TLDR: This week, Cyclone Gabrielle wrecked the Hawkes Bay, Gisborne and parts of Coromandel and Northland, killing at least 10 people, cutting off power to 225,000 homes and making 10,000 homeless in what appears to be Aotearoa’s biggest natural disaster since the Christchurch Earthquakes of 2011 and our worst climate catastrophe ever.
Repairing the damage and building back more climate-resilient infrastructure will cost taxpayers, ratepayers, insurers and residents billions of dollars over many years to come. Gabrielle’s destruction exposed Aotearoa’s need to invest heavily adapt to climate change, as well as reduce emissions. It has triggered a debate about how, where and whether to rebuild the infrastructure to cope with these events, which are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change.
In Friday night’s ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers in recorded podcast above, I and co-host Peter Bale spoke with Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about his call for the Reserve Bank (Te Pūtea Matua) to consider not hiking the Official Cash Rate this coming Wednesday by 50 basis points, as had been widely expected before Gabrielle.
We also spoke with Dr Michael Baker from the new Public Health Communication Centre about the centre’s latest paper on the need for long-term thinking – Especially for preventing catastrophic risks. We talked about how democracies often struggle to overcome their biases towards short-term thinking, and failures to prepare for long-term risks, unless in times of crisis.
I also produced a podcast for The Spinoff this week where I spoke to ClimateSigma’s Belinda Storey about the finances of climate retreat.
Charts of the week
Longer weekend reading and listening
Here’s a few links longer reads and listens for paying subscribers for the weekend.