Appendix 4

On the ephemerality of beaches

Contents
author Cimino
originally published 20190406 as a Mahurangi Magazine article

Renewables Making Poor Impression: With global energy consumption increasing in 2018 at nearly twice the average rate since 2010, renewables are not keeping pace with energy growth, much less slashing greenhouse gas emissions. The cardinal electrification-of-everything imperative utterly underlines the need for zero-carbon power production at scale. The 2018 data that will allow this chart to be updated is due to be published in June. Otherwise, not only are renewables incapable of averting dangerous rates of global heating, they are callously condemning the poor to perpetual energy poverty. chart Mahurangi Magazine | bp Statistical Review of World Energy 2018

…we shall defend our islandsepigraph added—“island” pluralised, posthumous apologies to the quotee—20250926,
whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches
Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940.

Relying on economics to salvage a survivable climate is the 21st century equivalent of standing down an army and leaving defence of the realm to wizardry. With the United States Senate summarily scuttling the Green New Deal, it might seem in poor taste to point out that the problem of climate disruption is wicked way beyond the power of economics—green, doughnut, or otherwise—to address. When the survivors of anthropogenic climate disruption take stock in two or three hundred years’ time, they will find today’s preoccupation with financial systems and economics utterly unfathomable.

Despite Green New Dealers, along with everybody else, being brought up on accounts of empires and their conquests, with nary an economist referenced, the ubiquity of neoliberal doxaWikipedia: Greek word meaning common belief or popular opinion is such that civilisation’s salvation is seen as only possible via some new, green free market. Ironically, what did finally get the United States economy growing decisively after the Great Depression was not New Deal economics, but World War II mobilisation—exactly what is needed now, globally. Last Friday’s announcement by former foot-dragger Winston Peters on firearms-control legislation is testimony of how a crisis can change everything. The wickedness of the wicked problem that is global warming is that while a modest majority52% Support or Strongly Support. Horizon Research poll of 1164 respondents aged 18+ nationwide between 20 and 27 March 2018 of New Zealanders support all parties in Parliament agreeing on plans to act on climate change, comprehension of the fiendishly difficult challenge of replacing fossil fuels at scale, while simultaneously reducing their use, is thin-film-solar-panel deep.

On 15 March, 1.4updated 9 April to figure quoted: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/19/school-climate-strikes-more-than-1-million-took-part-say-campaigners-greta-thunberg million school students worldwide are claimed to have demonstrated against the lack of adult climate action. This is fewer than 0.2% of world school students, or little more than 0.5% of the 263 million out of school anyway. But equally, arguably, to justify the Greta Thunberg-inspired Fridays for Future title, the strikes need to be held weekly. Regardless, the adult response to those strikers would be to invite the school student leaders to deliver lectures and run laboratories and workshops, on all aspects of meaningful climate action. The adult response would also be to help the school students develop a clear-eyed, science-based climate-action curriculum. The intergenerational Friday colleges could be conducted in the heart of communities, outside of school grounds, to retain the strike frisson—Warkworth’s town hall, as a local example.

Fateful Trajectory: With its unshakeable, it’s-the-economy-stupid faith in growth, humanity has already precipitated the Sixth Great Extinction. What may stand to be salvaged, in addition to a percentage of the species otherwise condemned, is a survivable Earth, and only a grassroots population moratorium has the power mobilise on the epic scale and speed needed. chart Boston Globe | Mahurangi Magazine data 1965–2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy; 1900–1965 Department of Energy Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center

Ōrewa school students could, pertinently and strategically, contribute to the coastal geomorphology and sea-level rise modules. Auckland Council, afeard of frightening the horses, refuses to discuss sea-level rise of much more than the Intergovern­mental Panel on Climate Change’s self-proscribedas published: government-proscribed, outdated, , 1-metre-by-2120. And although the council is using the ‘worst-case’NZ RCP8.5, or the representative concentration pathway assuming global warming of 2° by 2100 emissions concentration scenario, projected ahead a little, to 2150, for greenfield development consents, that pathway has since become a best-case, at best.

