James Samuel

New Zealand had one hour of the 24 hour project, which was presented live from the Auckland Museum on Thursday night. Most of the hour was taken up with a 45 minute slide show, and then a few people including myself, were given 60 seconds and a single slide each to bring a message of the work they are involved in.

There are some quite well developed plans afoot which speak about extracting and utilising large volumes of very low-grade carbon-rich coal from mines in Southland. This carbon, which has been safely locked away in the ground for millions of years, would be unlocked and dispersed into the atmosphere. No matter what we do with coal, the end result is the same – the volume of carbon in the atmosphere will increase.

Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine “planetary boundaries” that can guide us in protecting our planet’s many overlapping ecosystems.

His analysis ends with a fatalistic statement: “Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction, but a reality that people feel … A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.”