For example, overwhelming evidence suggests that much of the East Coast region decimated during the Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle in early 2023 would not have been damaged anywhere near as much if politicians at both Local and Central Government level had put aside their prejudices and made decisions in the best interests of the people they serve.
I have written before
about the need to hold those responsible to account but that will not happen
until a full inquiry is allowed to investigate the complete background in which
decisions were made that, in hindsight, could have been avoided.
As one of a few
survivors at the coalface of the destruction, l am well placed to tell such an
inquiry why the damage occurred, how it happened, who or what was responsible
and what needs to be done in order to avoid it happening again. Let’s hope we
get the chance to tell it like it is instead of being, up until now, denied.
While the biggest
player in the disaster was undoubtedly Climate Change itself, there were
equally unfortunate instances of dereliction of duty or abuse of power by those
charged with overseeing the wellbeing of the communities most badly hit.
Local Government
could have limited the damage had they reinstated a bi-law restricting the
planting of exotic forests to classes 6 and 7 marginal hill country. Also, they
failed to adequately police the harvesting consents that would ultimately lead
to destruction that should not have occurred.
Central Government
could have used its authority to direct the OIO (overseas investment office) to
reject applications from overseas investors, allowing the purchase of large
tracts of quality grazing land which were justified solely on the misuse of the
ETS (emissions trading scheme) entitlements.
So, that is one of
the lessons we could learn from past experiences but the one l am about to
describe is somewhat more encouraging simply because the change of government
offers the possibility of a previous bad decision being negated by a regional
economic development project being revisited.
I am talking about a
previous Gisborne District Council decision to reject a Government Minister
(Shane Jones)’s $40 million offer needed to fund the Te Araroa log barging port
project headed by Sir John Clarke (former Principal of Ngata College and
respected advisor to the Waitangi Tribunal).
That offer was
unfortunately contemptuously rejected by the Gisborne District Council,
accompanied by insulting language from the Deputy Mayor that has no place in
discussions that have the capacity to benefit the region as a whole.
But the good news is
that the aforementioned Minister is now back in control of his old portfolio
(the Provincial Growth Fund), albeit
with a smaller amount of discretionary funds at his disposal and no doubt keen
to revisit the proposal irrespective of whether the Council is still of a mind
to oppose it. It is just one of those common sense projects that should be
supported by all those who see a future for this ravaged land.
Let’s do it!
Clive Bibby is a commentator, consultant, farmer and community leader, who lives in Tolaga Bay.
18 comments:
Purely from an observer informed by TV pictures, slash turns bridges into dams. Dams need to be much stronger than bridges, so bridges fail in their new roll.
That's so simple even I can understand it.
"While the biggest player in the disaster was undoubtedly Climate Change itself..."
The use of the word undoubtedly implies you have empirical evidence that climate change was definitely to blame, as opposed to it being a rare weather event, very possibly influenced by the Tongan volcanic eruption, which was most definitely not a climate factor.
Considering ALL global extreme weather event data shows a decline or no increase in the frequency and intensity of weather events over the past 70 years, I'd be interested in why NZ is apparently bucking the trend and the evidence you seem to think you have that undoubtedly shows this.
DeeM
This is a discussion l have had with people whose opinions l respect ever since the Cyclones (in rapid succession) ripped apart the framework
of our community in such terrible fashion.
For me, one who has lived on the same road and experienced all the climate events that have severely damaged our infrastructure over the last 43 years, trying to prove one way or another who or what is causing climate change is a pointless exercise.
I find it far more constructive encouraging people to accept climate change exists and that it is in all our interests to develop policies in mitigation that will enable us to live with the changes that are occurring.
You could be right that the changes in the numeracy and strength of these events is mainly due to “one off”eruptions or changes to the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere but the evidence suggests, if nothing else that it is probably as a result of a combination of all those factors occurring at the same time.
Whatever, the fact remains that sitting on our hands and doing nothing is not the answer.