Sea-level rise cannot begin to be understood without understanding the ephemerality of glaciation. Once the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt—and civilisation is on track for ensuring exactly that happens—two stark facts become highly relevant. The immediate consequence is that, with sea level 66 metres higher than today’s, the world’s coastlines are radically redrawn, billions are displaced, and much of richest agricultural land is submerged. Effectively, permanently. Permanently—in all probability—because it requires an excruciatingly improbable coincidence of factors for ice sheets to form in the first place; most of the Earth’s 4.54 billion years have been ice-sheet free. Some categorically insist, convinced by behavioural psychologists, that it is crucial not to say such things. That people will give up. Yet everybody—at least, by the age of seven or eight—knows everybody dies. The human response is to value life, and to value the lives of the yet-to-be born. The global suicide rate—a little more than 0.01%abysmally, New Zealand’s suicide rate is much higher: 0.01367% in year ending June 2008—certainly doesn’t indicate a mass loss of interest in living, upon the realisation that life is finite. Great-grandparents don’t lose interest in great-grandchildren simply because they have a diminishing likelihood of living long enough to see them graduate, or otherwise.

But the credentials of behavioural psychology to design meaningful climate action strategy are no stronger that of those of economics. The facts must come first, and the broad facts are that the worst-case consequences are an uninhabitable planet, with or without a heroic, global mobilisation. Pretending that those are not the facts, produced the pretence that was Paris. Nobody seriously suggests that Winston Churchill made it more difficult to defeat Nazi Germany because, prior to hostilities, he should have said ‘only’ Poland was prone to invasion. Today’s Poland is the 2°, 1-metre by 2100—the vanishingly remote prospect that the 2014 worst-case emissions concentration pathway hasn’t been consigned to best-case, at best.

Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness didn’t evolve 350 000 years for the benefit of the 200-year-old free market. And the notion that gross-domestic-product growth aids environmental protection, and stabilises population is a self-serving myth, of mythically catastrophic proportions. Free-market adherents would have it that government intervention—backing winners—is a fool’s errand. But meaningful climate action means governments mobilising to build zero-carbon infrastructure at scale, something where Aotearoa was once a world leader—meaning that even today, New Zealand’s fossil-fuel-free electricity generation is still 83.9%in 2018, almost up there with France’s 89.9%in 2017, which is nearly 9% cheaper, whereas Green Germany’s is a punishing-to-the-poor more than 39% dearer.

Ephemerality of Glacial–Interglacials: If humanity fails to avert ice-sheet disintegration—and even heroic efforts to that end have no guarantee of success—all bets are off as to whether they ever re-form. And while tropical temperatures in polar regions are fascinating to contemplate, the balmy Holocene that has been so good to Homo sapiens sapiens generally—not least its rich, rejuvenating beaches made possible by a stable sea level—will be the stuff of history, and dreams. Here, the navy-blue bars indicate periods subject to glacial–interglacial cycles, as opposed to what are popularly thought of as ice ages. chart Mahurangi Magazine

World War II mobilisation wasn’t the result of economic planning, but the commissioning of manufacturing on the crude but effective cost-plus basis. Today, the New Zealand government shouldn’t be backing winners, but building climate-action winning infrastructure, by commissioning electric trains and trolleybuses, and prioritising road use for the latter—building fewer motorways for fewer motorcars, be they battery-powered, driverless, or 3-D-printed.

