Kiwis give thumbs up for emissions suggestions

Most Kiwis generally back the Climate Change Commission’s bold recommendations to put New Zealand back on track toward emissions targets, new survey data suggests.

Last year, Massey University researchers polled Kiwis to find that seven out of 10 supported a Covid19 recovery that aligned with the country’s climate-change goals.

In a follow-up survey of nearly 1100 people over February and March, they’ve also found strong support for a range of carbon-cutting measures the commission proposed in its draft advice.

That report, released in late January, warned New Zealand was on a path to fall well short of hitting targets under current policies and recommended a range of urgent actions.

They included slashing livestock numbers by around 15 per cent by 2030, phasing out imports of petrol cars by 2032, and planting 25,000ha of native forest every year by 2030, until at least the middle of the century.

Altogether, the recommendations — still to be finalised, with the commission still working through 15,500 submissions — would see greenhouse gas emissions fall by 36 per cent below 2018 levels by 2035.