The most familiar sound I have heard all morning is sirens and the sound of neighbours making makeshift repairs. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be our grandchildren’s issue not ours. This was supposed to be an issue that would hit the developing world, then Australia and Europe. But not us. Not now.
This was supposed to be something that we could pass off as a freak weather event not the new normal.
Auckland, my home for the last 51 years, a city which is not tropical, in a country which was supposed to be the most resilient against climate change has just received more rain in 24 hours than we normally get in a summer.
Our international airport’s ground floor is now a swamp. Our motorways are rivers. Our dream that God would spare New Zealand from the worst vestiges of climate change, rudely ended
Over the past two years in Auckland I’ve from inside our family home an apocalyptic orange sky form as the dust and ash from the Australian bushfires made it 2000 km trip across the Tasman Sea to our shores and shut out all the of the sun for a day.
Later that year I watched the neighbours tree bow to the might of an earlier and gentler storm, and in its demise make its cemetery our garden shed. They expired together. The tree was cut up and removed, but the sign of its final transit remains.
We’ve had flooding before in Auckland but never with loss of life to people have died two people are missing.
Last night I happen to be driving when the rains hit. I watched in disbelief as roads I’ve cycled down since childhood turned into lakes. I saw an abandoned bus with flooded beyond its ability to escape, possibly beyond redemption.
A normal 20 minute drive across town became a one hour 20 drive as we tried to find a route that wasn’t flooded and avoid queues of abandon cars on motorways where four lanes have been reduced to one, and even that one akin to fording a river.
We live in an elevated neighbourhood – not in the valleys which are typically the ones affected. This time we tasted nature’s fury with equal measure. After a landslip, the house round the corner will likely be a write off and one of the people inside is unaccounted for. We are praying for their safety.
We were one of the lucky ones. I only have to endure The task of spending the weekend mopping and sponging as best I can the downstairs carpet which has become a small swamp knowing full well that this is my only recourse as carpets funding services are run off their feet dealing with far more serious cases.
So this is what climate change looks like there’s not a freak event this is not something which will pass this is the new normal in fact even to say it’s the new normal is incorrect because the trajectory we are on is towards greater severity not plateau.
What’s apparent to me now is that based on the evidence, action will not come fast enough from our political leaders: they are tied in a noose of election cycles that constrains even good people into short term thinking. Nor will action come fast from a select group of people sitting in Swiss towns, only to find themselves outnumbered 3:1 by paid lobbyists. It will be up to the people to take action.
We have seen one model of taking action millennial’s who have lost patience and I’ve resorted to destruction.
While this is an emergency and whilst what is happening is alarming, to live in a state of emergency and to bow to it’s not the right response.
We need to acknowledge the harshness of what is and respond with heads that are as calm as our weather no longer is.
We face the difficult challenge of acknowledging the climate emergency we live in while not living in a state of psychological emergency in response to this. This would serve only to layer personal emotion stress on top of planetary environmental stress. The result would surely be to pivot us into angry and ill-conceived responses.
We all all in this together and blame will help no one.
I do not know how we find our way out of this or through this. None of us do. And none of us can find that answer alone. All I know is that together is our best hope.
For my part I will be continuing to ask myself what is it that I can do what is the small part that I can play.
For me the answer is very simple I can do three things.
1. I can continue to advocate and invest in technologies that can make a difference to counteract climate change.
2. I can challenge misinformation about technologies including but not limited to Bitcoin that help reduce the impact of climate change but because they also disrupt vested interests have been falsely maligned. This spreading of misinformation needs to stop.
3. Because I have learnt tools to help people stay calm and distress in the face of worry anxiety and crisis I can continue to make sure that as many people as possible gain access to these tools so that they can take immediate action from a mindset of dynamism not despair, acceptance not rage.
We’re in this now. We’re in this for the long haul and we’re in this together.
* please forgive any typos. This was largely dictated without edits or proofing so I could quickly get back to sponging the carpet before it starts to rot.