Begun in all innocence, the fossil-fuel era is on target to end Earth’s habitable climate about a billion years prematurely. After 31 years of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report writing, the rate at which carbon dioxide is being concentrated continues to increase. And not just the rate at which carbon is being added must rapidly reduce, the concentration in the atmosphere must come down, for the longer it remains above the preindustrial level of 280 parts per million0.028%—just one wicked-problem attribute of anthropogenic climate disruption is that an odourless, colourless gas at an atmospheric concentration of a fraction of 1% holds the key to Earth’s habitability, the longer the atmosphere and oceans will warm. Between 65% and 80% of carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years—cold comfort for acidification. Removal of the balance takes up to several hundreds of thousands of years, meaning ongoing ocean heating and ice-sheet melt, long-term. It behoves the first few human generations to contemplate the wickedness of the problem to take one for the team by doing every conceivable meaningful thing to slash fossil-fuel emissions and to care for the most vulnerable. With the Central Pacific islands set to receive one and a half times their share of sea-level rise, Aotearoa, with its heavier than average carbon habit, has a particular responsibility to help Pasifika adapt.

Environmental psychology can, however, provide useful pointers:

To conclude, our findings suggest that communicating the reality and urgency of climate change—perhaps combined with media attentionSchmidt A, Ivanova A, Schäfer MS. Media attention for climate change around the world: A comparative analysis of newspaper coverage in 27 countries. Global Environmental Change. 2013; 23: 1233–1248. to the issue and with communicating individual experienceZhao X, Maibach E, Gandy J, Witte J, Cullen H, Klinger BA, Rowan KE, Witte J, Pyle A. Climate change education through TV weathercasts: Results of a field experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 2014; 95: 117–130. of climate change-related extreme weather events—is successfully influencing the levels of climate change belief in New Zealand.

There are obvious, rich points of engagement, from personal or family ties with the Pacific, to the near universal appeal of beaches. Hauraki Gulf beaches, beloved by Aucklanders, typically have nowhere to retreat to. A clue to this is that, until Pakiri–Te Arai, beaches are intermittent rather than continuous, backed by terrain unconducive to wave action being able to maintain a sandy littoral and sublittoral zone apace with sea-level rise. Spitsand their attendant berms such as Ōrewa, Hatfields, Waiwera, Wenderholm and Te Muri will, if they are allowed, will migrate up-estuary for a time. Increasingly, the former beach shoreline will be highly erodible clay hillside. Only when the full extent of sea-level rise has run its 66-metre course will shoreline be able to begin the long process of cliff and rock-platform creation. Sandy saltwaterlake and river beaches are another thing, but will face their own challenges beaches will be an incredible rarity.

But there’s a further reason those who strategize for climate action shouldn’t pull their punches. The, mostly young, people who’ve studied anthropogenic global heating in depth don’t deserve to be further isolated in their contracted cognitive dissonance, particularly by those in positions of responsibility pretending all is in hand, so as to supposedly not spread a contagion of climate-inaction-depression inaction.

Although zero-breedinglike zero-carbon, zero-breeding is, of course, an entirely relative term. It does need, however, to be closer than the 100% of 100% Pure is humanity’s best shot of achieving zero-carbon, there is still much that needs to be built, and built without steel and cement, and possibly even with much less glass. Aotearoa knows how to grow the wood for the wood-laminate structures that could lock up carbon for millennia. Being factory built, they would be infinitely relocatable, the need for which has yet to be conceded in Christchurch, but has in Dunedin South.

Kopp Up: The upper 2014 projection here, based on Kopp et al 2014, had, by 2018, been increased from 1.9 metres to 2.4, but, as is clear from the non-linear increase apparent here, sea-level rise doesn’t stop at 2150. The 2018 study, of which Robert E Kopp is an author, includes projections of 15.5 metres by 2300. The utter inevitability of tens of metres of sea-level rise makes managed-retreat prevarication in already at-risk set­tle­ments such as Southshore and South New Brighton, and even Ōrewa, an entirely inappropriate strategy. chart Preparing for Coastal Change Ministry for the Environment

A determined, Churchillian ‘we shall fight on the beaches’ is more likely to rally support for meaningful climate action beyond the soothing balm of battery-powered-car business-as-usual. The Auckland region alone has more than 3000 kilometres of coastline most of which is vulnerable to sea-level rise and could be made more resilient. If Aucklanders wait until urupā are exposed and infrastructure is disinterred, storm after storm, the region will be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the response required. Regardless, in the primeval quest to be coastal, new buildings on concrete platforms continue to be consented barely above sea level.

