NZ needs a climate change plan
the choices plainly enough. The OECD’s once-a-decade take on New Zealand’s environment points out that the country’s emissions have risen in recent years. It says New Zealand is approaching the ‘‘environmental limits’’ of its agriculture-heavy growth model, and must make changes if it wants to curb emissions, such as bringing farming into its Emissions Trading Scheme.
Meanwhile, research commissioned by a cross-party group of MPs lays out several scenarios – from business-as-usual to ambitious options that include cuts in the national dairy herd, aggressive use of emerging technologies and extensive new forestries. Both reports acknowledge New Zealand’s special challenges: unlike most other countries, its energy sector is already largely ‘‘decarbonised’’ (renewable); and its large proportion of agricultural emissions are hard to cut without economic pain.
The OECD also points out that transport emissions here are unusually high with the highest car ownership rate among developed countries; very large public spending on roads; and unusually low petrol taxes. What can be the justification for all of this in the age of climate change?
On agriculture, the OECD suggests that bringing farming into the ETS – or applying other taxes to the sector – would ‘‘provide much-needed policy certainty for the agricultural sector, encourage investment and accelerate innovation’’. The Government will no doubt say it is funding research on agricultural emissions. But what about the power of incentives for farmers? A better strategy would gradually introduce farming into the scheme, with time to plan, trial new technologies and make changes to the size of herds or land use if that is the smartest response.
For now, it seems the Government’s plan is to buy its way to its Paris targets; international carbon credits will apparently make up 80 per cent of the effort to drop emissions by 2030. There’s nothing theoretically wrong – if the markets are credible then it doesn’t matter how global emissions come down. But credits are likely to run to billions of dollars and keep growing.
So we need a plan – and a willingness to grapple with the trade-offs involved in answering to this global crisis.