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I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Destructive, devastating, apocalyptic. That's how the wildfires burning across Los Angeles over the last week have been described. The blazers have largely brought the US's second largest city to a standstill, destroying thousands of buildings and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate.
It comes as officials declare twenty twenty four the hottest year on record, with temperatures breaching the target of one point five degrees celsius above pre industrial levels for the first time. Today on the Front Page will be discussing the ongoing climate risks that New Zealand faces with victory. Where are you a University of Wellington professor Jonathan Boston. But first we're in Los Angeles with nine News USA
correspondent Lauren to Marzi. Lauren, can you start by describing to us where you are currently and what sort of damage you're seeing.
It's really extraordinary to look around where myself and my cameraman are at the moment. In the Pacific Palisades. This was the hardest hit area it's just tucked in behind
Santa Monica and Los Angeles. This feels no matter which way you look, there's this devastation that's straight after straight block after block of homes that have just been brought to the ground by this fire that has moved through so quick And you know, Australia and New Zealand are so used to have seen bushfires that this is an urban fire that's come roaring through the city.
The fires have been burning for coming up on a week. Are there any signs of things being can yet? What are some of the main challenges firefighters are facing.
It's the Santa Ana winds which comes through. It's a real winter thing here in Los Angeles and in California. These winds barrel through the Santa Monica and through the Santa Anna region. That's what's really causing the problem here right now. He's still got four fires burning around Los Angeles. Two of them are all but contained now, but those two largest ones, the Palisades Fire and the Eaten Fire, which are on either side of Los Angeles, are still uncontained.
The Eaten Fire is burning currently up the hill and it's twenty seven percent containers, So that's certainly progress that's been made by the fire crews here, but when it comes to Palisades Fire, it's only eleven percent containment. It has caused so much damage it feels like there's nothing
less to burn. But you know, as Cruise Tron works through as fast as they can ahead of these winds, that they're getting the aerial assets up to put down those water bombing helicopters and fire retardant because the concern is these winds are going to pick up once again and just a single ember can spark a whole new fire.
I understand there have been a lot of health warnings issued because of all the smoke as well.
Right it's across Los Angeles. I mean in those first initial days especially, it was just really a strange, eerie sense to look out the window in the middle of the city and it be blanketed by this such thick ass and smoke. Now things are beginning to improve as the fire dies down a little bit, but all throughout the fire zone there is ass flying everywhere, and you think about the amount of properties that have been burnt down. It's hazardous. It's tough. There are water issues that's been
boil water issues across the county with water problems. It's tough for every which way you look. And then you've got these tens of thousands of people who are right now evacuated and trying to deal with the situation when they either can't get back into a house or they have no house to go back to.
Evacuations for the palisades and eaten fires they have dropped in the last couple of days, which is some good news, but as you hear, it's still a very fluid situation and that could change. So be aware that we're at approximately one hundred and five thousand residents under evacuation orders and approximately eighty seven thousand residents under evacuation warnings. I just want to remind everybody if you are asked to leave and you're in an evacuation order area, your life
is in danger. You need to leave.
Yeah, those thousands of people that have been forced to evacuate, where have they actually all gone.
There are evacuation centers set up across the city right now, but it's a tough situation. The housing market here in Los Angeles is the best of time. It is horrific. It is expensive. There are people who are trying to stay with family members. At the moment, many staying in these centers. But there's going to be need to be something put into place because the hundreds and hundreds of houses that's been burnt to the ground can't just be
put back up overnight. So it's a tough situation a head there, and it's certainly a messy one.
And we've heard all about which celebrities homes have burnt down, but so many more people have been affected. Right, have you spoken to many people on the ground, Oh, I.
Have so many, and it is just heartbreaking hearing these stories. I spoke to one woman, Suzanne in the Eaten fire. Her house was in Alta Dina, and I was there as Suzanne got back to her property. It was brought to the ground by these fires. She built up that house with her partner, who passed away from cancer a few years ago. She said, all of her memories are inside that house. It is so tough to see what is unfolding here. It is person after person's story after
story of heartbreak. Yeah, it really it's horrific and it's.
Perhaps unsurprising to see as well. There's a bit of a blame game coming from Donald Trump's side about the causes of this disaster, what's going on there and what our officials actually saying about what could have caused this.
