Global actions for climate change – podcast

In this final episode of the Voice of the Sea Ice podcast series, RNZ science communicator Dr Claire Concannon and experts discuss what we’re doing to address human-induced climate change that is impacting Earth’s global systems, including ice melt in Antarctica.

Claire is joined by RNZ Climate Change Correspondent Eloise Gibson and Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw (The Workshop). They discuss the Paris Agreement, whether New Zealand is doing its bit as a nation and how important individual actions are in the face of the enormous emissions of bigger nations and billionaires.

The long-form version of this podcast is on the RNZ website here. It delves deeper into the Paris Agreement and the social science and psychology being used to frame narratives for and against climate change action and adaptation.

Learn more about framing and how humans process information in Making sense of our information environment.

Transcript

Eloise Gibson

New Zealand has a two-part target and we always have had. This was true when John Key set the first iteration of our target in 2016. And it was true when Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government boosted our target, as did a lot of other developed countries in 2021, in response to reports showing that the promises made just weren’t going to get the planet where it needed to go.

Dr Claire Concannon

Initially, it was a 30% reduction of 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, which then got boosted to 50% in 2021.

Eloise Gibson

The idea has been that we would do as much as we could inside New Zealand to get transport emissions down, electricity emissions down, but that it was just going to be too expensive to make a respectable pledge just with action inside New Zealand. And so as a cheaper way of achieving a target that was going to be acceptable to other countries, we would buy in some help.

Dr Claire Concannon

Instead of risking potential economic shock from trying to do too much too quickly, we would pay another country to take action to reduce their emissions. When you’re counting for the planet, a reduction in emissions is a reduction in emissions.

Eloise Gibson

The expectation was typically that it would be from Asia or the Pacific, because those countries are more affordable – it would be a lot cheaper, for example, to retire a coal-fired power station in Indonesia than it would be to try and do it here or in Australia – with the idea being that, by 2030, we would have made a lot more progress at home, and in the years after that, we’ll be able to make all of the effort here ourselves.

So it was kind of a stop-gap thing to put in a decent-sized pledge without having to do it all here.

Dr Claire Concannon

But here’s the thing. Successive New Zealand governments haven’t locked in anything. So right now, without that overseas part sorted, it’s projected that we will be over our 2030 target by 84 million tonnes of emissions, which is more than one full year of New Zealand’s emissions. Anyway, that’s the not-yet-sorted offshore part. How are we getting on with the doing stuff at home portion?

Eloise Gibson

The good news is that we’re doing much better than we thought we were going to be doing when John Key signed up to our first Paris Pledge. So the number of credits that we need to buy from overseas shrinks all the time. The cost of renewable energy comes down all the time.

And those kind of forces do help drive change. We’ve turned our emissions around in the last few years. They’ve stopped going up or plateauing, and they’ve started coming down.

And that is significant. Other developed countries got there a long time before we did. But we have done it, and that really does count.

Dr Claire Concannon

Woo! Go us. Little pat on the back. We’ve just submitted our next target out to 2035. And it’s 51–55%, which has garnered the criticism of not being super ambitious in terms of upping our existing 50% pledge.

This target should be met within New Zealand, so no overseas spending – although, right now there’s a projected 9 million tonne gap to reach 51% based on the policies in place.

Eloise Gibson

Partly, that is a legacy of the Coalition having scrapped a bunch of stuff that Labour had instituted that was going to pay off in emissions terms further down the track. And partly it’s because it takes time to ramp up to things. So really, for long-term changes like the transport sector, you would need to be making change now and investing now to get those benefits post 2030. And that’s just not happening.

Dr Claire Concannon

And here, I think, we come to the crux of it. Your best-value climate action involves taking early steps towards long-term change and reaping benefits years down the line. You know what that doesn’t mesh well with? Short-term political cycles. And while the majority of us here in New Zealand consistently say, in survey after survey, that we’re concerned about climate change and we want to see action on it, our politicians either don’t believe us or just chicken out.

Eloise Gibson

For example, Chris Hipkins, when he thought that emissions prices rising was going to push up petrol prices, he was going for re-election and he backtracked on what the evidence was clearly telling him needed to happen. That was later overturned in court, incidentally, but you know, our mettle doesn’t seem to be particularly tough when it comes to brazening these things out.

But I think that a lot of really high-emissions industries and a lot of politicians rely on the fact that people don’t have the bandwidth to grapple with it.

Dr Claire Concannon

Maybe there is a lack of bandwidth. There’s a lot going on.

Journalists

The cost of living crisis.

Should we be scared of artificial intelligence?

Long waits and overrun emergency departments.

The price at the supermarket checkout keeps rising.

Dr Claire Concannon

And also, this is the job of our local and regional councils and our government. They should be dealing with the modelling and the risk ratings and uncertainty around scary weather events. They should be assessing the science and then working with their communities to create long-term policy and plans in response. And look, some definitely are. But others might need a nudge.

