Author: Bryan Walker

The counsel of failure: Greenhouse Policy Coalition on Durban

“There is a danger that, in trying to encourage major emitters to sign up to a new agreement or to bridge the Kyoto legal gap, New Zealand might commit itself to something short of a global deal that binds us to making economic sacrifices which are not reflective of fair burden sharing.” So wrote David Venables, executive director of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition, in the NZ Herald this week.

I described the Greenhouse Policy Coalition in a post last year, but I’ll briefly recap. Its members come from a range of New Zealand industry and sector groups covering the aluminium, steel, forestry (including pulp and paper), coal, dairy processing and gas sectors. They include Fonterra, NZ Steel, the Coal Association, Solid Energy, NZ Aluminium Smelters Ltd and others. They are not deniers of climate change and express the cautious opinion that “there is sufficient scientific evidence to warrant the adoption of appropriate precautionary public policy measures”. However their emphasis is strongly on policy which protects what they regard as New Zealand’s international competitiveness.

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Vidal’s voyage to Durban

How better to journey to the climate conference at Durban than through the African countries along the way which are already grappling with climate change? That’s the route John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor, has been following over the past ten days and reporting on in a series of articles.

He started in Egypt. The impacts of climate change are difficult to disentangle from natural coastal processes and the effects of human activities on the flow of the Nile, but an inexorably rising sea level and the increasing intensity of storms threaten increased salination of groundwater and soil as well as inundation. Extreme heat will also take its toll on city life.

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NZ wind: call for 20% by 2030

My attention was caught by a press release this week from the NZ Wind Energy Association (NZWEA) announcing the results of an Infometrics report they had commissioned on the likely economic effect for New Zealand of an increase in wind power by 2030 to the point that it supplied 20 per cent of the country’s electricity. The NZWEA considers this a realistic target. The report came up with some interesting figures.  Compared with the more modest expectations of the Ministry of Economic Development that wind might supply 8 per cent of the electricity in 2030 there was clear economic benefit for the country in the 20 per cent figure.

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Introduction to Modern Climate Change

I wouldn’t normally seek a text book for review, but a pre-publication recommendation described this one as excellent reading for any lay person interested in the subject. I’d also seen the author, Andrew Dessler, in an television interview which I wrote about, which was further encouragement. The book is An Introduction to Modern Climate Change. Dessler is a climate scientist but he’s also versed in the politics of the matter, having worked as a Senior Policy Analyst during the Clinton administration. His text book, a little unusually, covers both the science of climate change and the policy response to the issue.  It makes excellent sense to consider them together.

The science carries such grave implications for human welfare that it demands policy responses. Dessler sets much store by an electorate educated in both the science of the changing climate and the steps that are needed to avoid its worst consequences in the future.  Not all of the electorate is likely to become as educated in the science as this book allows, but the broad scientific outline on which the book is based is certainly capable of wide dissemination across the community.

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The scientific yardstick for political policy

I was pleased to see the Labour Party’s announcement that it is opposed to the Southland lignite development planned by Solid Energy, and went looking for more detail in the party’s climate change policy.  The opening paragraph of the policy statement struck me as more direct than I expected:

Climate change poses an enormous global threat and severely threatens our way of life. It is occurring more rapidly than previously predicted. Humankind is pouring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere on a scale far greater than the ability of the environment to absorb them.

Against this background the decision to oppose the lignite development in spite of its claimed financial benefit makes perfect sense: Continue reading “The scientific yardstick for political policy”