In 2050, dairy is a niche industry
In most garages will be either an electric vehicle, or perhaps no vehicle at all.
The year is 2050. New Zealand has reached its target of net zero emissions of greenhouse gases. It hasn’t been easy, but for those who remember the second decade of the century, when efforts to meet those targets became serious, there have been some big changes.
This week’s final report by the Productivity Commission on achieving a low-carbon economy gives a hint as to what that world might look like.
Firstly, a tonne of carbon is worth perhaps $300 in the New Zealand emissions trading scheme and, after 30 years of adjustment and comparable international action, trade-exposed industries are no longer receiving any subsidies, so face the full price of every tonne of emissions.
Despite a lot of grizzling about all that extra cost, the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is still producing high-grade metal because production in China, Australia and India has plummeted, thanks to those countries’ reliance on emissions-heavy coal and gas, rather than hydro-electricity.
Indeed, in Southland, the impact of climate change adaptation has been far more dramatic on farming than heavy industry. Beef and sheep finishing farms have been given over in large part to ‘‘carbon farming’’ plantation forestry – some of it for harvest, some of it permanent.
They produce an income for landowners from a combination of sophisticated financial products that release the monetary value of sequestered carbon, and the value of the wood at harvest.
In many parts of the country, both exotic and native forestry plantation on marginal land is stabilising eroded hillsides and improving river and lake water quality.
Following a massive investment by the New Zealand Superannuation Fund in the early 2020s, much of the harvested wood goes to the local prefabricated home construction industry, which is churning out affordable, if somewhat samey, houses. New suburbs have an American homogeneity to them compared with today’s happy jumble of architectural styles.
Unfortunately, a combination of Nimbyism and a romantic view about the value of farmland over suburbs has kept urban land prices higher than they might have been, especially in Auckland.
That has forced a population drift south now, aided by climate change making the south of the South Island warmer, albeit stormier.
Affordable housing has made Dunedin and Invercargill boom, although nobody lives on the flats in South Dunedin any more because sea-level rise means they’re reverting to tidal mudflats.
Insurance companies abandoned homeowners long before that happened and the Government paid to relocate them.
Southland remains a dairying region, but demand for dairy products has plummeted.
The costs of reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions and stringent freshwater regulation have made traditional dairy products expensive, less conducive to bulk commodity production.
Even more challenging has been a global move away from consuming animal protein. Its high cost, awareness of how land- and water-hungry pastoral farming is, and a seachange in public attitudes to what constitutes animal cruelty have combined to make animal farming a niche industry.
The rise of meat and milk made from plants has been the key enabling factor in that trend. Swathes of the Canterbury Plains that converted to dairying early in the 21st century have gone back to arable crops such as wheat.
On every rooftop is a solar photo-voltaic array, connected to a large in-home battery that allows households to generate their own electricity.
In most garages will be either an electric vehicle, or perhaps no vehicle at all. Owning a car has become less important to a generation of homeowners raised on public transport, cycleways, and driverless vehicles that can be ordered up like taxis.
Of course, there will be no oil and gas production. That fell away in the 2030s when all existing fields ran out. Instead, New Zealand now imports natural gas from offshore to top up the national electricity system, which it still needs, and to produce heat for industrial processes where electricity still doesn’t cut the mustard.
The weather is wilder and there are fewer tourists now that air travel is expensive again, but seamless digital connection to the rest of the world is the norm.
Of course, not all of this will happen exactly like this. But a lot of it will. And if it were to happen overnight, it would be wrenching.
But 2050 is 32 years away, giving more than a whole generation for adjustment. The trick now is to stop talking about it and use that time to start executing that change in ways that avoid massive social and economic upheaval in the process.