Author: Bryan Walker

On the eve of destruction

This column was published in the Waikato Times on 1 September

Chamerlain In September 1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a conference at which Britain and France had agreed to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. He spoke to a crowd outside Downing Street: “I believe it is peace for our time…And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”

Appeasement was an early attempt to cope with the threat of Nazi Germany.  It’s not my purpose here to make any judgment on its wisdom. The point is that it didn’t remove the threat. Within one year of Chamberlain’s reassurance war had been declared. Within two years the Londoners recommended to sleep quietly in their beds were being blitzed by German bombers and sleeping in air raid shelters.

Why raise this in a column on the Eco-issues page?  Because, prompted by observations in British MP Colin Challen’s recent book Too Little, Too Late, I see the appeasement stage of dealing with Nazism as analagous to what our government is currently offering in the face of climate change. Yes, there is a belated recognition that global warming poses a threat to the future.  But there is also a vain hope that  something less than full engagement with that threat will make it go away.  10 to 20% emissions reduction by 2020, 50% by 2050.  We can all sleep quietly in our beds.

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Nepal: warming in the high Himalaya

NepalOxfam climate change reports keep coming.  This time it’s Nepal, a country about which New Zealanders who share Edmund Hillary’s values will care.  Oxfam spoke to people in fourteen rural communities across three ecological zones in that country.  What those people had to say is remarkably consistent with the current climate change projections.  But it’s not because they know what those projections are.  These are mainly poor people, often not well educated, and unlikely to be aware of the IPCC reports. Here are a few of the statements:

“There has been no rain this winter, and the monsoon doesn’t arrive on time any more. Four or five years ago we grew enough rice and wheat to eat for five months, now it is not enough for one month. Before we had lots of green vegetables, fruits and sugarcane, but now we can grow very little, only where there is water close by.”

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A solemn warning on coral reefs

Australian scientist and coral reef expert John Veron reckons there’s a “great big gorilla in the cupboard” — advancing ocean acidification. It cleans out reefs, leaving them “horrible places – dead, empty, slime-covered.” He paints this grim picture in a lecture given to the Royal Society in London last month. It’s available on line and I have just watched it – twice. His seriousness and the weight of his concern are deeply impressive.  Veron warned that his talk would not be a happy one. Usually his talks on coral are fun. This one wouldn’t be, but “I’ve never given a more important talk in my life.” It was highly focused and informative, accompanied throughout by a range of illuminating pictures and graphs. I watched it carefully, anxious to fully understand its import, and have pulled out a rough summary of some of his major points.   

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Prescott: Plan B for Copenhagen failure?

PrescottJohn Prescott, whose activities in the lead-up to Copenhagen I drew attention to in an earlier post, continues to make waves in Guardian reports. Is he fighting on two fronts?

Yesterday he reiterated his basic position when he launched the campaign New Earth Deal, on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 

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A strong voice from Kiribati

A short item in today’s Herald reports the visit to New Zealand under Oxfam’s auspices of Pelenise Alofe Pilitati. I followed up with a call to Oxfam who provided helpful extra material about their visitor. As Chairperson of the Church Education Director’s Association in Kiribati she is acutely aware of the impact climate change is having on the future prospects and outlook of young people. “The future of Kiribati is in our hands – we work very hard each year to support and help students to be successful. We want our children to love their country and love to serve their people. But what is the future of our children when our country is being threatened by global warming?”

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