The NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development‘s latest Shape survey [PDF] suggests that a clear majority – 63% – of New Zealanders think the country should be a global leader on climate change issues, with only 23% supporting moving at the same pace as other countries. Interestingly, support for Labour’s goal of carbon neutrality and National’s 50 by 50 policy is evenly split at 39% of respondents each. Plenty of room for a tussle for the climate vote at the next election.
NZ BCSD press releases here and here.
Category: Climate politics
Kill possums and save the world
Possums eat trees. Trees take carbon from the air. Kill possums, tree growth increases, and more carbon’s sucked out of the atmosphere. The Department of Conservation’s been keen on this idea for some time, to the extent of claiming last year that $200 million spent on possum and goat control would sequester enough carbon to meet New Zealand’s complete Kyoto emissions overshoot. They’ve finally convinced the cabinet that this is worth pursuing: conservation minister Chris Carter announced yesterday [Scoop, Stuff] that DoC will tender for commercial investment in six carbon offset trials.
Details of the projects are still being developed but they are likely to be of two types. The first will set aside specific areas of conservation land for either replanting or natural regeneration of forests on land which was not in forest prior to 1989, thus making these measures Kyoto compliant. The second type of project, likely to be the largest of the two, will involve major pest control initiatives on conservation land to measure and assess increases in carbon storage, both through the removal of pests which may emit methane and through increased growth in shrubs and trees with the pests gone.
Interestingly, Carter notes:
“Companies have already been approaching DOC with multi-million dollar conservation and carbon storage proposals. The government’s decisions mean that all New Zealand companies are put on a level playing field in a tender process for the carbon storage opportunities conservation land offers.
What a difference a decade makes…
Ford and Chrysler have just announced that they’re joining the US Climate Action Partnership, a body set up to “call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
More on inhibition
Brian Fallow provided a good overview of the politics and reality of dealing with agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in yesterday’s Herald:
In the context of a dairy boom the arguments for exempting agriculture is likely to fall on ears if not entirely deaf, at least hard of hearing. The dairy sector, after all, would not be asked to physically reduce its emissions to some level. It would only have to take financial responsibility for any increase in emissions above that level. If it is cheaper to buy emissions reductions that have occurred elsewhere or offsets from forest sinks, well, that is exactly what a trading regime is for. It is intended to achieve emissions reductions at least cost, and reflects the fact that the atmosphere does not care where the reduction occurs. More cows, in short, may just mean more trees. Or biogas digesters. Or biodiesel from algae on effluent ponds.
Never mind the farts, it’s the fert that matters
The Sustainability Council of NZ has just published the wittily titled report A Convenient Untruth [PDF], which finds that half of NZ’s Kyoto liabilities might be met if farmers used nitrification inhibitors – substances that markedly reduce the output of potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from farm fertiliser use. From the media statement:
Emission reductions available from the dairy industry are large in relative terms and can be achieved quickly. After seventeen years of targets without measures to achieve them, and a lack of time to get serious emissions reductions from many other options, the availability of a cornucopia of cheap and rapidly adoptable agricultural options is a remarkable break.
Herald report here.
Meanwhile, David Parker expects government policy to reduce NZ’s Kyoto commitment by 50 per cent. In the absence of policy, do we take that on trust?