When it comes to climate change, NZ fails its well-earned reputation for innovation, environment editor David Williams writes
Opinion: In pre-Christmas Copenhagen in 2009, New Zealand was under pressure.
Criticised at home and in Denmark over its emissions reduction target, and with Prime Minister John Key only belatedly deciding to attend, the Government was desperate for some good news as the talks themselves descended into disarray.
That bright spot was found in a $200 million, New Zealand-led alliance to reduce the agriculture industry’s greenhouse gas emissions – while still promising to feed the world’s hungry.
The announcement served many purposes. One was the international prestige of announcing something of presumed substance at a UN climate change summit. (The meeting was later written off as a disaster.)
But it was also designed to address criticism at home, that, effectively, the Government was soft on farmers, and to continue the narrative that Kiwi innovation could help tackle this thorny global problem.
New Zealand committed $45 million over four years. “This is just the beginning,” Associate Climate Change Minister Tim Groser declared in Copenhagen, while noting no reduction targets would be set for biogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
The Danish minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, Eva Kjer Hansen, said her country had shown what was possible by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from farming by 23 per cent since 1990, while, over the same period, boosting food production by 16 per cent.
So, what has been achieved?
The Global Research Alliance is still alive, with a stated goal of reducing “emissions intensity of livestock”.
New Zealand’s Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre’s latest annual report talks of “progress towards solutions”, warning the complexity of the problem means identifying mitigation solutions is a “long-term goal”. The centre spent $53 million of taxpayers’ money over 11 years.
The emissions figures – which count the most – don’t make for good reading.
Between 2009 and 2019 (the latest official greenhouse gas emissions figures from Ministry for the Environment), the country’s total gross emissions increased 7 percent, and agricultural emissions were roughly stable. Taken from 1990, the international standard, to 2019, the figures are downright terrible – a 24 percent rise in gross emissions, one of the worst records of all developed countries.
Key’s promise of emissions reductions of 15 percent on 1990 levels by 2020? Not met. The $200 million alliance promising to reduce our agricultural emissions? A failure, based on gross emissions figures. The idea existing technologies will reduce agricultural emissions? Still being argued.
As a rich country that has high per-capita emissions, and which has made an outsized contribution to emissions since the industrial revolution began, New Zealand should be ashamed.
“What I’m seeing is taxpayers’ money’s being spent overseas to basically to get some of our worst polluters off the hook.” – Mike Smith
Unfortunately, a change of Government has done little to change some of those structural problems. This has become more apparent as the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow enters its second week.
Sure, the Government passed the Zero Carbon Act and established the Climate Change Commission. But agricultural emissions still sit outside the emissions trading scheme and the professed goals for reducing biogenic methane are seen as too weak.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn’t even attend the talks in Glasgow, which suggests a lack of interest, as well as urgency. (Our emissions reduction plan was delayed by five months and the draft out for public consultation was seen by many as limp.)
New Zealand’s economy might be relying on agricultural exports while the borders are closed to international tourists, but the country squandered a one-off chance to invest in a green recovery.
Last week in Glasgow, New Zealand signed a global pact to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. However, the promises aren’t binding and the Government plans to stick to its domestic target of at least a 10 percent reduction.
Similarly, an international pledge to end support for fossil fuel companies can be sidestepped, New Zealand officials believe.
The Government announced a stronger emissions reduction target for 2030 – to reduce net emissions to 41 percent below gross 2005 levels. But most of that nationally determined contribution is expected to come from “offshore mitigation” – an admission from the Government this country either can’t, or won’t, reduce its domestic emissions. It would rather spend billions of dollars overseas than wield a big stick on polluters, like fossil-fuel-guzzling cars and farming.
It’s no wonder that activists like Mike Smith are taking the Government, and polluting companies, to court.
Smith says rather than throw-away lines about climate change being New Zealand’s “nuclear-free moment”, the country needs what he calls a nuclear response. “What we seem to be getting is like a pretty cheap skyrocket.”
