Call to set climate targets into law

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment wants climate change targets embedded into law, with ‘‘carbon budgets’’ for expenditure set 12 years ahead of time.

The recommendation is the main thrust of commissioner Jan Wright’s final report before retirement, released yesterday.

It calls for New Zealand to make much bolder and more specific plans for how to reach our emissions targets.

Currently, Wright has no confidence that New Zealand will meet the target it signed up to in Paris, let alone its 2050 goal.

‘‘There is no direct link between New Zealand climate policy and reaching the Paris target,’’ Wright said.

The Paris target commits New Zealand to reducing our net emissions of harmful gases to 57.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. The target for 2050 is 32.3 million tonnes per year.

Greenhouse gases are the primary cause of human-influenced climate change, which is likely to cause drastic damage to food production, coastlines, and weather in coming decades.

‘‘Climate change is the environmental issue of our time. I feel strongly that we must move to a low-carbon model,’’ Wright said.

‘‘The development of climate policy is distributed across different government agencies, and can be crowded out by other priorities.’’

New Zealand has an emissions trading scheme (ETS) but no cap is set on emissions, and it excludes agriculture, which accounts for almost half of our harmful emissions.

Wright points out that New Zealand’s total emissions are climbing, while in many other countries they are falling.

One of them is Britain, which Wright argues we could learn from.

Britain sets its targets for emissions reduction in law, while allowing governments of the day to create their own way of getting there.

As well as far-off targets like the Paris Agreement and a 2050 goal the law requires government to set incremental ‘‘carbon budgets’’ just 12 years in the future.

"I have no faith that we will even meet our Paris target." Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright

‘‘Twelve years is close enough to have an idea about what new technology will make possible but far enough away to give businesses time to plan predictably. What we hear from New Zealand business about climate change is the main thing they want is predictability,’’ Wright said.

The carbon budgets are spread over five-year periods to allow flexibility. So far the UK has met every one.

Wright argues that putting carbon targets into law would ‘‘depoliticise’’ the issue, taking it from a political football to crossparty co-operative practice.

Since 2011, Britain has had lower per-person emissions than New Zealand. Since 1990, its net emissions have decreased by 64 per cent while New Zealand’s have increased by 38 per cent.

Wright said there was plenty more the Government could be doing.

‘‘Why isn’t the Government purchasing electric cars down to the district health board level?

‘‘That would help create second-hand market.’’

Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett said the targets were already ‘‘quite locked in’’.

She said it was not necessary to a put them in law.

‘‘We are really clear on what those targets are. We have gazetted them. We are heading towards them,’’ Bennett said.

She said the Government had a varied climate change work programme across multiple agencies, all overseen by her as minister.

‘‘We’re very different than the UK, both in our emissions profile also in what we use and how we use it,’’ Bennett said.

‘‘I don’t think setting up an independent climate change body would work for us at the moment, but it might be worth looking at in the future.’’

She agreed that cross-party work on climate change would be useful, but said we were far away from getting consensus between politicians on the issue.