Carbon emissions

BRYAN Leyland (Letters, 5.2.21) writes closing Tiwai would ‘‘increase worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide because its lost production would be made up by coalfired smelters overseas’’.

Our emissions are our problem; others’ emissions are theirs.

While China is still building coalfired stations, it is also installing massive amounts of wind and solar every year — hundreds of GWs, in fact (New Zealand’s total capacity from all sources is 10GW).

‘‘Saving’’ Tiwai is popular, but does Mr Leyland care about CO2 emissions?

On a new blog post by Rodney Hide, Mr Leyland comments ‘‘. . . nuclear power is the only safe, largescale, reliable and economic way of reducing emissions. Anyway, who would want to? The increased carbon dioxide is helping to green the world.’’

Nuclear is the most expensive to build, maintain and decommission (cf. Lazard, BloombergNEF).

Greening the world? Pity about the increasing desertification, worsening droughts and fires in Australia, American west coast, South America, Arctic, and so on.

Mr Leyland rides a Trojan horse — a clever climate denier trying to slip through the barrier of real science.

B. Allain

Auckland