Jury's in, time to adapt on climate change

10 April 2007

Media Release

Jury's in, time to adapt on climate change to avoid massive extra costs

The latest UN report shows the jury is now in on climate change and it is time the country started serious work on avoiding unnecessary losses and reaping huge potential benefits from weather changes which are now virtually certain to occur.

The New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development, whose 56 members companies' annual sales equate to 30% of gross domestic product, says major benefits are to be had from work which starts now to mitigate the massive damage and losses which climate change could inflict.

"The country and businesses need to adapt and innovate. The time to keep cherry picking the science is over," the Chief Executive of the Business Council, Peter Neilson says.

"The deniers now comprise an underwhelming minority. The vast majority of New Zealanders know climate change is a problem. They're going to welcome work to cut back on the damage, adapt properly to new weather patterns and also seize opportunities to profit in many areas."

The latest report justifies the work that has already been started by government, insurers, local authorities and businesses in a bid to avert the impact of rising sea levels and more frequent catastrophic storms, changes in rainfall distribution and a rising risk of damage to our health and exports from new pests which will be able to survive here for the first time.

The public will be more impressed by effective action on a number of fronts than nit picking over the science.

Mr Neilson says business and national and local government now need to act on everything from population location planning to flood evasion measures, to enforcing new building designs to cut back on potentially massive losses from a rising number of catastrophic weather events.

The Northland floods recently, causing an estimated $80 million in damage, the $25 million Matata and Bay of Plenty floods of May 2005 and $155 million Manawatu floods in February 2004 were a sign of things to come and will result in huge insurance premium rises, unless mitigating action is taken.

Massive losses in other countries, like the US$45 billion Hurricane Katrina, hurricanes Rita and Wilma (US$10 billion each) and Cyclone Larry in northern Queensland (A$250 million), will impact on the global re-insurance market and inevitably put up New Zealand premiums. Properties subject to repeated weather damage are already going uninsured.

Mr Neilson says the latest UN report will give impetus to initiatives to doing everything from installing water tanks on urban properties, to delay sudden downpours overwhelming storm water systems in build-up areas, to new restrictions on coastal building; new building design; flood prevention systems for buildings (estimated in some New Zealand studies already to make a 5.7% return); new storm water and sewage system planning; changes in land use to prevent flooding and landslips.

This will also bring opportunities, including better returns from re-afforestation of marginal land, and maintaining production in newly-drought prone areas with new species of plants and animals.

The country also stood to profit from other carbon-reducing innovations coming out of research and development work now under way to produce new forms of bio fuel, and lower animal methane emissions. Work and other benefits would flow from a proposed new $100 million forest planting initiative, the largest in the country's history.

As the country steps into action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the next few years, other benefits will also flow. They include improved health from cleaner cars and insulated homes and lowering the volume of waste going to landfills, where it produces methane and dangerous leachates.
"All the evidence we are seeing here and abroad also indicates strongly that when businesses cut down carbon emissions, profits go up, regardless of sector. Every shareholder would be wise to ask if that's happening in the business they have a stake in.

"Dow Chemical, for example, cut company CO2 emissions by 32 per cent between 1994 and 2005 and saved $4 billion. DuPont cut its emissions 60 per cent and saved $3 billion in energy efficiency improvements alone," Mr Neilson says.

"It's time we moved on from asking if climate change is happening, to making huge gains from managing it properly."

ENDS

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