Climate gets scraps
James Shaw is an honest man, so when I asked him whether the Government’s $12 billion infrastructure plans would help or hinder his fight against climate change he went quiet, rather than directly lying.
After a while he gave a qualified answer about how it depended on how transport developed over the next decade.
But Shaw is not stupid. This $12b package will do far more to send emissions up than down. It’s got a few nice little bits of Green-friendly spending around the edges but at its core it is a commitment to spending billions of dollars on roads.
More roads means a lot of things. It can mean more safety. It can boost the local economy, or votes in a local economy. It also means more cars, a lot of them, and for the foreseeable future those cars are going to be overwhelmingly burning fossil fuels.
Challenged with this, the Government will point to the things that aren’t roads in the package, like the $200 million decarbonisation fund, intended to get the public sector estate off things like coal boilers.
But these are crumbs dropped from the table. There is a single 22km stretch of road being built in Northland with this money that will cost more than three times that entire package at $692m.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson, who has expertly built himself the political landscape to do all this within, bats this away by saying some of the roads will have dedicated bus and cycle lanes, and that there is a decent whack of money for rail. He will also note that electric cars need to drive on roads too.
Robertson probably sees plenty of Nissan Leafs driving around Wellington (I know I do), but a reality check on electric vehicles is sorely needed here. At present there are 19,130 electric vehicles on New Zealand roads, a whopping 0.44 per cent of our light vehicle fleet of 4.28 million. The average age of that fleet is
14 years – does anyone really think a feebate worth $800 is going to radically change the makeup of that fleet in the near future?
Another excuse will be that this money is meant to go to ‘‘shovel-ready’’ projects – it’s meant to immediately boost the economy – and there aren’t that many climate-friendly projects. Indeed, NZTA seems completely unable to build anything other than roads. But this is urgency mostly of the Government’s own making. It wants to spend a large amount of money in an election year while debt is cheap, on things that won’t add to the overall ongoing spend of Government – meaning it can’t spend this on things like a boost to welfare or a middle-class tax cut, because as much as that also would stimulate the economy, it could throw the books out in the longer term.
To be fair, Robertson does appear to be quite worried that the economy could be in for some serious pain in the next wee while, and wants to get out ahead of that.
The Greens clearly find this painful. Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter was not at the the announcement. Shaw told media that ‘‘as Green Party leader’’ he would have liked to make the mix a bit different.
‘‘This is a coalition Government, and what we have done is influence the shape of the package overall,’’ he said.
The Green Party could actually do well out of this massive defeat. This is the kind of ammo the party could use in an election year to prove that Labour’s commitment to climate change action is only skin-deep, able to be over-run when votes are on the line. And, that if you really wanted to make New Zealand a world leader on getting emissions down, you need to give the Greens a lot more mandate. It is unclear if the Greens have the desire to really properly attack Labour this year, however.
Even if the party does turn this into electoral gain, this will remain a missed opportunity. Chances to splash about $12b come around rarely. It certainly won’t be available for any ‘‘Green New Deal’’ any time soon.
To the Government’s credit, it has put some money away to invest in green initiatives so the next time there’s a huge pot of capital sitting around it can be used: the $100m in the Green Investment Fund. It’s 120 times smaller than the infrastructure package, can only be spent on things that will actually make money for the fund, and hasn’t invested a cent since it was created more than a year ago. Wowee.
A reality check on electric vehicles is sorely needed here.