Response to 'Climate: NZ's role on spaceship Earth'

The Challenge

Dr Kevin Trenberth Hon FRSNZ explained why climate change is so bad for our planet and what we can do about it. "Recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid, and intensifying, and unprecedented in thousands of years", IPCC Report November 2021. "It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change, making extreme climate events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall, and droughts, more frequent and severe." Wellington, NZ science played an early, critical and now continuing role in proving that fossil fuels were and are instrumental in increasing CO₂ in the atmosphere. This was led by a fellow Fellow, the late Dr Athol Rafter. As quoted in the ODT in 1957, Dr Rafter warned from CO₂ data that the poles could melt. 1st canary in the coal mine for NZ.

Otago Daily Times 1957

Dr Kevin Trenberth Hon FRSNZ has challenged Aotearoa New Zealand and the Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi to act in response to this planetary challenge. Here is a response:

Utu Whanonga Pai (ōhanga)

Reward Good Behaviour or UWP ōhanga or te whanonga whanonga

New management systems are needed to regulate planetary energy systems, unite humanity and science and reward good behaviour. Creating trust between people is critical. Recalcitrant business actions in energy, frequently with government complicity, are destroying civilisation and damaging the planet as per IPCC. The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi is a pivotal agent for creativity.

Planetary Management

The planet has strict rules for its energy balance. Measured as temperature, the balance has been exceeded by 1 degrees C, now going to at least 2 degrees C, by human actions that have disturbed self acting planetary management systems. Management systems are required to manage planetary energy for eternity. Civilisation has two major systems, one self acting and the other unregulated:

1. A self regulated (self acting) energy cycle based on photosynthetically active radiation drives a carbon energy cycle, including humans, that operates within planetary boundaries. This decreases the entropy in the system. Human intervention will require proper management of the carbon cycle and biodiversity to ensure this balance continues.
2. An unregulated energy cycle, primarily as a consequence of a human invention, “the machine”, is indispensable because it can transform energy but is addicted to embedded energy in its manufacture and additional energy for associated infrastructures and its operations. It increases the entropy in the system. The machine has had unintended consequences through CO₂ production causing catastrophic disruption to the planetary energy and CO_2. Humans are the cause of the problem but can also rectify the situation but new management paradigms are needed to ensure the survival of civilisation.

Utu Whanonga Pai (UWP) Reward Good Behaviour

An immediate planetary management decision to totally replace or significantly reduce fossil fuels for machines is impossible as there is no acceptable immediate replacement energy source.

A reasonable “transition” period even with Transition Engineers is being made untenable due to the recalcitrant behaviours and actions of business. Businesses view resources and especially resource shortages as profit opportunities and so are hugely compromised. Priorities for proper planetary energy management are compromised. Any new action securing proper machines or renewable energy, mainly by machines, is of itself energy intensive (fossil fuel, 1.83t CO₂/t steel, 11.5t CO₂/t aluminium) even if resources are available and even if machines (including IT and Cloud and their net operational energy costs) ultimately achieve a proven “net” energy (CO₂) balance. There is a built-in precarious time lag to an “energy balanced planet and economy” including machines and their lifetime energy use. New energy resourcing risks are being created daily by repeating old initiatives, just as other energy risks are mitigated!! A Faustian Bargain even with machines to remove CO₂.

The planetary management approach is to pursue a renewable energy economy with proof that the machines meet significant net positive renewable energy yields or CO₂ reductions. Critical to this is to optimise the combination of machines, “fit for purpose”, in a transitional energy constrained planet. In parallel, to introduce a universal planetary action management system to reward good behaviour and unify humanity and science. It is the fusion of ecology and economics built on principles learnt as a consequence of science and observing human behaviour over 50 years. As it is not a legacy system, it is designed with the future planetary performance a priority and to utilise the latest human inventions but meeting strict conditions. B3ST Economics is economics at its BEST.

50 years of universal discussion has only yielded a goal to contain, not reduce, planetary temperatures and only to about 2C with what one suspects are movable goalposts. Planetary action management would be a universal system, uniting individuals with planetary perspectives to properly manage planetary temperatures and energy. It is to reward good behaviour, hence UWP.

