PCE report brings home impacts of climate change

Thursday, 27 November 2014, 2:52 pm
Press Release: Generation Zero

Thursday 27 November 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PCE report brings home impacts of climate change

Youth climate organisation Generation Zero has welcomed the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's 'Changing Climate and Rising Seas' report and says it demonstrates climate change will affect all of us.

“No-one will escape the impacts of the changing climate, but everyone can be part of the solution to stop global warming at a level that gives our kids a fighting chance of adapting,” said spokesperson Paul Young.

“This report beautifully tells the scientific story of how we know with such certainty that burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are making the Earth hotter, and brings home the impacts on New Zealand of one of the most certain effects: sea level rise.”

“We're already feeling the effects of the changing climate and these will get worse due to a certain amount of warming already 'locked in'. But the rate of change can be slowed and more devastating impacts avoided through a rapid transition to a low carbon world.”

The report cites projections by NIWA that the severe flooding in Auckland of January 2011 will be a one-in-ten-year event by mid-century, and could be an annual occurrence a few decades later if the world takes no action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Young: “We need action to both manage the unavoidable – by planning for the warming already locked in – and avoid the unmanageable – by doing all we can to cut carbon pollution and ultimately achieve a zero carbon global economy.”

“On both fronts, leadership and long-term planning from central government is sorely lacking.”

“As sea levels continue to rise, our leaders to pull their heads out of the sand and develop a plan to transition New Zealand to a successful low carbon society.”

ENDS

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