He sees offshore mitigation as trying to buy our way out of trouble, instead of the transformative change the country needs, including moving away from industrial-scale dairy farming.
“What I’m seeing is taxpayers’ money’s being spent overseas to basically to get some of our worst polluters off the hook, in terms of their responsibility for reducing [emissions].
“For me it’s like a form of corporate welfare for the polluters, and without the benefits that we desperately need to stabilise our climate system.”
Given its lack of urgency, despite declaring a climate emergency, it’s almost like the Government doesn’t believe in climate change, sometimes, because of the gulf between what’s proposed and what we’re told is required.
Already, the country is experiencing severe floods, increased temperatures and more intense storms fuelled by climate change. And the international scientific evidence is that without a rapid reduction of emissions – by almost 50 percent by 2030 – the changes will be locked in and global consequences will be far, far worse. Change is needed – quickly.
Yet New Zealand’s leaders seem to be driving along obliviously, swerving to find wiggle-room to allow polluting to continue, in a big red car of vacillation. It seems captivated by the agricultural lobby, and the money it creates for the country in the short-term.
Yes, this Government is dealing with three decades of inertia. But it’s had its hand on the wheel for four years now and that’s long enough to react to the science, which has only hardened while it has been in office.
Projections ‘scary’
A $7.1 million, five-year research programme called NZ SeaRise is improving the country’s sea-level rise predictions. Its finding will be released early next year.
“It’s scary in some places,” says Tim Naish, a professor in earth sciences at Victoria University of Wellington’s Antarctic Research Centre, who leads SeaRise with his colleague Associate Professor Richard Levy. “There are places in New Zealand that really get hit much worse than others.”
Previous estimates are for 30cm of sea level rise by 2060 or 2070, depending on how quickly the ice sheets melt. But Naish says the lower North Island is subsiding at about 4mm per year, just as sea level’s going up at 3.5mm per year.
That might bring forward to as early as 2045 those storm surge effects in parts of coastal Wellington. What is considered a one-in-100-year flooding storm surge now will likely happen every year by then, which will be devastating for coastal highways and train lines.
“I’m so frustrated as a scientist,” Naish says. “We’ve known this for 30 years; the evidence has been really clear for at least 15 years. And I feel like we’ve failed to communicate how urgent this is.”
Smith, the climate activist, says pretty soon people will find their coastal properties can’t be insured because they’ve been red-zoned by councils. “And that’s not decades away, that’s years if not months away.”
If the average person fully understood how dramatic the change is going to be over the next decade they would be up in arms, Smith says. “Climate change has been rolling out slowly; it’s going to accelerate very soon.”
Asked to fact-check those claims, Naish says: “None of this is crazy stuff that Mike Smith’s saying – he’s completely backed up by the science.”
Back in 2009, in Copenhagen, Key’s government was given the benefit of the doubt about innovating our way out of the crisis. But the country’s track record since has been woeful and our future promises look increasingly weak. Our intention to rely on offsets is disgraceful.
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, a Marshall Islands climate envoy to COP26, told TVNZ’s Q+A programme on Sunday: “Putting that financing aside for the Pacific was great but it doesn’t mean anything if they’re not also lowering their emissions.”
Looking to 2030, it’s hard to see how letting large polluters off the hook on reducing emissions, and spending billions on offshore offsets, are going to cut it with voters who will pay increasing attention to climate change, and the Government’s performance.
We’re a nation known for innovators – think Hamilton Jet, bungy, our movie-makers, the yacht-designers. Yet, when it comes to climate our leaders seem to have run out of ideas, or gusto. They’ve reverted to a slap-dash, No.8 wire approach in the hope it’ll be enough.
The Government is failing to bring its wealth of resources to bear, or encourage the innovation that’s required.
Where are the subsidies for solar? The shake-up of the electricity sector to get more renewable generation built? The Covid-scale advertising campaign to explain this complex issue?
“We need to send clear messages to politicians not to be fearful of doing the right thing,” Smith says. “At the same time, we need to send them a message that if they don’t do the right thing they will be punished politically.”
