2019 Otago Daily Times feature

I was interviewed for this Otago Daily Times (ODT) feature last Friday afternoon. Generally I'm happy enough with it, I'm still showing some signs of nervousness in the video interview and I've just sent an email to the journalist correcting the megatonnes quoted in the piece to gigatonnes which is the word that I would have used.

The idea of a wall in Carmen Houlahan's interview which is above mine in the print edition of the ODT is a very unrealistic one. If you're concerned about the expenses of routing an arterial road behind Dunedin at maybe 60 metres above sea level* then I would point out that the costs of building a wall that will fail by 2100 at the latest (going by IPCC reports – pdf link) is going to both cost more and be less useful (by far). Building climate change resilience into Dunedin City does not include any more sea walls (there is a small one that has already failed on occasion at St Clair). Personally I think such a wall would fail long before 2100 and even if it …