Australian social-documentary photographer Rennie Ellis published his Life’s a Beach  in 1983, and the sentiment goes back much further—two millennia to Roman resort Baiae, and beyond. Physiologically, waterside life likely was the making of the human, odd-man-out, primate, be that as it may, by the Upper Paleolithic, dispersal to Australia and the Americas was distinctly coastal. In 2017, the Coastal Restoration Trust commissioned a rare survey of New Zealanders about their relationship with beaches. Unsurprisingly, 77% of respondents were either somewhat concerned or very concerned about the effect erosion may have on the future quality of New Zealand beaches. Not quite as many considered that global warming or climate change was a major cause of the erosion—58% indicating as opposed to 29% indicating 1–5; 12 unsure 6–10 on a scale of 1–10. Nevertheless, given the coast is the coalface of fossil fuel use impacts, reticence to readily acknowledge the role of global warming, sea-level rise, or display the trust’s survey results accessibly, is unlikely to be a constructive strategy, other than extremely short-term.

A 2016 study finally put paid to the standard textbook position that humans reached the Americas via an ice-free corridor, by showing that is was unviable ahead of actual human arrival, more than 14 700 years ago. It was, of course, via the coastline that humans migrated, as the species was ever want to do. With 14 of the world’s 15 largest cities located close to the sea, beaches and their ephemerality in the face of sea-level rise are an inescapable focus for meaningful climate action. Older people need to swiftly set aside any reticence and use the universal, ancient urge to range the coastline to rally meaningful climate action. And any who remain unmoved by the ephemerality-of-beaches or the ephemerality-of-ice-sheets perspectives, might also consider the ephemerality of non-icy oceans, on observable planets. It seems, a 2017 study finds, that while water is not exceptional, its persistence when a planet transitions from a snowball state likely is. By rights, it could be said, Earth should never have retained liquid oceans, much less for long enough to evolve complex life forms.

Greater Than France: But not in a good way—New Zealanders’ per capita emissions are more than twice those of the French. New Zealand’s rightfulas published: righteous condemnation of France for its lethal sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in the Waitematā Harbour, is diminished by its self-righteous, ill-informed, rejection of nuclear power—blinding its citizens to their being the bad guys of global warming. Chart data 2012. chart Mahurangi Magazine

Providential climate and sea level stability during the 11 650-year-long Holocene provided humanity the opportunity to develop agriculture, and all the discovery that followed. It is a preposterous improbable fluke, but it is just one of many, such as the emergence of rna that, added to the calculated 1-in-700-quintillion odds of Earth having a close analogue, strongly suggests this planet is the epitome preciousness, and Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness literally its personification. Yet, humankind is prepared to sacrifice the remaining billion years of this astoundingly rare and beautiful biosphere, and its beaches, on the altar of a grotesquely unfit-for-purpose 57-year-oldin 2019, if dated from Okun’s law, 1962 ideology of growth-dependent economics.

Aotearoa is uniquely positioned to demonstrate how a country could go to zero-carbon and  care for its people, and its neighbours. New Zealanders, however, would first need to find the wisdom and the courage to make its climate nuclear-free-moment, nuclear-powered.

To be reworked…

 

In a nutor perhaps, pipi…shell For many, beaches are the definition of favourite place. But coastal beaches are a Holocene attribute that will be lost to sea-level risewith rare exceptions, over an uncertain but inexorable timeframe. Western civilisation’s prevalent life’s-a-beach ethos suggests that climate’s unkindadjective added 20250924 coastal impact must be recruited as a call to arms, to do every meaningful thing to defend the last billion years of the biosphere.

