The climate change bill arrives and the grown-ups don't want to pay

TL;DR: Our planet is now warming and generating extreme climate events faster than our politicians, voters and institutions can agree to reduce the costs and share the burden of those events fairly now and in future.That was evident in a range of delays, non-responses, finger-pointing fudges and distractions thrown up yesterday by Aotearoa’s politicians, who by default have decided to force today’s costs down onto those who can least afford it, and push tomorrow’s costs onto those who can’t do anything right now to stop it. See those examples below.News elsewhere from Aotearoa’s political economy on climate, housing and poverty:* a third of babies overall and more than half of all Māori babies under six months old are now not fully vaccinated, up substantially from before Covid; The Post-$$$* Thomas Coughlan reported for The NZ Herald this morning he understood “from people familiar with the matter that the Ōtaki to north of Levin (O2NL) expressway could cost as much as $1.9 billion based on one recent costing,” which would be up by $400 million from the last official estimate; and,* The Earth Commission’s group of more than 40 researchers published a study in Nature overnight showing humans had pushed seven of the planet’s eight physical boundaries into areas that risk causing mass displacements, migration and conflicts.Usually, I put in a paywall for paying subscribers at this point in the email newsletter and lock off the podcast above from free subscribers. But I want to experiment until the end of June with publishing everything to everyone immediately to see what happens with subscription rates, revenues and email opening rates. I want to thank paying subscribers in advance, who are still the only ones able to comment and get access to our very active chat section and webinars. Join our community by subscribing in full to support my journalism in the public interest about housing (un)affordability, climate change (in)action and poverty (not enough) reduction.The bill has arrived and the grown-ups won’t payThe understandable instinct of any leaders when confronted with a costly and unpopular choice is to play for more time and information, hoping new less painful options are magicked up, or the delay is long enough that today’s voters and shareholders aren’t around to bear the costs when they finally can’t be avoided.That strategy — it’s more of a set of instincts — can work when the tectonic forces driving those costs and decisions is slower than the decision-making processes. Democracies, organisations and societies captured in the status quo have the slowest processes, in the absence of immediate existence-threatening crises.Yesterday, the failure of Aotearoa’s political instincts and metabolic rates to deal with the escalating pace of human-induced climate change was starkly on display in a series of events, announcements, non-decisions and blatherings, including:* the Government yesterday announced it would share with councils and insurers the cost of buying back about 700 now-uninhabitable homes (~$1 billion) and protecting another 10,000 at-risk homes (un-estimated) from extreme climate events, but couldn’t say how much it would or could pay, and how much it expected or would force councils and insurers to pay;* the Deputy Mayor of our biggest and most-heavily-affected city, Auckland’s Desley Simpson, expressed alarm this morning that the Government hadn’t said how much of the sharing it would do, saying her ratepayers couldn’t pay; * the Mayor of that city, Wayne Brown, yesterday tried to stop the country’s largest news gatherer and its (only) two television news broadcasters from attending and reporting on his very-public announcement of how he wanted our second-largest Government to respond to these climate shocks financially by cutting social spending and selling a share of the country’s most profitable monopoly, in order to protect home-owners from higher interest rates;* the Mayor of our second-largest city, Christcurch’s Phil Mauger, ramped up efforts to rip out the safety bollards his own council screwed into one of its busiest roads to protect cyclists, just so drivers could get a lane back to pump more emissions into the climate; * the leader of one of our four biggest political parties, ACT, said the Government was setting a dangerous precedent by agreeing to fund part of the buy-outs, which was likely to lead to councils being even more restrictive with consenting for new homes; and,* a group of shop-owners in our third-largest city, Wellington, escalated their two-year-long legal challenge to a plan to remove 145 angled car parks outside their shops in order for the busiest commuter route into the city to have a safe cycle lane.News briefly elsewhere…Hawkes Bay Regional Council, which estimates its total Gabrielle flood repair costs $885 million, is fighting with the Government’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) over who will pay for emergency costs. RNZ (Lauren Crimp)NZ Post dropped service to 25% of the world, and no one knew. Newsroom Pro-$$$ (Nikki Mandow)Government may invest up to $56 million to subsidise less-carbon-intensive inshore fishing fleet. Newsroom-Pro-$$$ (Andrew Bevin)Kāinga Ora downsizes KeriKeri housing development by a third to eight homes and adds two car parks to 16 parks after protest by 800 residents against three-story development. NZ HeraldNational MP David Bennett, who will retire at this election after being an MP for 18 years, apologises for saying Commerce Commission staff ‘need a bullet.’ RNZKa kite anoBernard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe