Tag: targets

Lies, damned lies, and the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern)

targetAmongst the many responses to the 2020 emissions “target range” at Scoop I stumbled upon this cracker from Alasdair Thompson, chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern). It’s such a blatant misuse of statistics that I can’t let it pass unnoticed. Thompson describes the modest target as…

…a challenge for New Zealand is as big, or bigger than when the UK entered the European Common Market (EU).

And why? Because it’s going to cost a lot.

“At an average 15 per cent reduction, the cost of $30 per week per head amounts to $6.7 billion each and every year, said Alasdair Thompson, EMA’s chief executive. “This is more than the total of all our lamb, beef and other meat exports. It represents about 60 per cent of our total dairy exports. […] It’s the price we are being told in effect we need to pay – nearly five per cent of GDP – to retain access to world markets, mostly for our agricultural products.”

It appears Thompson has used the figures Nick Smith used at the announcement of the targets, then added his own gloss. Why is this misleading? First, the NZIER-Infometrics report [PDF] is useless as a guide to the cost of emissions reductions, as I showed here. Second, Smith’s use of figures from the report is itself suspect, as Keith Ng memorably noted at OnPoint. Thompson presents $30 a week as a “cost”, when in fact it’s a measure of foregone growth (ie the difference between two projections of economic growth). He then presents this in terms of GDP — a full 5% cost. This is a complete misrepresentation of the numbers. The NZIER-Infometrics report suggests that GDP will be reduced by 2.4 to 2.6% in 20202 on a scenario where NZ buys emissions units at $100/tonne to cover emissions that have not been subject to any reductions. In other words, even if you make lots of unrealistically expensive assumptions, the cost will be a lot less than Thompson wants us to think.

As baseless economic scaremongering goes, Thompson’s press release takes a very large biscuit. I’ve no doubt the membership of the EMA will insist that Thompson take a course in basic numeracy, and issue a retraction and clarification (but I won’t be holding my breath).

The size of a cow

AtomHeartMother.jpg NZ’s farming leadership remains in denial about the need for action on climate change, as a remarkable speech [full text, Stuff report] by Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson demonstrates. Addressing the Plant Protection Society’s annual conference in Dunedin yesterday, Nicholson took swipes at Keisha Castle-Hughes, Greenpeace and the Green Party:

It’s not the reality that Greenpeace or the Green Party informs people before they ‘sign-on’. There’s no hint of a real solution apart from some ‘great leap backwards’. No, the vision they extol is instead apocalyptic. It is designed to create a climate of fear and don’t the anti-progress agents love fear. A fear of no oil, rising sea levels, extinction and starvation. It’s moral brainwashing without facts or context.

No real solutions on offer? No facts to support calls for action? It looks to me like Nicolson’s the one who’s making stuff up — and leading NZ’s farmers down a commercially disastrous path in the process.

Continue reading “The size of a cow”

No vision, no guts, no future

targetThe New Zealand government announced this afternoon that NZ would table a conditional emissions target of between 10% and 20% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020 [Scoop, Herald]. The range is supposed to allow for a response to the progress of international negotiations, and the conditions are that there should be a comprehensive international agreement that (according to the MoE Q+A):

…sets the world on a pathway to limit temperature rise to not more than 2°C; developed countries make comparable efforts to those of New Zealand; advanced and major emitting developing countries take action fully commensurate with their respective capabilities; there is an effective set of rules for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF); and there is full recourse to a broad and efficient international carbon market.

Climate minister Nick Smith says that the target will be achieved by a mixture of domestic emission reductions, the storage of carbon in forests, and the purchase of emission reductions from other countries. The MoE Q+A page lists the measures in place to help NZ reduce emissions (#25): it amounts to a watered down emissions trading scheme, a $323 million home insulation and clean heating fund, a new Centre for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research, incentives for new energy technologies like sustainable biofuels, electric cars and solar water systems, Resource Management Act reforms and a National Policy Statement to support renewable electricity generation. No mention of forestry. Are the trees expected to plant themselves?

The target range comes as no surprise, given the signals emerging from the government over recent weeks, but the modest nature of the target and the fact that it is all conditional puts NZ in a weak position internationally. Smith & Co continue to insist that their targets, based on “50 by 50”, are in line with what the science is telling us, but that is only true if they cherry pick the most optimistic IPCC scenario, and ignore the evidence that’s been emerging over the last two years. This is not mysterious stuff, not news. The science and policy community has told the government the facts — it looks like they have chosen to ignore them and pander to those who would rather do nothing.

It is now transparently obvious that this National-led government simply does not understand the real challenges presented by climate change. They do not appreciate the full seriousness of the situation that confronts the planet, they underestimate the need to act, and they have completely failed to make any coherent assessment of what could be done. That amounts to gross incompetence, and they should be held to account for it, both at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion.

[Pusillanimous]

Some cuts are bigger than others

targetNick Smith and the government’s insistence that a sensible emissions target for 2020 is too expensive to even contemplate is coming under more pressure with the release today of a report [PDF] prepared by the Green Party, which they claim shows that big cuts are affordable. Announcing the release of the report, Greens climate spokesperson Jeanette Fitzsimons said [Scoop]:

“The Government says it can’t be done, but careful research shows it can be done. Environment Minister Nick Smith says it’s too hard and too expensive to set a responsible target, but the facts and the science say something different,” Ms Fitzsimons stated. “In the absence of leadership from the Government on this issue, weâ’e done the work. There’s a way to be optimistic and constructive in the face of a major international challenge but it seems the Government is taking a different path.”

A key part of the Green strategy involves a major commitment to tree planting and pest control in native forests, both of which Smith seems keen to ignore or misrepresent — as his response, headlined Bold 2020 target comes with high price demonstrates. Smith is content to trot out his current mantra, “We need an ambitious but achievable goal for 2020 that balances the environmental risks of climate change with the economic impacts on New Zealand of reducing emissions”. The minister is of course completely correct, but since he lacks ambition, gets the “environmental risks” completely wrong and continually overstates the cost of action, I expect the government’s goal to be too soft — and therefore immensely damaging to New Zealand’s long term interests.

Update 5/8: Jeanette Fitzsimons at Frogblog on Nick Smith’s response to questions in the House today:

Not a single question of mine answered, not a single point in our report addressed, but finally, the last refuge of someone with no arguments, a personal attack […] NZ deserves a “can do” minister, not a “can’t do, won’t try” government.

[The Smiths]

Lions led by donkeys

target Climate change minister Nick Smith has been popping up all over the media in the last couple of days talking 2020 targets, on the back of the latest Infometrics/NZIER economic modelling [PDF] on the potential costs of different targets. And though he is refusing to commit to a number before next month, it’s becoming pretty clear that the wind is blowing in the direction of 15% by 2020, and no improvement on 50% by 2050. There’s a transcript of the interview he gave with Guyon Espiner on TV NZ’s Sunday morning Q+A programme here, and his discussion with Kathryn Ryan on RNZ’s Nine To Noon this morning is here. Espiner and Ryan do their best to pin him down, but the minister’s only clear on one thing — 40% is too expensive. From the Q+A transcript:

Well the government’s commissioned this report from Infometrics and NZEIR to try and get a feel for what those numbers would be if we went for the target that Greenpeace is promoting of minus 40, that indicates a cost of about you know 15 billion dollars per year at 2020, you know that’s more than the entire expense of our health system…

…that’s a cost of about three thousand dollars a year, 60 bucks a week…

Is that a fair summary of the likely costs? Time for a quick look under the hood…

Continue reading “Lions led by donkeys”