Paris Agreement

• Chemical giant LyondellBasell (LYB) has emerged as an example of better practice in this field by proactively addressing concerns over misaligned industry affiliations.
• The company's Climate Advocacy Report , released in May 2023, evaluates its memberships in key trade associations, categorising each based on alignment with climate policy positions.
• Another example of good practice is provided by Bayer’s (BAY) Industry Association Climate Review (2023) which assesses 63 associations.
• As the world grapples with climate challenges, the time for blurred communication is long gone, and corporate leaders should be clear about their climate transition pathway.

• TOKYO, Feb 7, 2024 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Limited today announced that the Fujitsu Group has been selected for the CDP's A List for climate change for the seventh year in a row, earning the highest rating in the CDP's evaluation of corporate activities in response to climate change.
• The survey evaluates companies' outstanding efforts to demonstrate leadership in disclosing information, identifying and managing risks, addressing challenges, as well as setting ambitious and significant goals.
• In 2017, The Fujitsu Group laid out its medium- to long-term environmental vision, the Fujitsu Climate and Energy Vision, setting its goal to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050.
• Utilizing AI and other advanced digital technologies to support innovation, Fujitsu is working to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change through its business operations.

• Hawkes Bay, parts of Auckland and the Coromandel all still bear the scars of the worst storm to hit New Zealand this century.
• Restoring infrastructure to the way it was before a natural disaster is not necessarily the best approach for a resilient future.
• A year after Gabrielle, New Zealand needs to look to the future of climate risk, policy creation and infrastructural investment.

How frequently will it be exposed to the costs and chaos of weather events?
How should it respond to those risks?
What are the infrastructural investment priorities?
How should it sequence its responses?
And how will we pay for these measures?

Read more:
Landslides and law: Cyclone Gabrielle raises serious questions about where we've been allowed to build

Political agreement in theory

• In October 2016, the National-led government’s environment minister Paula Bennett announced the ratification of the Paris Climate Accord.
• The treaty became legally enforceable in New Zealand in 2020 while Jacinda Ardern was prime minister.
• Fundamentally, the commitment to addressing climate change is a point of agreement across the political spectrum.
• Having ratified the Paris Accord, cuts to the country’s emissions are legally enforceable and time-bound.

Can NZ ‘adapt and thrive’?

• If this is a national priority, then planning, budgeting and sequencing need to be committed to.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed over a multi-decade, integrated programme of planning, compulsory purchase and infrastructure construction.
• Read more:
  NZ cities urgently need to become 'spongier' – but system change will be expensive

Time for big decisions

• If the policy is going to be reconsidered, so be it.
• But New Zealand has pressing infrastructural investment needs to facilitate growth and sustainability.
• Given the huge financial consequences, and inevitable trade-offs in social programmes, education, defence and other budget priorities, a time frame for making big decisions is essential.

John Tookey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The worrying findings, based on temperature records contained in sea sponge skeletons, suggest global climate change has progressed much further than previously thought.
• Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming.
• To date, estimates of upper ocean warming have been mainly based on sea-surface temperature records, however these date back only about 180 years.
• Earth may in fact have already reached at least 1.7°C warming since pre-industrial times – a deeply troubling discovery.

Getting a gauge on ocean heat

• Oceans cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface and absorb an enormous amount of heat and carbon dioxide.
• Global surface temperatures are traditionally calculated by averaging the temperature of water at the sea surface, and the air just above the land surface.
• This makes it more difficult to accurately reconstruct stable baseline ocean temperatures.
• But what if there was a way to precisely gauge ocean temperatures over centuries in the past?

Studying a special sponge

• But they grow at a much slower rate and can live for many hundreds of years.
• This means sclerosponges can provide a detailed diary of sea temperatures, down to a resolution of just 0.1°C.
• We studied the sponge species Ceratoporella nicholsoni.

• We looked at temperatures going back 300 years, to see whether the current time period which defines pre-industrial temperatures was accurate.
• The sponge records showed nearly constant temperatures from 1700 to 1790 and from 1840 to 1860 (with a gap in the middle due to volcanic cooling).

What does this mean for global warming?

• It shows human-caused ocean warming began at least several decades earlier than previously assumed by the IPCC.
• Long-term climate change is commonly measured against the average warming over the 30 years from 1961 to 1990, as well as warming in more recent decades.
• Add to that the average 0.8°C global warming from 1990 to recent years, and the Earth may have warmed on average by at least 1.7°C since pre-industrial times.
• Read more:
  'Australia is sleepwalking': a bushfire scientist explains what the Hawaii tragedy means for our flammable continent

We must act now

Our revised estimates suggest climate change is at a more advanced stage than we thought. This is cause for great concern. It appears that humanity has missed its chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C and has a very challenging task ahead to keep warming below 2°C. This underscores the urgent need to halve global emissions by 2030.
Malcolm McCulloch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.