Oh, there are so many political potshots being thrown out right now. This morning, Donald Trump laughing out at Californian authorities, he was on his truth social saying that the fires are still raging. They are incompetent politicians who have no idea how to put them out. Why can't they put them out? And then you've got the politicians here in California, the California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is asking questions himself about what has happened. Donald Trump has now been invited
to view this devastation across Los Angeles. But the reports that we've had of fire hydrants drying up and fire crews being unable to access water, now, in some respects it is never there was never plan for this amount of damage and fire fighting. But on the other hand, Gavenu sim says, there must be answers as to how this could have happened. And you know, if there were those fire hydrants that were full, how many more properties could that have saved and potentially live.
Thanks for joining us Lauren, thank you so much, Helphy. The Los Angeles fires is just the latest natural disaster the US has faced in recent years. Two back to back hurricanes caused billions in damage in the country South last year, while Hawaii had its own devastating wildfires just two years ago and over the next months, Music England marks two years since devastating weather events in the Upper
North Island left damage. We're still clearing up Victoria. University of Wellington professor Jonathan Boston has recently published A Radically Different World, Preparing for Climate Change, and joins US now to discuss where we go next. Jonathan, your book caught ari as. On its front cover, you write, societies must prepare for a more perilous future. Can you explain that to us?
Humanity has been warming the planet over the last one hundred years or so through the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests, and the evidence is that thus far we've warmed the mean surface temperature on the planet by about one point three degrees celsius, heading towards
one point five and potentially two degrees. One of the consequences of warming the planet is that we are changing the climate system on the planet, and that, among other things, is increasing the intensity and in some cases the frequency of powerful storms. So we're getting more significant, intense rainfall events, we're getting more severe droughts, we're getting some stronger winds
in places. The evidence is that as a result of the damage we're doing, the costs economic costs are going up at a higher rate than gross domestic product globally, and the insurance losses are going up significantly. What we're witnessing right now as we speak Chelsea, of course, is the very severe fire events in California, particularly Los Angeles, where there is no question there will be tens of billions of dollars of a property damage, perhaps perhaps over
one hundred billion, and very significant insurance losses. So we are entering a new world, a radical changed world, as a result of human activity, and as a consequence of that, we need to prepare for a different world. Guess the tough thing is figuring out when you make that call, right, when do you tell people they need to leave their homes?
Yeah, I mean it's a huge call. I mean, the intricacy of Westporter is that you have to you kind of do have to make a call like that reasonably early both both bridges become impassable, and so once it happens, you are stuck on effectively an island in Westport. So there is a point where you have to say, right, in the interest of safety, we need to go now,
so you can't leave it too late. But also you know it's a significant logistical event and obviously really upsets a lot of people, so it's important that we base those decisions on some good science.
Well, a lot of your book covers the idea of relocation to avoid the risks posed by climate change. You use it the examples of Westport in twenty thirty facing rising sea levels and flooding, and Wellington, CBD in twenty sixty five contending with its proximity to the sea as well. Can you explain what you mean by relocation and what that could look like.
So as we think about how we might adapt to the impacts of climate change, we can in certain contexts improve the protective structures that we have the stock banks, seawalls and so on. But in many cases it won't be technically feasible or cost effective to increase protection. So the only realistic option in those sorts of situations will be to literally remove existing physical structures that houses businesses, infrastructure and so on and relocate them to safer locations.
To do this, we will need a very well developed systematic planning framework that assesses the risk to particular coastal communities, that provides local authorities or the national government the powers to conduct the process of planned relocation over a period of time, and then includes funding mechanisms to facilitate the kind of changes that are required. Because obviously people will be losing their property in many cases that will constitute
their main asset. Businesses will be disrupted by the need to move significant areas of business activity. It might be the central business district of a town or even a city like Wellington. So what we need in this context is the legislative framework to provide the policy tools to enable local and central government to manage this very difficult process of moving buildings and infrastructure out of harm's way.
I mean, in many cases the buildings will need to be demolished and the infrastructure will need to be demolished and then removed. So planned relocation is essentially moving physical is out of harm's way in an orderly managed way.
