Speaker 1: Chiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Destructive, devastating, apocalyptic.
Speaker 2: That's how the wildfires burning across Los Angeles over the
Speaker 2: last week have been described. The blazers have largely brought
Speaker 2: the US's second largest city to a standstill, destroying thousands
Speaker 2: of buildings and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate.
Speaker 2: It comes as officials declare twenty twenty four the hottest
Speaker 2: year on record, with temperatures breaching the target of one
Speaker 2: point five degrees celsius above pre industrial levels for the
Speaker 2: first time. Today on the Front Page will be discussing
Speaker 2: the ongoing climate risks that New Zealand faces with victory.
Speaker 2: Where are you a University of Wellington professor Jonathan Boston.
Speaker 2: But first we're in Los Angeles with nine News USA
Speaker 2: correspondent Lauren to Marzi. Lauren, can you start by describing
Speaker 2: to us where you are currently and what sort of
Speaker 2: damage you're seeing.
Speaker 3: It's really extraordinary to look around where myself and my
Speaker 3: cameraman are at the moment. In the Pacific Palisades. This
Speaker 3: was the hardest hit area it's just tucked in behind
Speaker 3: Santa Monica and Los Angeles. This feels no matter which
Speaker 3: way you look, there's this devastation that's straight after straight
Speaker 3: block after block of homes that have just been brought
Speaker 3: to the ground by this fire that has moved through
Speaker 3: so quick And you know, Australia and New Zealand are
Speaker 3: so used to have seen bushfires that this is an
Speaker 3: urban fire that's come roaring through the city.
Speaker 2: The fires have been burning for coming up on a week.
Speaker 2: Are there any signs of things being can yet? What
Speaker 2: are some of the main challenges firefighters are facing.
Speaker 3: It's the Santa Ana winds which comes through. It's a
Speaker 3: real winter thing here in Los Angeles and in California.
Speaker 3: These winds barrel through the Santa Monica and through the
Speaker 3: Santa Anna region. That's what's really causing the problem here
Speaker 3: right now. He's still got four fires burning around Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Two of them are all but contained now, but those
Speaker 3: two largest ones, the Palisades Fire and the Eaten Fire,
Speaker 3: which are on either side of Los Angeles, are still uncontained.
Speaker 3: The Eaten Fire is burning currently up the hill and
Speaker 3: it's twenty seven percent containers, So that's certainly progress that's
Speaker 3: been made by the fire crews here, but when it
Speaker 3: comes to Palisades Fire, it's only eleven percent containment. It
Speaker 3: has caused so much damage it feels like there's nothing
Speaker 3: less to burn. But you know, as Cruise Tron works
Speaker 3: through as fast as they can ahead of these winds,
Speaker 3: that they're getting the aerial assets up to put down
Speaker 3: those water bombing helicopters and fire retardant because the concern
Speaker 3: is these winds are going to pick up once again
Speaker 3: and just a single ember can spark a whole new fire.
Speaker 2: I understand there have been a lot of health warnings
Speaker 2: issued because of all the smoke as well.
Speaker 3: Right it's across Los Angeles. I mean in those first
Speaker 3: initial days especially, it was just really a strange, eerie
Speaker 3: sense to look out the window in the middle of
Speaker 3: the city and it be blanketed by this such thick
Speaker 3: ass and smoke. Now things are beginning to improve as
Speaker 3: the fire dies down a little bit, but all throughout
Speaker 3: the fire zone there is ass flying everywhere, and you
Speaker 3: think about the amount of properties that have been burnt down.
Speaker 3: It's hazardous. It's tough. There are water issues that's been
Speaker 3: boil water issues across the county with water problems. It's
Speaker 3: tough for every which way you look. And then you've
Speaker 3: got these tens of thousands of people who are right
Speaker 3: now evacuated and trying to deal with the situation when
Speaker 3: they either can't get back into a house or they
Speaker 3: have no house to go back to.
Speaker 4: Evacuations for the palisades and eaten fires they have dropped
Speaker 4: in the last couple of days, which is some good news,
Speaker 4: but as you hear, it's still a very fluid situation
Speaker 4: and that could change. So be aware that we're at
Speaker 4: approximately one hundred and five thousand residents under evacuation orders
Speaker 4: and approximately eighty seven thousand residents under evacuation warnings. I
Speaker 4: just want to remind everybody if you are asked to
Speaker 4: leave and you're in an evacuation order area, your life
Speaker 4: is in danger. You need to leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those thousands of people that have been forced to evacuate,
Speaker 2: where have they actually all gone.