Aotearoans’ Responsibility

4.895m Aotearoans each have direct responsibility and collectively for a space of about 400m ha of Antarctica, 45m ha of ocean and 27m ha of land. Their indirect responsibility is for the rest of the planet and the atmosphere (especially troposphere) above this area. Their individual and collective behaviours define the “state” of the space which NZ now closely and constantly monitors.

Paradigm for Management

The paradigm would manage this total space to perpetuate prosperity for the life forms to safely inhabit this space, as a subset (1%) of the planet and ultimately the planet. It encompasses "The Living Standards Framework" (LSF) of The Treasury, Te Tai Ohanga, who provide advice to Government on its overarching economic framework.

Measurement and Management

The state of this space, which is dynamic, can be measured, including the "inputs" and "outputs" to the "black box". It can be managed to perpetuate prosperity, an output. You can't manage what you don't measure. The space has natural and human made "rules" that govern the operation of the system and humans can devise "means" and mechanisms to modify the state of the system.

Aotearoans Management System.

Until now there has been no single system to manage Aotearoa's space including biophysical, social and financial components. A management system is being designed to overlay this space to ensure the collectively determined plans with goals are constantly improved. The outputs of scientists models are inputs to the system. It is currently built around a “Duncanson Doctrine ” which will evolve to be an operational system which is envisaged by the interaction of the models of the Planet, Aotearoa and land, oceans and Antarctica as diagrammatically shown here.

Enhanced Carbon Cycle

This new era requires a new interpretation of information as actions inside all companies can impact CO₂ in the atmosphere. An example here is from a NZ company to illustrate that the whole value chain has to be accounted for. Our work on the carbon cycle in the 1960s was a start, it is now time to extend it to manage all carbon fluxes on the planet. NZ King Salmon fuses biology, land, machines, humans, finance, oceans and climate. The expanded CO₂ value chain is shown here. McGuinness Institute. (May 2022). Working Paper 2022/10 – New Zealand King Salmon key documents 2012–2022. Retrieved from https://www.mcguinnessinstitute.org/publications/working-papers

Future Actions for RSNZ Te Apārangi

In 1976 a RSNZ Fellow, my staff member, Dr Geoff King reviewed “Limits for Growth”. The 2nd canary in the coal mine. The Chairman of NZ King Salmon in May 2022 said that “climate change was happening faster than the company expected”. Salmon deaths from heated ocean water necessitated closure of many pens, impacting financials, the company and shareholder prosperity. I was a Director of the startup company 40 years ago, but things are different now!! The 3rd canary in the coal mine for NZ. Is it three strikes and out? How should industry and the country respond?

In 2022 New Zealand joined the IPEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity to focus on four key pillars including, in line with the Paris Agreement, a “clean energy, decarbonisation and infrastructure pillar”. This will not save NZ. This is not the “get out of jail card” needed. The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi will positively support these developments but has the scientific knowledge and knowhow necessary to design a safe planet, a new paradigm for NZ and the Planet.

Utu Whanonga Pai (UWP) Reward Good Behaviour fits into the “clean economy pillar” but provides the backbone to show international leadership through cooperation, collaboration and scientific concepts for the planet as well as IPEF. The UWP ōhanga, UPW Economy, the new paradigm goal:

“A Planet to keep every Person safe so that you can Prosper and plan to Progress and Perpetuate”

Action. Start with a Duncanson Paradigm, develop the UPW Framework based on BEST economics and for “Determining BEST Priorities, Outputs, Results, and Related Performance Accountabilities”

Any interested parties that would like to see the next detailed stage of the project should contact us directly, but the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi may wish to set up a special UWP ōhanga Study Group to examine and report to the Fellows on a way forward to forge humanity and science links to perpetuate prosperity for Aotearoa New Zealand and the planet though planetary management systems. The research behind the Duncanson Paradigm is due to be published shortly.

Mr. R. Duncanson and Dr John H Troughton FRSNZ 1979 Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi.

john.h.troughton@gmail.com +61 41 997 0594