We have the ability as intelligent human beings to make the changes necessary in mitigation that may require life changing decisions but make them we must. We all have a responsibility to contribute as best we can to the community effort.
Was climate change the cause of Bola?
Changes in climate have always been with us and will continue ad infinitum.
To say the latest episode was caused by climate change itself is a bit misleading.
However, you are allowed some license having lived through Gabrielle and its effects.
Absolutely Clive. Reasonable risk mitigation is essential. Ultimately, in hard reality. it comes down to cost vs benefit.
For the avoidance of doubt, I believe in climate change but nothing I've seen by way of evidence tells me it's anything other than natural.
If getting things done by blaming events like these on climate change, despite the actual data showing different, is the only way to get the necessary and justified infrastructure improvements made, then I have some sympathy for you.
However, it could backfire and the solution recommended is to produce even less CO2, which has been the standard fix by the establishment up to now. It's an easy way out, requiring little practical effort but a lot of control over our economy and personal choices.
After all, that's a big part of climate change too, I think.
Even my old colleague Ewan McGregor, in writing his latest book on this subject as it has affected HB, suggests that the evidence exposes the 2023 East Cost related storms, as a combination of events occurring in such a short timeframe, to be the most destructive and wet as any on record. I support his analysis as someone who has lived through the ones that are rated second and third on that list. So it is reasonable to accept that this country is experiencing something out of the ordinary and it just seems logical, for want of a better name reflecting the reality, to call it climate change.
Unfortunately Clive the barge site idea will not progress if common sense prevails. Sure it might take pressure of the roading infrastructure but as an idea that has been mooted for half a century now it has never met practical or economic hurdles. The economics of moving logs over any distance by whatever means these days is becoming very challenging. The log export market where most northern East Coast logs are destined is notoriously fickle, sufficient and consistent volumes year on year are simply not available, and if the climate is indeed becoming a worsening problem there will be increasing weather issues to cause log supply chain disruptions, including barge operation utilisation. I am not sure that too many larger forest owner corporates would be willing to invest in such a project, so why should the taxpayer?
The word Climate Change has the potential to disrupt a party. As we all know it’s the go-to name for the climate alarmists that gave up on both Global Cooling and Global Warming and adopted Climate Change as it conveniently covers all bases. It’s the MSM’s religion they demand is their god given vocation to fill everybody’s head with their mindless propaganda. Even as late as today after the coldest and wettest summer I can remember, NZ has fluked a couple of warm days motivating the MSM to go into overdrive, warning us of the perils of the hottest tempera on record. All lies and bullshit. However Clive, I agree with you that our climate continues to change as it has done for thousands of years and will continue to do so with or I suspect without mankind’s influence. We should make decisions wisely and not play Russian roulette with our infrastructure and precious land use.
Weather events and climate change are not necessarily related
Now you’ve got me blushing. Clive, so I’ll respond in a suggestive spirit, rather than a critical one – at least up to the barging idea. So, it’s a free book for you when it arrives.
1. Storms happen, whether or not the climate is changing, (I think it is).
2. The issue essentially is a landuse one. Should the Tairawhiti hill country remain in pasture, pine forest of native vegetation (the last has to be yes, surely)? The landuse changed to grass in the later part of the 19th Century, to pines the latter part of the 20th. So, rightly or wrongly, that was established well before the 2023 storms. You can blame Jacinda for a lot of things, but the tree-planting policy at the time her mother was taking her to Tumbling Tots is not one of them. That said, the slash issue was amply demonstrated by the 2018 Queen’s Birthday storm, and not enough was done to address it.
3. The land in question is likely to be in private ownership, so how do we tell the land owner what he/she should or shouldn’t do with it? Or more, must or mustn’t do with it. Now we really are into something new, but maybe that time has come. In much of the country, Hawke’s Bay in particular, easier and stable pastureland is being converted from boundary to boundary in pines. That’s the end of the pastoral infrastructure, history and the grand landscape. This is serious!