Speaker 3: There are evacuation centers set up across the city right now,
Speaker 3: but it's a tough situation. The housing market here in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles is the best of time. It is horrific.
Speaker 3: It is expensive. There are people who are trying to
Speaker 3: stay with family members. At the moment, many staying in
Speaker 3: these centers. But there's going to be need to be
Speaker 3: something put into place because the hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: houses that's been burnt to the ground can't just be
Speaker 3: put back up overnight. So it's a tough situation a
Speaker 3: head there, and it's certainly a messy one.
Speaker 2: And we've heard all about which celebrities homes have burnt down,
Speaker 2: but so many more people have been affected. Right, have
Speaker 2: you spoken to many people on the ground, Oh, I.
Speaker 3: Have so many, and it is just heartbreaking hearing these stories.
Speaker 3: I spoke to one woman, Suzanne in the Eaten fire.
Speaker 3: Her house was in Alta Dina, and I was there
Speaker 3: as Suzanne got back to her property. It was brought
Speaker 3: to the ground by these fires. She built up that
Speaker 3: house with her partner, who passed away from cancer a
Speaker 3: few years ago. She said, all of her memories are
Speaker 3: inside that house. It is so tough to see what
Speaker 3: is unfolding here. It is person after person's story after
Speaker 3: story of heartbreak. Yeah, it really it's horrific and it's.
Speaker 2: Perhaps unsurprising to see as well. There's a bit of
Speaker 2: a blame game coming from Donald Trump's side about the
Speaker 2: causes of this disaster, what's going on there and what
Speaker 2: our officials actually saying about what could have caused this.
Speaker 3: Oh, there are so many political potshots being thrown out
Speaker 3: right now. This morning, Donald Trump laughing out at Californian authorities,
Speaker 3: he was on his truth social saying that the fires
Speaker 3: are still raging. They are incompetent politicians who have no
Speaker 3: idea how to put them out. Why can't they put
Speaker 3: them out? And then you've got the politicians here in California,
Speaker 3: the California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is asking questions himself
Speaker 3: about what has happened. Donald Trump has now been invited
Speaker 3: to view this devastation across Los Angeles. But the reports
Speaker 3: that we've had of fire hydrants drying up and fire
Speaker 3: crews being unable to access water, now, in some respects
Speaker 3: it is never there was never plan for this amount
Speaker 3: of damage and fire fighting. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: Gavenu sim says, there must be answers as to how
Speaker 3: this could have happened. And you know, if there were
Speaker 3: those fire hydrants that were full, how many more properties
Speaker 3: could that have saved and potentially live.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us Lauren, thank you so much, Helphy.
Speaker 2: The Los Angeles fires is just the latest natural disaster
Speaker 2: the US has faced in recent years. Two back to
Speaker 2: back hurricanes caused billions in damage in the country South
Speaker 2: last year, while Hawaii had its own devastating wildfires just
Speaker 2: two years ago and over the next months, Music England
Speaker 2: marks two years since devastating weather events in the Upper
Speaker 2: North Island left damage. We're still clearing up Victoria. University
Speaker 2: of Wellington professor Jonathan Boston has recently published A Radically
Speaker 2: Different World, Preparing for Climate Change, and joins US now
Speaker 2: to discuss where we go next. Jonathan, your book caught
Speaker 2: ari as. On its front cover, you write, societies must
Speaker 2: prepare for a more perilous future. Can you explain that
Speaker 2: to us?
Speaker 1: Humanity has been warming the planet over the last one
Speaker 1: hundred years or so through the burning of fossil fuels
Speaker 1: and the destruction of forests, and the evidence is that
Speaker 1: thus far we've warmed the mean surface temperature on the
Speaker 1: planet by about one point three degrees celsius, heading towards
Speaker 1: one point five and potentially two degrees. One of the
Speaker 1: consequences of warming the planet is that we are changing
Speaker 1: the climate system on the planet, and that, among other things,
Speaker 1: is increasing the intensity and in some cases the frequency
Speaker 1: of powerful storms. So we're getting more significant, intense rainfall events,
Speaker 1: we're getting more severe droughts, we're getting some stronger winds
Speaker 1: in places. The evidence is that as a result of
Speaker 1: the damage we're doing, the costs economic costs are going
Speaker 1: up at a higher rate than gross domestic product globally,
Speaker 1: and the insurance losses are going up significantly. What we're
Speaker 1: witnessing right now as we speak Chelsea, of course, is
Speaker 1: the very severe fire events in California, particularly Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: where there is no question there will be tens of
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of a property damage, perhaps perhaps over
Speaker 1: one hundred billion, and very significant insurance losses. So we
Speaker 1: are entering a new world, a radical changed world, as
Speaker 1: a result of human activity, and as a consequence of that,
Speaker 1: we need to prepare for a different world. Guess the
Speaker 1: tough thing is figuring out when you make that call, right,
Speaker 1: when do you tell people they need to leave their homes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's a huge call. I mean, the
Speaker 5: intricacy of Westporter is that you have to you kind
Speaker 5: of do have to make a call like that reasonably
Speaker 5: early both both bridges become impassable, and so once it happens,
Speaker 5: you are stuck on effectively an island in Westport. So
Speaker 5: there is a point where you have to say, right,
Speaker 5: in the interest of safety, we need to go now,
Speaker 5: so you can't leave it too late. But also you
Speaker 5: know it's a significant logistical event and obviously really upsets
Speaker 5: a lot of people, so it's important that we base
Speaker 5: those decisions on some good science.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of your book covers the idea of
Speaker 2: relocation to avoid the risks posed by climate change. You
Speaker 2: use it the examples of Westport in twenty thirty facing
Speaker 2: rising sea levels and flooding, and Wellington, CBD in twenty
Speaker 2: sixty five contending with its proximity to the sea as well.