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw

We seem to have a disconnect between the people who we elect and the care and the concern and the action at a community level.

Dr Claire Concannon

This is Jess Berentson-Shaw, the Director of Narrative Research and Strategy with The Workshop. It’s an organisation based in Wellington that researches how people think and reason about complex issues such as climate change.

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw

For lots of communities, where they struggle is the sense that they know that there are people in organisations with more power and the ability to do something about climate disruption, but they don’t feel like those people are doing anything, and then what they experience is quite a lot of communication directed at their individual behaviours.

So the problem with that is that people understand climate disruption is a massive existential issue, and yet the solutions that they’re being given are these tiny behavioural level changes, and on top of that, they can’t see what’s happening at the kind of big structural level. So it creates a dissonance for people and irritation, which I think is fair enough frankly.

Dr Claire Concannon

Part of Jess’s work involves talking to communities and then advising councils how best to communicate around climate change. And they found that when scientists or the media – and yeah, mea culpa here – talk about the scary risks, some people do tend to switch off.

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw

Communication around climate primarily uses what we would call a risk frame. For people who are concerned about climate change but aren’t necessarily aware of what they can do about it, risk-based frames tend to slam the door in their face about learning what’s next.

Dr Claire Concannon

So what does work?

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw

There are ways of thinking about the improvements that responding to climate disruption boldly and effectively can have on people’s lives.

Dr Claire Concannon

Think about how good it would be to have better public transport, says Jess, or more green spaces in our cities to hang out or more energy-efficient homes or how good it would feel to have a solid emergency and adaptation plan for a coastal community. Or what about the new jobs that moving to green energy or investing in green technology could bring?

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw

For us, framing through those what we call better life aspects is a really helpful frame. And that’s not to say that it’s all a fantastic, fabulous outcome, that there won’t be hard times. But if we can give people an entrance into the climate issue that they connect to on an everyday level and it feels relevant to their lives and also doesn’t frighten the wits out of them initially, then they can step into a space where they’re more willing to engage in some of these more complex conversations that we need to have.

Dr Claire Concannon

Luckily, we live in a functioning democracy. And if we want to flex those citizen powers, to have our say, what should we do? Here’s Eloise Gibson again, with thing number one.

Carve out some bandwidth around local and national election time to do some informed voting.

Eloise Gibson

Does this match my vision for the future? Does this match where I think New Zealand should be positioning itself? And kind of can they show their workings, you know, just to sew all that up?

Dr Claire Concannon

And there are other citizen flexes too.

Eloise Gibson

Writing to local councillors and MPs is really important. And I think just sticking up for things like perhaps a safe zone outside your local school for where children can ride or cycle safely so that their parents don’t feel that they need to get in the car and drive them to avoid them getting squished.

Dr Claire Concannon

Plus, you can think about what you do with your money.

Eloise Gibson

KiwiSaver providers vary hugely in where they invest their money and how much they care about whether or not they are worsening the climate crisis or not. It’s really easy to find out information about that. And that’s where a lot of people’s money, any money they have that’s not in their house, that’s often where it is for a New Zealander.

I think spending power is the other thing that we maybe don’t talk about enough. I mean, look at the impact that whoever buys from Nestlé and Mars globally is having on New Zealand farmers, who are now being paid if they want to reduce their emissions.

Dr Claire Concannon

What about those carbon footprint individual actions? Should we even bother? Well, if you’re a jet-setting billionaire, you should definitely get on that.

Journalist

It would take about 1,500 years for those of us in the 99% to emit as much carbon as the world’s richest billionaires do in a single year.

Dr Claire Concannon

But even if you’re not, there are likely benefits anyway. Eloise says that those who crunch the numbers on household actions say transport and what you eat are the top two to focus on.

Eloise Gibson

Use public transport, use cycle lanes, take small trips out of the car if you can. I think the important thing is to signal that you’re ready to do these things, that you’ll do what can work with your lifestyle. You know, likewise, you might decide to eat beef a little bit less often. It’s the most climate-intensive type of food, but it’s also really delicious and I still eat it. And often it will save you money. So there’s some really compelling case studies now about electrifying your vehicle and your house and what that can save you in terms of your bills. It doesn’t stack up for every single person, but there’s so many people that it does save money for.

Dr Claire Concannon

Thanks to RNZ’s Climate Correspondent Eloise Gibson and Jess Berentson-Shaw, Director of Narrative Research and Strategy at The Workshop.

Production help was from Ellen Rykers and Liz Garton, Briana Juretich-Greig was production coordinator and sound engineering and design was by William Saunders and Steve Burridge.

Tēnā koe i whakarongo mai. I’m Claire Concannon. Have a great week. Kia pai, te wiki.

Acknowledgements

This podcast is courtesy of RNZ. It is from the Voice of the Sea Ice series by Dr Claire Concannon. The series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme.

Eloise Gibson, RNZ Climate Change Correspondent

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw, Director of Narrative Research and Strategy, The Workshop