Now the barging idea. Not a landuse issue, but a roading one.
1. $40 million – it would be twice that if previous public costings are anything to go by – but surely the time of throwing public money at ideas is over.
2. It’s a non-starter. The status quo is that a logging truck picks up 30 tons of logs from the depths of the forest and delivers them to the port. Very efficient, though hard on roads, but they pay road-user charges. Maybe it should be more.
3. Most of the East Coast forest is south of Te Araroa, so the logs are trucked north to be barged south. (Of course, they could be barged to Tauranga, if that ported wanted them. For the Port of Gisborne, the log trade is basic.)
4. So the logs would have to be trucked to the barge port, and stored until the barge arrives. Up to the barge the logs have been handled three times. This is a costly business. Then the reverse is the case at the port because the barge load is a mix of grades to go, likely, on separate vessels.
5. As far as I am aware, the only barging in this country is on a small scale in the sheltered waters of the Marlborough Sounds of Hauraki Gulf. A barge weight down with logs laboriously being towed or pushed by a tug along the east coast of the North Island when the sea cuts up rough is an accident waiting to happen. More logs of beaches, but in such a case they come from a different direction.
6. Up to reason, the pine industry is vital to the national interest. Logging trucks, we just have to live with them.
Clive, first up the devastating weather of 2023 was a weather event. I believe climate changes...... always has and always will. Saying recent weather events are climate change caused by human emissions of CO2 is intellectual stupidity.
Let's reference the last 30 years of weather to build a climate picture and compare to previous tri-decades. The dustbowl 1930's era hold the global high temperature records of the recent couple of centuries. The tri-decades until 1980's, scientists were predicting an ice age, all whilst earths fuels were rapidly being turned into CO2. The climate nutters can't have it both ways. That was just a slight cooling period, nothing alarming.
The idiots wasting all our precious resources fighting CO2 emissions, drain every possibility of any resources left for future climate mitigation or prosperity. As DeeM says it is a cost/benefit we all do before building near the beach, or Esk valley. After the Christchurch earthquakes, have you noticed how the retired land that Christchurch decided it would never build on again.....well piles are going down and the houses are going up. People are taking the risk the next earthquake may be 500 years or more away. Crazy perhaps, the owners think it's entirely rational.
Clive I bet your ideas will bear fruit, as long as intelligent people come to the table. That proposition is long overdue. That said, keep up the good work. Peter
I was tempted to start thinking that Ewan may have abandoned his obsession finding fault with my ideas simply because he dislikes everything l stand for. I now admit that any suggestion that might happen was precipitate in the extreme.
I am left with no alternative but to debate his attempts to discredit the points l make as if he is the font of all knowledge about the forestry industry, particularly what motivates people of different ethnic origin to himself when deciding how they manage the forests they own.
Because l can tell him without fear of contradiction, that trying to find an operational efficient formula for Tairawhiti Iwi (who actually have a numerical majority in this region) that might seem like common sense to the HB Ngati Kahungunu who operate as a minority within a Pākehā dominated region, is like expecting the radical Maoris of Te Pati Maori (which is all of them) to suddenly behave in a manner that encourages understanding of why they do things that offend so many people.
So Ewan McGregor should not be too quick to dismiss plans that could work for those who want them to succeed without first understanding the political framework in which all businesses operate here on the East Coast.
If he did so he would understand why the budget supporting the Port of Napier expansion based on a percentage of logs coming from forests which have traditionally exported them via the Gisborne Port was a flawed assumption.
Yet he continues to grandly claim that the export log barging idea off the beach at TeAraroa is doomed to failure and continues to promote his opinion about its viability apparently unaware that the Minister in charge of this Government’s negotiated $1.2 billion provincial growth fund is the same Shane Jones who, in the same capacity in a different Government had already offered the project $40 million which was rejected - not by the Company but by the local District Council in a fit of childish pique.
