Thursday, November 29, 2018

Climate Change: What you can do about it

As part of its series on climate change, Stuff is asking for people's stories about what they're doing about it. Which is great, in that it will help spread the word about obvious things people can do to reduce their emissions: use public transport, use the most efficient car you can afford (and switch to an electric at the next replacement), insulate your house, support electricity companies which only use renewables, eat less or no meat and dairy, cut down on or eliminate air travel, have fewer or no children and so on.

But fundamentally, that's not enough. Most obviously because not everyone will do it, but more importantly because most of our emissions are simply not of a nature that is directly responsive to the actions of consumers. For example, 95% of our dairy production is exported. So even if we organised a nationwide dairy boycott, it wouldn't matter to them. 40% of our electricity and 80% of our coal and gas is consumed by industry - again, not responsive to us, because we're not their customers. Around 20% of our fuel consumption is by the road transport industry. We're not their direct customers either. While there's some scope for consumer action to influence these sources (e.g. pressuring supermarkets to use only clean transport providers), it is less effective than direct action.

But while these large polluters are effectively immune to consumer action, they can be controlled by policy and regulation. Dairy emissions can be controlled by the RMA (or less effectively, the ETS). Industrial emissions can be reduced by direct regulation and higher carbon prices. Road transport emissions can be reduced by regulating the efficiency (and eventually, the fuel type) of the trucks they are allowed to use. And of course, regulation can be used to make it easy for consumers to do the right thing as well.

Which brings me to my point: the most effective thing you can do as an individual to fight climate change is pressure politicians to take strong action. Emissions can be reduced - will only be reduced - by strong policy, which can only be implemented by government. The good news is that politicians depend on you for their jobs, so we have direct leverage here. While polluters can donate to them, only people can vote. As for how to pressure them, you can do it directly, by emailing your MP, or with friends, by joining or supporting groups like 350, Generation Zero, and Greenpeace. The campaigns and protests of these groups and others like them have changed policy, and the more voices they have, the bigger the changes they can push. But above all, vote. Vote only for parties who commit to strong action (and actually do so when in office). Do not vote for deniers, foot-draggers, chickenshits or compromisers. Our future depends on this. Your children's and grandchildren's futures depend on this. So act like it, and vote for a government which will save us, rather than one which pretends there can still be a "business as usual".