Speaker 2: Can you explain what you mean by relocation and what
Speaker 2: that could look like.
Speaker 1: So as we think about how we might adapt to
Speaker 1: the impacts of climate change, we can in certain contexts
Speaker 1: improve the protective structures that we have the stock banks,
Speaker 1: seawalls and so on. But in many cases it won't
Speaker 1: be technically feasible or cost effective to increase protection. So
Speaker 1: the only realistic option in those sorts of situations will
Speaker 1: be to literally remove existing physical structures that houses businesses,
Speaker 1: infrastructure and so on and relocate them to safer locations.
Speaker 1: To do this, we will need a very well developed
Speaker 1: systematic planning framework that assesses the risk to particular coastal communities,
Speaker 1: that provides local authorities or the national government the powers
Speaker 1: to conduct the process of planned relocation over a period
Speaker 1: of time, and then includes funding mechanisms to facilitate the
Speaker 1: kind of changes that are required. Because obviously people will
Speaker 1: be losing their property in many cases that will constitute
Speaker 1: their main asset. Businesses will be disrupted by the need
Speaker 1: to move significant areas of business activity. It might be
Speaker 1: the central business district of a town or even a
Speaker 1: city like Wellington. So what we need in this context
Speaker 1: is the legislative framework to provide the policy tools to
Speaker 1: enable local and central government to manage this very difficult
Speaker 1: process of moving buildings and infrastructure out of harm's way.
Speaker 1: I mean, in many cases the buildings will need to
Speaker 1: be demolished and the infrastructure will need to be demolished
Speaker 1: and then removed. So planned relocation is essentially moving physical
Speaker 1: is out of harm's way in an orderly managed way.
Speaker 1: The risk, of course Chelsea is that if we don't
Speaker 1: have a good policy framework in place, then we won't
Speaker 1: move properties in advance of the incoming tides, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and instead will suffer ever increasing damage along our coasts
Speaker 1: and therefore ever increasing costs, both financial and non financial
Speaker 1: to those who are affected, with potentially very, very damaging
Speaker 1: consequences for society as a whole. Indeed, one of the
Speaker 1: big concerns I have is that if we fail to
Speaker 1: prepare adequately in a proactive and precautionary way for what
Speaker 1: is coming at us from the future, then we run
Speaker 1: the risk of undermining our capacity as a society to cope,
Speaker 1: thereby undermining our democratic institutions and moving into a very
Speaker 1: different world in which that would be well tragedy upon tragedy.
Speaker 6: It's twenty fifty. We've bone passed the one point five
Speaker 6: degree target that world leaders promised to stick to. The
Speaker 6: Earth has warmed two degrees since the eighteen hundreds, when
Speaker 6: the world first started burning fossil fuels in mass scale.
Speaker 6: Reports on heat waves and wildfires regularly fill the evening news.
Speaker 6: Summer days exceed forty degrees in London and forty five
Speaker 6: degrees in Delhi, as extreme heat waves are now eight
Speaker 6: to nine times more common. These high temperatures prompt widespread
Speaker 6: blackouts as power grids struggle to keep up with the
Speaker 6: energy demands needed to properly cool homes. Ambulance sirens blare
Speaker 6: through the name, carrying patients suffering from heat stroke, dehydration
Speaker 6: and exhaustion.