 

Endnotes note The following endnotes were fashioned to accompany images and captions included in the original Mahurangi Magazine article, which, in this new Light the Fuse format were left naked of accompanying text:

 

 

Birdas published: Birth, but surely wordplay counts for something, given a metaphorical triple-entendre birdstrike could be as disruptive to the growth-for-growth’s-sake as literal birdstrike is to commercial aircraft operations —$1.2-billion per year, globallystrike or Uninhabitable Earth: One generation can bring humanity to its senses, by predominantly re­fus­ing to procreate. Population already exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of the planet by 50%. Given that there remains at least a possibility  that radically slashing greenhouse gas emissions could alleviate otherwise hellish privations in store for children being born today, it is illogical that it is apparently unconscionable to stop population growth in its tracks, but acceptable to fail to completely curtail, amongst other things coal mining. Aotearoa published as: New Zealand burns an egregious, reported 534 000 tonnes per year to dry milk—and steel and cement manufacture. For Birth Rightits former domain, birthstrikeforfuture.com, is, tellingly, up for grabs to get real traction, however, it must threaten economic growth, at scale—a potentially dangerous action given the global financial oligarchy will likely not go quietly. bbc News

Metaphorical birdstrike That young people apparently can’t grasp en masse that they could readily wrestle power from the prevailing oligarchy, for any purpose, is remarkable. All  they have to do, at scale, is to organise the mother-of-all birdstrikes—a birth strike—demanding the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation begin, to give humanity, and its fellow species, a fighting chance to weather the 3rd Millennium Polycrisis. Even without the help of the fertilization president, industrial-scale procreation has seen global population balloon greater than tenfold.

That mere discussion of the possibility of consideration of a pause on proliferation can invite extreme reactions from people who reverently worship Planet Earth is paradoxical, but cannot be allowed to forestall a close examination of the rapidly reducing options for, on one hand, radical reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, and on the other, the means to decently feed, clothe, and shelter any given population. While it has endlessly argued that climate targets can be reached without risking alienating audiences by insisting that population be considered, the inconvenient fact is that, despite the record uptake of solar, greenhouse-gas emissions are showing no signs of plummeting, and meantime, nor has the energy-hungry work demanded by the Great Mobilisation begun—building accommodation for the billions who will be displaced by multi-metre sea-level rise, to name but one⸺herculean , a barely adequate superlative for the magnitude of the task⸺enterprise. It is precisely because of the scale required of the Great Mobilisation that an econ­omy-disrupting birthstrike must be contemplated. The choice is stark: More more-of-the-same stupid, growth-for-growth’s-sake economy, or radical, intelligent, Great Mobilisation economy. A bigger, fairer economy, building  for the immediate future, as well as the medium- and long-term.

Breeding Wicked Problem: Nothing spotlights the wickedness of the problem of anthropogenic climate disruption more dramatically than the need to confront the natural, human imperative to breed that is driving the Sixth Great Extinction and the onset of a potentially uninhabitable Earth. Air-flight carbon-dioxide-equivalent values here based on premium economy direct return flights. graphic Mahurangi Magazine, adapted from the Guardian  | Wynes & Nicholas, Environmental Research Letters, IOPscience

Until the present biosphere-destroying economy is held to account, those presiding over the corporations calling the shots have no financial incentive to do anything but feed—and profit from feeding—consumerism. If sufficient young people sacrifice—or even delay—their procreative birthright, their message will, in time, be heeded. To being lectured that any hiatus in having babies will wreck the economy, their unwavering response must be:

Yes, it will put your  biosphericidalglobal sum of all ecosystems on Earth + suicidal economy out of its misery-making misery, but you will find that our  Great Mo­bil­i­sa­tion economy will do just fine, and we  know how to waitVincent Lingiari, quoted in From Little Things Big Things Grow.