The risk, of course Chelsea is that if we don't have a good policy framework in place, then we won't move properties in advance of the incoming tides, so to speak, and instead will suffer ever increasing damage along our coasts and therefore ever increasing costs, both financial and non financial to those who are affected, with potentially very, very damaging
consequences for society as a whole. Indeed, one of the big concerns I have is that if we fail to prepare adequately in a proactive and precautionary way for what is coming at us from the future, then we run the risk of undermining our capacity as a society to cope, thereby undermining our democratic institutions and moving into a very different world in which that would be well tragedy upon tragedy.
It's twenty fifty. We've bone passed the one point five degree target that world leaders promised to stick to. The Earth has warmed two degrees since the eighteen hundreds, when the world first started burning fossil fuels in mass scale. Reports on heat waves and wildfires regularly fill the evening news. Summer days exceed forty degrees in London and forty five degrees in Delhi, as extreme heat waves are now eight
to nine times more common. These high temperatures prompt widespread blackouts as power grids struggle to keep up with the energy demands needed to properly cool homes. Ambulance sirens blare through the name, carrying patients suffering from heat stroke, dehydration and exhaustion.
Your Westport example, though, was only about five years away. Now, how quickly can we have these conversations around how to properly move entire towns. It sounds like we should have been having this conversation years ago.
Yes, well, in some parts of the country, local governments have tried to have these conversations going back ten fifteen years, but it's been very difficult because you've got a situation where people have powerful vested interests in remaining where they live. There's an attachment to place. You've also got quite a lot of misinformation and disinformation, so people denying the nature of the risk that we face. And then fundamentally you've
got the problem of who pays. And in the absence of having some kind of central fund which assists people to actually move from their existing dwellings, then of course many people so they can't afford to move. So one of the critical factors in all this is having a principled approach to the bearing of the costs of planned relocation over the coming years. On the issue of timing, obviously that is going to vary from place to place, but plainly in some cases we will have many decades
to plan and to undertake a really locate. In other situations it might have to be done very quickly. If we fail to be proactive about this, then we're going to be faced with the kinds of situations that arose as a result of the anniversary floods in Auckland in twenty twenty three, and then the damage that Cyclone Gabrielle inflicted in which over a thousand properties have been designated as Category three, that is that they cannot be relived
in and are being brought out. And in that sort of situation, well, then instead of having lots of time to plan, people are affected kind of instantly overnight and who's their home and business?
Now New Zealand loves a per capita table, but there's one in your book that we probably won't like. Two twenty twenty three weather events rank in the top five of weather disasters by cost per capita for that year. So these weather events aren't just happening overseas, they are
having an impact here already. Yet a lot of people still want to see these kind of events as one offs, don't they They don't pay attention to the news, and that we had the hottest year on record again last year, for example, and probably think we're fear mongering by talking about a more perilous future. As someone who's studying all of this on a daily basis, Jonathan, what would you say to those people.
Well, I would encourage them to read the available scientific evidence, which is extensive, and in particular encourage them to read the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a grouping of hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists who have the mandate to assess the most recent scientific evidence and provide a thorough analysis of what is happening
and what is likely to happen in the future. And if people read that kind of evidence, it will be very hard, in my view, to conclude that there's no problem. On the contrary, the evidence is overwhelming that humanity is warming the planet, that the warming of the planet is having some very severe consequences, and those consequences will become
ever more severe over the coming decades and beyond. So the first thing I would say is we need people to read the best available, up to date scientific evidence and to take that seriously. Then we need people, on the basis of that to put pressure on governments to develop the kinds of policy frameworks that we need in order to prepare for what is coming. If we fail to prepare well, then, as I've indicated, the costs and consequences will be all the greater, and some of those
consequences could be extraordinarily dire. So we do have a problem, though, Chelsea, which is that globally there has been an active disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry over many decades to try and persuade people that there isn't a serious problem, or that to the extent that there is a problem, it's not due to human interference in the climate system
or other kinds of false accusations. And so, as we've witnessed in watching the vires in California in the last week, there are still people saying that this has nothing to do with climate change, it's all due to bad planning, bad allocation of resources, and so on, Whereas the scientific evidence is pretty clear that the kinds of events with being witnessing have been at least made worse by climate change, and that this is a foretaste more and more of what is to come.
Thanks for joining us, Jonathan. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.