Speaker 2: Your Westport example, though, was only about five years away. Now,
Speaker 2: how quickly can we have these conversations around how to
Speaker 2: properly move entire towns. It sounds like we should have
Speaker 2: been having this conversation years ago.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, in some parts of the country, local governments
Speaker 1: have tried to have these conversations going back ten fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but it's been very difficult because you've got a situation
Speaker 1: where people have powerful vested interests in remaining where they live.
Speaker 1: There's an attachment to place. You've also got quite a
Speaker 1: lot of misinformation and disinformation, so people denying the nature
Speaker 1: of the risk that we face. And then fundamentally you've
Speaker 1: got the problem of who pays. And in the absence
Speaker 1: of having some kind of central fund which assists people
Speaker 1: to actually move from their existing dwellings, then of course
Speaker 1: many people so they can't afford to move. So one
Speaker 1: of the critical factors in all this is having a
Speaker 1: principled approach to the bearing of the costs of planned
Speaker 1: relocation over the coming years. On the issue of timing,
Speaker 1: obviously that is going to vary from place to place,
Speaker 1: but plainly in some cases we will have many decades
Speaker 1: to plan and to undertake a really locate. In other
Speaker 1: situations it might have to be done very quickly. If
Speaker 1: we fail to be proactive about this, then we're going
Speaker 1: to be faced with the kinds of situations that arose
Speaker 1: as a result of the anniversary floods in Auckland in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and then the damage that Cyclone Gabrielle
Speaker 1: inflicted in which over a thousand properties have been designated
Speaker 1: as Category three, that is that they cannot be relived
Speaker 1: in and are being brought out. And in that sort
Speaker 1: of situation, well, then instead of having lots of time
Speaker 1: to plan, people are affected kind of instantly overnight and
Speaker 1: who's their home and business?
Speaker 2: Now New Zealand loves a per capita table, but there's
Speaker 2: one in your book that we probably won't like. Two
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three weather events rank in the top five
Speaker 2: of weather disasters by cost per capita for that year.
Speaker 2: So these weather events aren't just happening overseas, they are
Speaker 2: having an impact here already. Yet a lot of people
Speaker 2: still want to see these kind of events as one offs,
Speaker 2: don't they They don't pay attention to the news, and
Speaker 2: that we had the hottest year on record again last year,
Speaker 2: for example, and probably think we're fear mongering by talking
Speaker 2: about a more perilous future. As someone who's studying all
Speaker 2: of this on a daily basis, Jonathan, what would you
Speaker 2: say to those people.
Speaker 1: Well, I would encourage them to read the available scientific evidence,
Speaker 1: which is extensive, and in particular encourage them to read
Speaker 1: the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which
Speaker 1: is a grouping of hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists
Speaker 1: who have the mandate to assess the most recent scientific
Speaker 1: evidence and provide a thorough analysis of what is happening
Speaker 1: and what is likely to happen in the future. And
Speaker 1: if people read that kind of evidence, it will be
Speaker 1: very hard, in my view, to conclude that there's no problem.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, the evidence is overwhelming that humanity is
Speaker 1: warming the planet, that the warming of the planet is
Speaker 1: having some very severe consequences, and those consequences will become
Speaker 1: ever more severe over the coming decades and beyond. So
Speaker 1: the first thing I would say is we need people
Speaker 1: to read the best available, up to date scientific evidence
Speaker 1: and to take that seriously. Then we need people, on
Speaker 1: the basis of that to put pressure on governments to
Speaker 1: develop the kinds of policy frameworks that we need in
Speaker 1: order to prepare for what is coming. If we fail
Speaker 1: to prepare well, then, as I've indicated, the costs and
Speaker 1: consequences will be all the greater, and some of those
Speaker 1: consequences could be extraordinarily dire. So we do have a problem, though, Chelsea,
Speaker 1: which is that globally there has been an active disinformation
Speaker 1: campaign by the fossil fuel industry over many decades to
Speaker 1: try and persuade people that there isn't a serious problem,
Speaker 1: or that to the extent that there is a problem,
Speaker 1: it's not due to human interference in the climate system
Speaker 1: or other kinds of false accusations. And so, as we've
Speaker 1: witnessed in watching the vires in California in the last week,
Speaker 1: there are still people saying that this has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with climate change, it's all due to bad planning,
Speaker 1: bad allocation of resources, and so on, Whereas the scientific
Speaker 1: evidence is pretty clear that the kinds of events with
Speaker 1: being witnessing have been at least made worse by climate change,
Speaker 1: and that this is a foretaste more and more of
Speaker 1: what is to come.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Jonathan. That's it for this episode
Speaker 2: of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
Speaker 2: stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot co dot nz.
Speaker 2: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin,
Speaker 2: who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe
Speaker 2: to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind
Speaker 2: the headlines.