There is little doubt that, sooner or later, youth will  discover the wit and wisdom to wrestle power from the oblivious biosphericidal oligarchy. What will be unknowable possibly for decades, is whether mobilisation in response to the 3rd Millennium Polycrisis was, by 2025, left so late that civilisation is rendered unrecognisable, and its people all but annihilated. There is no question of not mobilising immediately, and some actions are so patently priorities, no excuse for other than their immediate implementation. The  pair of such Great Mobilisation priorities should arguably be ending child poverty and homelessness. While that mission might strike the majority of climate-concerned as utterly off-target, that in itself is a powerful reason for putting poverty first, precisely because it sends the unequivocal message that nobody, and no country, is to be left behind. The Great Mobilisation enterprise is for all  of humanity and  the biosphere upon which it and its fellow species utterly, unequivocally depends, not to mention the profound degree to which humanity and its fellow species depend upon each other. In the face of the Third Millennium Polycrisis, to fail to mobilise is the  definition of collective insanity.
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Life a Beach 33 150 Years Back: Migration map used with the 2019 article illustrated a coastal route possible 14 700. With science having pushed the timing of coastal back so spectacularly, in such short a time, a map the updated the Smithsonian article seemed called for. Predominance of human settlement in the proximity of the coast is ancient. Although 33% of North America’s coastline is sandy or shingle beaches, the Pacific Northwest is decidedly less so, which strongly suggests the migrants were skilled users of coastal seaworthy watercraft. Alarmingly, as the Arctic neared its 2019 winter maximum, the Bering Sea was virtually ice-free, and should be frozen right now, in April, but isn’t. map from Gandy, 2020, National Geographic Magazine

Upper Paleolithic life a beach Life for Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness, it seems, has always been a beach, in very significant part. Given that sea level jumped about 60 metres between 12 000 and 7000 years ago, evidence of the coastal migration into North America is not often stumbled upon, along today’s—until recently—remarkably long-stable shorelines. It seems reasonable to conclude that muchif not most of prehistoric human migration was led by coast-dwelling people. Regardless of whether life’s-a-beach is literally in human dna, failing to communicate that global-heating-caused-sea-level-rise has precipitated their eventual irretrievable loss, would be the mother of Great Mobilisation own goals. Coastal population, meanwhile, is increasing dis­pro­por­tion­ately with Cosby et al, 2018 calculating: 

Ultra-coastal≤ 10 km population encompasses 14.6% of the global population on 4% of the landmass.

As the last significant landmass to be colonised by humans—circa 1280—Aotearoa has a rich oral record of coast-wise migration, bookending evidence spanning the 70 000-year South­ern Dispersal route scenario. The saga over conflicting human-dispersal hypotheses makes a compelling case of paucity of evidence not being evidence of absence. That, coupled with New Zealand’s absurdly pertinent distinction of being the last significant landmass to form, from the sunken remains of the failed Zealandia continent, provide a unique vantage from which to command the attention of the world-weary, and not for the first time in the young country’s history. Grist, if any further was needed, for the Light the Fuse  premise.

It is entirely probable that, from Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness’s earliest development and dispersal, littoral environments profoundly shaped the human physique. As with the orthodoxy regarding the peopling of the Americas, paucity of contrary fossil evidence may have protected older hypotheses. Either way, it is certain that polymath surgeon Peter Rhys Evans’ AttenboroughSir David, The Waterside Ape, BBC, 2016-praised  The Waterside Ape: An Alternative Account of Human Evolution will not be the last word on the roundly anthropologist-derided suggestion. Overturning orthodoxy is a famous for its holdouts; it is even possible, for example, that the last laugh will go to those who long questioned the running-flapping-arms cursorial hypothesis of the evolution of avian coelurosaurI am with Sibusiso Biyela: dinosaur, “terrible lizard”, is the mother-of-all animal-group misnomers, having evolving from small bipedal reptiles weighing around 2–5 kg. The more closely bird-related clade, coelurosaur, is merely “hollow-tailed lizard”—birds.
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‹ Appendix 3

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Disclosure The author of this novel modello is no longer the secretary of Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. The content published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine.

 

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