Why Kiwis should care about US court’s climate ruling
Our Government needs to take a good look at itself. Last week some of us shook our heads in disbelief as the US Supreme Court trashed a plan by the country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create a greenhouse gas emissions reduction scheme for power generators.
‘‘Terrible’’, we thought, but things aren’t as clean and green as we’re led to think in Aotearoa. Far from it.
The US is the largest global emitter of greenhouse gases, followed (not closely) by China. Its Supreme Court ruling doesn’t bode well in the fight against climate change – it severely restricts the ability of the EPA to adopt industry-wide measures to reduce greenhouse gases.
The EPA has been responsible for regulating air pollution in the US since the Clean Air Act of 1970.
So if not the EPA, who else will make sure the US reduces its emissions?
There is still reason to hope the US will continue to reduce emissions, having already cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by almost 7% since 1990. This reduction is thanks in large part to action at state level, paired with renewable energy being cheaper than coal and gas.
It’s probable these factors will continue to bring down emissions further still, but progress is likely to be an uphill battle with a hamstrung EPA.
This reduction by the US might sound pitiful, and it is. For comparison, the UK’s net emissions have fallen almost 50% since 1990.
But the real kicker is that at home we’ve managed to increase our emissions.
While we may have started on a better footing, with our dams and wind turbines, there is no excuse for the fact our net greenhouse gas emissions have increased by almost 26% since 1990. That’s not clean, nor green. So what’s gone wrong in Aotearoa? While other countries have been working hard to reduce their emissions, we’ve sat back and let cars and cows hike ours.
Planting trees has helped, but not enough. And let’s not forget they are vulnerable to the increasing risk of forest fires, storms, droughts and floods which are happening every other week because of climate change.
Once carbon is in the atmosphere, it’s there for a good 1000 years or more.
To turn things around we need regulation and investment that sparks real change, especially in agriculture and transport. We’ve known about climate change for decades and we talk a good talk, but we aren’t fighting the good fight.
Global warming is, as it says on the can, a global issue. That the Supreme Court has thrown a spanner in the works in the US means the rest of the world has to up its game and work even harder to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels.
That is the goal we, alongside 193 other countries, signed up to in the Paris Agreement.
If we continue as we are we will reach 1.5 degrees by the end of this decade. If we pass this threshold, our children will look back on the recent heatwaves, floods and droughts as the good old days.
While the US Supreme Court has been as unhelpful as possible towards this global mission, that says more about that court and the political situation in the US than it does about courts in general.
The courts have a very powerful role to play in supporting climate action. Around the world, we are seeing courts engaging with the climate crisis through human rights claims, commercial claims and claims holding governments to account for inaction or for a failure to comply with their own legislation.
We are also seeing this trend in New Zealand, with a number of climate-related cases before the courts, including our own.
While the Supreme Court decision in the US may seem far from us, we should treat it as a wake-up call.
We can’t afford to leave it to someone bigger than us to fix this for us. Nor should we kid ourselves about our efforts – we are not even punching at our weight on this issue, let alone above it.
If the whole clean green New Zealand dream means anything, if we want our children to have a liveable planet and not hate us for destroying it, we need to do a lot more – and we need to do it now.
LCANZI is a non-profit group of barristers, solicitors and academics using their legal skills to advocate for action against climate change. In July 2021, LCANZI filed High Court proceedings seeking a judicial review of the Climate Change Commission’s advice to the Government and the Government’s decision on New Zealand’s national contribution under the Paris Agreement. Judgment has not yet been issued.