Consequently, It would be a brave person who predicts what projects will succeed or fail in the Tairawhiti region mainly because the Maori hold a majority of votes in Council and have demonstrated that they will use it to enhance their own best interests above that of everybody else.
So in Ewan’s own words, it is what it is and we just have to live with it.
But in the meantime he would be well advised to keep his advice to himself. The locals are more inclined to make decisions based on what they see as priorities for spending and are more likely to listen to the advice given by those who understand the politics of this unique region.
My guess is Ewan is not one they would go to for that advice. The reasons are obvious.
Why would they come to me for advice anyway? I don't promote myself as either a 'consultant' or a 'farmer'.
Those reading the latest epistle from the scribe from Tolaga Bay may wish to read Barry Brill's article posted in Breaking Views Friday 25th August last year.
Mr Brill presents some of the views of Dr John Clauser, recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics, who has particular expertise in how cloud feedbacks are processed in global climate change models.
In May 2023 Dr Clause stated,
"In my opinion there is no real climate crisis."
He further stated,
"The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous
corruption of science that threatens the the world's economy and
the well being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has
metastasized into a massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience.
In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of
other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly
misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists,
government agencies and environmentalists."
Dr Clause seems not to be of the current post truth era, in that he believes that the evidence counts, that someone's personal opinions do not beat the hard scientific facts.
Well, I guess a Nobel Prize ain't worth what it used to be Clive!
Mr Brill's article is well worth a read.
Not sure why you seem to think l am somehow out of step with people like Dr Clause, Tom.
I am and always have been sceptical of the current Climate Change Science and have used Dr Clause myself as an example of esteemed scientific opinion that can’t be dismissed simply because he happens to be, at the moment, in a minority of world opinion.
You should be sending your comment to the Editor of the Gisborne Herald who has been trying for years to label me a Climate Change Denier which apparently is the greater sin.
In most of the articles l write, l refer to the “growing” number of world scientists who are disavowing this bunch of crap.
I do say that Climate Change is real irrespective of who or what is responsible and we need to just accept it and spend our time working out ways of learning to live with it.
You could go to the Herald website and check out my opinions on this and other matters if you want to but no doubt you won’t bother.
But yes, Barry always follows the money and comes up with credible opinions - something l try to do myself.
No matter that you don’t seem to think so.
Oh and for what it’s worth Tom, my own research tells me that your Dr Clause Is a real person and is not at all related to the other fictional character of the same name who apparently spends most of his time in the Arctic supposedly taking samples of melting sea ice for the IPCC.
I can’t work out where you sit on climate change. Clive. You say that “While the biggest player in the disaster [the two early 2023 storms] was undoubtedly Climate Change itself…” seems to suggest that this was something beyond the natural snail-pace of climatic dynamic, which you accept, but that means nothing because it is and always has been, ancient ice ages having come and gone. That’s beyond argument as no one claims that it is static. The issue is, ‘Are humans accelerating it?’ many scientists say that we are not, but many more say that we are. If we accept the latter, then surely, we need to respond. So Clive, what is you view on it? Do humans have any responsibility in its cause here?
You are the one who appears confused Ewan. If you got back over every comment l have made about Climate Change you will note that my opinion regarding its origin has always been the same. To suggest otherwise is just another one of your attempts to deliberately misrepresent my opinions on this and anything else - including my attitude to former and most likely soon to again be President Donald Trump.
It won’t work but just so you can’t accuse me of failing to restate my position on Climate Change, it is as it has always been - Climate change is real and has been a major influencing factor in recent climate events in this country and in many other parts of the world.
But l have no idea who or what has caused the climate change of recent times, although l tend to agree with those who suggest it is more likely to be part of a planetary cycle than as a result of increases in GH gas emissions due to excessive use of fossil fuels.
The fact that my opinions are in line with Tom’s Dr Clause and other “heretic” world renowned scientists is purely coincidental but it just goes to show that even mere mortals like myself can work things out for themselves and come to common sense conclusions.
You should try it some time Ewan.
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