Turn the toxic ship Humanity

Every so often, an exotic species like Aedes aegypti enters New Zealand and is not detected and stamped out.

These creatures typically die of cold. But, some time soon and maybe already, it won’t get cold enough any more, and A. aegypti will establish a permanent foothold here.

A. aegypti is a mosquito that transmits Ross River virus, yellow fever and, particularly, dengue fever. This is how climate change will affect New Zealanders’ health. Some effects are already being felt.

Consider the mental health of farmers experiencing their third “one in a 100- year” extreme weather event in three years, or of Westport residents enduring yet another catastrophic flood.

Climate change is here and is affecting us now.

However, politicians calibrate their response to climate change in proportion to the concern of their voters, rather than the objective danger. Consequently, there is no realistic prospect of avoiding terrible consequences. We can’t say the “worst” consequences, because no matter how bad things get, they will still get even worse if we don’t stop them.

Everywhere we look, we see that it’s not just climate change, but our relationship with nature that is fundamentally out of whack. This is having health consequences: excessive nitrates in drinking water supplies in Canterbury, Campylobacter from sheep dung in Havelock North, microplastics and toxins in our food, zoonotic diseases (including COVID-19) arising from agricultural practices…and the list goes on.

The problem is, we have taken to heart the biblical idea that human beings should have dominion over nature. We continue to behave as if the point of nature is to serve us, and we use it as if it were a limitless source of raw materials to be extracted, and a bottomless sink for our waste products.

We blithely assume that the staggering scientific progress that has been made over the past several hundred years will inevitably lead to all problems being conquered.

The problem of exponential growth of consumption within a closed system of resources to be consumed seems unlikely to be solved by doing more of it.

Of course, despite this, we are animals, with the same needs as other animals, and the same reliance on healthy ecosystems of which we are part.

While we have expanded the habitats we can survive in, and the foods we can eat, every degradation of our air, water or food, and every loss from the web of life weakens us.

The recent report, Environment Aotearoa, from the Ministry for the Environment, was its triennial synthesis of environment reporting across all the domains that it monitors. It showed the vast majority of indicators of environmental health is trending in the wrong direction.

Nearly every habitat type in the country is in decline. More than 4000 species are trending towards extinction. And, although we need to be aggressively cutting greenhouse gas emissions, we have actually been increasing them.

As animals, we have evolved characteristics over very much longer than our post-enlightenment hubris. Imagine a herd of antelopes on the savannah. Lions eat antelope and hunt on the savannah. Yet the herd grazes away in the lions’ hunting ground, until they catch the sight or scent of the lion. Some weaker runners – the sick individuals or youngsters – may be caught, but the herd moves on and survives.

Maybe we acquired this behaviour ourselves in the same way, or maybe it was something else. But, despite our ability to foresee and understand future risks, our tendency to not take action until the danger is upon us is really no different to the antelope’s.

Perhaps we have a calculus, acknowledging that the most vulnerable – those in subSaharan Africa, say, or on low-lying Pacific islands – will suffer, but we will be able to go “back to normal”.

The problem with that approach is, by the time we perceive these first intimations of disaster – the first glimpse of a lion – its process is inexorable. Much worse consequences, that will affect all of us, are already baked in. We are surrounded by lions.

There is no prospect of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and probably not to 2°C. The wave of extinctions currently unfolding around the globe will wipe out probably millions of species. The health consequences of these trends will be very considerable. So what should we do?

Whether we conceive of a responsibility towards the rest of life on Earth or a responsibility to our children and future generations, these amount to the same thing. We have failed our responsibility to prevent these problems. We must not fail our responsibility to minimise them, and to provide hope.

Every day thousands of people take a stand for the planet and for future generations. They plant trees. They kill pests. They re-wet wetlands. They recycle. They walk or cycle to work. They reimagine their workplaces and neighbourhoods. They need your voice and your shoulder to the wheel, because these thousands of voices alone will not be enough. Political action is necessary and you are powerful political actors.

For a brief time in 2020, as our government and others around the world openly cast around for how they might restart an economy in a post-COVID world where “business as usual” was no longer possible, the public appetite swelled for an economy that had a restorative relationship with nature, rather than an extractive one.

The dead hand of the status quo has since reasserted itself, but we must take heart. The possibility of a better world exists and we have no option but to achieve it.

It is in reach. But we need you to help us stretch out for it.

Kevin Hague was until recently chief executive of Forest & Bird. Formerly a Green Party MP and a DHB chief executive, he is deputy chair of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, and chair of West Coast PHO and the West Coast Alliance Leadership Team