This week climate minister Nick Smith and international negotiator Tim Groser start their 2020 emissions target roadshow, ostensibly taking the pulse of the nation on the question of what target New Zealand should commit to in the run-up to Copenhagen in December. Much of the argument will undoubtedly centre around the costs of taking action. The government has already signalled it won’t commit to targets likely to damage the economy, but there is a bigger question to consider — what emissions cuts does the world have to consider in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and how should New Zealand play its part? Any cost to the NZ economy is only a small part of that overall equation, and (arguably) not the most important. I want to examine what “the science†is telling us about a global goal and how we get there, and what that means for New Zealand. The leaflet produced to accompany the consultation process is pretty feeble in this respect, so I make no apologies for going into some detail here.
Tag: Nick Smith
Hit the road, Nick
Climate minister Nick Smith and international negotiator Tim Groser have published the schedule for their recently announced consultation exercise on a 2020 emissions target for New Zealand. The hastily arranged exercise (announced only last month, and a surprise to many) has already drawn calls for an interim target of 40% by 2020 from the recently-formed NZ Climate Action Partnership and Greenpeace. In an interesting development, Carbon News is reporting that Green Party climate change spokeswoman Jeanette Fitzsimons has floated the idea that NZ could adopt a split target — setting separate 2020 targets for carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane:
Fitzsimons says that with the technology not yet available to reduce methane emissions from farmed animals – responsible for half of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions – this country should be thinking about setting separate targets for carbon, nitrous oxide and methane for 2020.
“If we set an overall target that is mainly determined by the difficulty of reducing agricultural emissions, it looks to the rest of the world like we are doing nothing,†she said.
It’s an interesting concept, at the very least, though I have to say I’m not keen on giving agriculture a wholly free ride. Federated Farmers like to insist that the “technology is not available”, but there are a range of options farms can use to reduce emissions, from the use of nitrification inhibitors to better handling of manure (not to mention shifting to low-carbon crops or carbon farming).
Full details of the public meetings below the fold. I’ll be making an effort to attend the Christchurch meeting next Wednesday evening.
Deckchairs? We haven’t even got a boat…
Followers of Hot Topic’s new Twitter feed might have noticed this link, posted this morning. It’s a Guardian report of a select committee hearing in the UK Parliament, in which the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change (at Manchester University) took the Labour government to task for the “dangerously optimistic” nature of the targets it has adopted.
Professor Kevin Anderson, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the government’s planned carbon cuts – if followed internationally – would have a “50-50 chance” of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2C. This is the threshold that the EU defines as leading to “dangerous” climate change. Anderson also said that the two government departments most directly involved with climate change policy, were like “small dogs yapping at the heels” of more powerful departments such as that run by the business secretary, Lord Mandelson. He said that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), run by Ed Miliband, should be given more power.
What are the British targets that so concern Professor Anderson? In the April budget, Gordon Brown’s government formally adopted the target suggested by the committee it established to advise on the matter — a 34 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 from a 1990 baseline. Anderson wants that tightened to 40% before the Copenhagen meeting in December, in order to get a reasonable deal out of the process.
… without more ambitious action he feared that a significant deal at Copenhagen would not be achieved. “No one I talk to thinks there is going to be anything significant to come out of Copenhagen,” he said. “We are going to come out and recover the deck-chairs in preparation for moving them as the Titanic sinks. We’re not even at the stage of rearranging them,” he added.
There’s a message here for New Zealand’s politicians and scientists, and it’s not a comfortable one for either group.
The moneygoround
Back in March climate change minister Nick Smith decided it was time to sort out whether the Emissions Trading Scheme was a recipe for economic disaster, as ACT and big emitters were insisting (using figures from a shonky report by NZIER), or affordable, as Treasury modelling (conducted by Infometrics) showed. Smith commissioned both economic consultancies to work together to arrive at a consensus, which they were happy to do (at a cost of $79,200 + GST). The result of this ministerial banging of heads was released yesterday [PDF], and it is simultaneously interesting, encouraging and profoundly disappointing.
Government to consult on emissions targets
NZ negotiators at the UN climate talks in Bonn have let slip that the government is planning “public consultation” on the emissions targets the country will set. David Williams at The Press broke the story yesterday:
New Zealand’s climate change ambassador, Adrian Macey, told a United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany, yesterday that New Zealand had been improving data collection and using economic modelling and analysis to help with greenhouse-gas reduction targets. “We are also undertaking a public consultation process,” Macey told the 3000 conference delegates.
This comes as news to most people, but Williams obtained confirmation that consultation was planned from climate minister Nick Smith’s staff:
“The Government will consult with the public prior to setting medium-term targets in August,” the minister’s spokesman said. “No announcements have been made.”
Except to the rest of the world, obviously. Expect the usual suspects to immediately start lobbying for do-nothing targets. Meanwhile, government climate policy continues to look as if it’s being decided on the hoof.