate, learn, and inspire.”

Arriving to such news was as a slap in the face to climate scientists and Pacific leaders, horrified by our backwards step, as if emissions don’t matter and certainly aren’t something we want to provide leadership on.

Despite over 90 countries being represented at such a significant event, Christopher Luxon, unusually, chose not to attend this conference for photo opportunities.

Christina Hood, an independent climate change and energy policy expert at Compass Climate, said:

“If we weaken our targets, we will cause more warming. I don’t think that that’s an okay thing to be doing, given the state of climate emergency that we see in the world.

The extra warming caused by weakening the methane target is massive: it is roughly equivalent to tripling all of our other emissions out to 2050. If we were to try and compensate by reducing other gases quicker, we’d need to be net-zero for other gases immediately and be net-negative to pull back all our CO₂ emissions since the Paris Agreement was signed out of the atmosphere.”

Professor Ralph Sims of Massey University said:

“If methane is not reduced in New Zealand, then we’ve got to reduce something else — and that means all the things the current government has thrown out, like support for electric vehicles, the GIDI scheme for decarbonising industry, and moves away from gas and coal.

We’re going backwards. And the farming community are the ones who are going to be impacted as much as anybody — probably more — because of droughts, floods and the impacts on their crops, cattle and pasture. It’s not a good scene at the moment.”

Those celebrating the change, such as Federated Farmers and our government, seem to think we live in isolation at the bottom of the world and can do as we please.

Still, with the oceans around us warming 34% faster than the global average, we must be realistic about the worsening impacts and prepare for the inevitable. This article was also in the Guardian:

While dairy farmers are delighted by the government’s change, it will be less welcome news to others. Ocean acidification and warming will impact the fishing and aquaculture industries, which contribute $1.1 billion to the economy.

Dr Alison Collins, the environment ministry’s chief science adviser, said, “The coastal zone is under a real squeeze … and the importance of that coastal environment is absolutely critical – it’s what we rely on in terms of our homes, our communities, our livelihoods and ultimately our connection to place.”

Some regions are expected to experience a rise in sea levels of 20cm to 30cm by 2050, and approximately 1,300 coastal homes are expected to face significant damage from extreme weather. Collins said that the coastal storms we might’ve expected once in a hundred years are likely to become annual events.

Just as with road cones, we’re soon going to find out there was a reason for our wokeness, being that agriculture is responsible for half of our climate-changing emissions, and the impacts are accelerating.

A resident walks among the debris washed ashore from Cyclone Gabrielle, Napier, New Zealand, Feb. 19, 2023. (AP Photos)

In 2022, Labour set up the Climate Emergency Response Fund, then in 2023, NZ was hit by Cyclone Gabrielle to devastating effect. Rather than reinforce the need for such a fund in 2024, the coalition gutted the fund.

So, who will pay when, and not if, there is another major disaster?

Or is it the same approach as many other things, such as loosening building regulations where earthquakes were previously deemed a risk, fast-tracking approvals, relaxing health and safety rules, or even funding healthcare?

That is, if these things happen to you, you’re pretty much on your own, but think of your economic contribution.

To end today, here’s Damian Marley and Sia with Burning Truth. Have a good Tuesday folks, I hope the weather is better there than it is here.

Ngā mihi,
Nick.