NZ Centre for Political Research Dr Muriel Newman Climate change policy a recipe for disaster

On the 30-year anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a lead authors’ meeting of 120 scientists is being held in Christchurch to prepare a report on land use and climate change.

One of the more contentious issues is whether grasslands can be considered as carbon sinks for UN greenhouse gas inventory purposes — in the same way forests are used to offset emissions.

This has been considered by Ireland, where 30 per cent of emissions come from agriculture. The Royal Irish Academy has taken the view that the soil under grassland ‘locks up’ carbon dioxide and should therefore be taken into account when calculating emission targets. They claim that while there is ample evidence that grassland soils sequester carbon, this has not been recognised by the IPCC.

It’s an even bigger issue for New Zealand where, almost 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by agriculture. Extensive research into this and other related issues is co-ordinated and funded by the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, which was set up in 2010 and receives an annual grant of $4.8 million.

One of the visiting UN scientists, IPCC co-chair Professor James Skea, is also a founding member of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change. Since this UK Committee is being used as a model for the NZ Government’s proposed Climate Commission, Professor Skea met with Climate Change Minister, Green Party leader James Shaw, to provide advice.

The role of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change is to advise the Government on emission targets and report to Parliament on progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The committee not only sets the carbon budgets and targets, but also monitors compliance.

A letter on the committee’s website illustrates their approach. The 2017 memo to the UK Minister of Agriculture warned: “The carbon footprint of UK agriculture reflects choices by consumers as well as producers and the wider food industry. Previous work by the Committee has demonstrated that a shift to healthier diets with lower red meat and dairy content could cut emissions while freeing up significant amounts of land. Options to support consumers to make more informed food choices should be considered … Such shifts will be particularly important for the longer term, when deeper cuts in agricultural emissions will be needed.”

The committee clearly believes running a consumer campaign against British meat and dairy producers, to reduce emissions by lowering demand, is an entirely legitimate course of action.

While the UK Climate Change Committee costs around £3.5 million ($6.82m) a year to run, the real cost is far greater. In 2016, Peter Lily, a Conservative MP, published a report outlining how the long-term cost of the law was never disclosed to the British public: “The costs of the Climate Change Act, which were not discussed at all during its passage through Parliament, are coming home to roost. Those costs — all ultimately borne by households through higher energy bills, increased taxes and a higher cost of living — are already substantial, growing rapidly and hit the most vulnerable hardest.”

He estimated that between 2014-30, the total cost of cutting emissions to meet the UK’s 2030 target would top £300 billion — excluding indirect costs such as the loss of jobs and business output as British industry becomes less competitive.

He said that during the establishment of the Act, the strategy of coalition ministers was to try “to pretend climate change policy was practically costless and would even make us better off.”

It appears the same approach will be taken here by our new government.

When asked in a recent Q+A interview about whether the Government’s climate change policies to make the country emissions-free by 2050 will force New Zealanders to make sacrifices, the Minister replied: “My goal is that by the end of this Parliament, we have put in place the architecture for that transition to the lowcarbon economy. But I see this as the greatest economic opportunity in a generation, right? It’s not all sunk cost. This is about investing in a cleaner, smarter, more productive and higher value economy. To me, that’s a tremendous opportunity.” Minister Shaw plans a Zero Carbon Act. This legislation will have two objectives — the first is to put into law the target of being a zero-emissions economy by 2050, and the second is to establish the independent Climate Commission.

One of the first tasks of the Climate Commission will be to advise the Government on whether agriculture should be brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme. During the election campaign, both Labour and the Greens promised to bring agriculture into the ETS, while New Zealand First promised to abolish the ETS altogether.

According to Federated Farmers, the cost to farmers of bringing agriculture into the ETS will be up to $83m in the first year, eventually rising to more than $830m per year.

So while New Zealand farmers presently enjoy the reputation of being amongst the most efficient food producers in the world, forcing the sector into the ETS will impose costs that will place our farmers at a significant competitive disadvantage, since no other country penalises agricultural food production through an ETS.

Under Labour, the future for farmers looks bleak as they willbe burdened with two huge wealth-destroying bureaucracies — the Emissions Trading Scheme and the Climate Commission.

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy, as Shaw is proposing, will fundamentally change the dynamics of how our economy works. The shift to net-zero emissions of man-made greenhouse gases by 2050 is of such a magnitude, that our economic future will be put at risk.

It’s not just agriculture, that will be penalised through costly climate change policies — all New Zealanders will pay the price, as the British are being forced to do.

With the Government’s climate change policy agenda set to impose huge financial costs on households over time, it is little wonder that global warming scaremongering is being ratcheted up.

Leading the charge is the Climate Change Minister, who clearly intends attributing all adverse weather events to manmade climate change, even though this is blatant propaganda: “We live in a part of the world where sea-level rise, coastal erosion, cyclones, and droughts are happening with the kind of increasing frequency and force that hasn’t been seen before. One recent estimate suggests that $19 billion of assets are at risk from sea level rise and flooding events. Flooding in 2011 cost nearly $17 million. Then there was one of the worst droughts on record in New Zealand in 2012-2013 costing the country $1.5 billion in lost agricultural exports. Quite literally — we cannot afford to ignore climate change and do nothing about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.”

The fact that man-made climate change is not the cause of adverse weather events in New Zealand was explained by former MP Barry Brill, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, in a recent complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority against TVNZ for inaccurate and unbalanced reporting!

"According to Federated Farmers, the cost to farmers of bringing agriculture into the ETS will be up to $83m in the first year, eventually rising to more than $830m per year."