December 2, 2024 – New Zealand’s carbon emissions per capita are among the highest in the world on a production basis and the NZ Climate Change Commission has been battling to improve New Zealand’s ranking.
Commission chair Dr Rod Carr steps down from his posting this week, fully aware the country has high emitting ways of earning foreign exchange (production emissions) and high emitting ways of living (consumption emissions) so using accepted international ways of measuring emissions, our emissions per capita are high however you look at them.
Kiwis must understand that on a population basis currently New Zealand is responsible for 0.18 per cent of global Greenhouse Gas emissions, while only making up 0.06 per cent of the world’s population.
Dr Carr says on a consumption basis Aotearoa’s per capita emissions far exceed those of less developed and developing countries. And that’s just counting what we emit today, not counting our historic emissions and contribution to global warming so far.
During his tenure the commission has engaged extensively and consulted widely in creating a body of data, models and evidence that informs the direction of policy required and available to New Zealand.
Dr Carr has said the commission’s work shows what is affordable and achievable, showing that a thriving, low emissions, climate resilient NZ is attainable, if the country make good choices now.
It has established frameworks for giving advice and reporting on progress against government plans and it has made its advice and assessments available to the world.
The elephant in the climate change room is the battle New Zealand is having compared with other countries on its biogenic methane emissions, largely from ruminant pastoral livestock farming – sheep, beef and dairy.
Per capita the country’s emissions are among the highest in the world in part but not entirely due to agricultural emissions and per stock unit – dairy cow, cattle beast or sheep – among the lower on average for red meat and milk protein production, Dr Carr says.
But averages hide the truth that the variability in average emissions between herds and flocks around NZ is larger than the variability between countries’ national average emissions for red meat and milk protein production, completely undermining the case that because we are among the lowest at the national average level, displacing NZ high emitting herds and flocks would increase global emissions.
Finding evidence of ‘leakage’, our emissions reduction causes emissions elsewhere to increase by more than our reduction, is hard. It is an appealing conceptual argument, often used to justify current emissions but it is not an evidence-based argument. Especially for biological processes and even more so where switching to low emissions forms of protein are available and affordable. Promoting myths as the basis for public policy is surprisingly common but should be called out for what it is.
Reducing high emitting herds in New Zealand and increasing production in low emitting herds here or elsewhere would lead to the same global output with less emissions in total. But New Zealand is becoming noted for a number of things in the fight to help improve the global climate footprint.
Kiwis are getting really good at delaying necessary, available and affordable action to reduce emissions from energy, transport and agriculture. We are developing our skill at walking backwards into the future, doubling down on dirty, old technologies and life styles.
The voters have been politicising many aspects of climate policy – how Aotearoa generates electricity. The country has made bicycles a political weapon, glorified fossil gas exploration and use, and risk spinning up a green veil of virtue which we think we can hide behind – a cloak of unmanaged pine trees. Dr Carr says.
Choices gives voice to vested interests who profit in the short term at our expense in the long term, obfuscating the truth that fossil fuels make Kiwis poorer, more vulnerable and sicker than they need to be. Getting freight off our roads would not only reduce emissions but reduce congestion, reduce the capital cost of our roads and reduce the costs of maintaining our roads.
New Zealand has more EVs than four years ago, more electric buses and commercial fleets. But we still have one of the oldest, and dirtiest light vehicle fleets of any developed country- because they are cheap to buy even if expensive to run. We are caught in a largely self-imposed poverty trap – leveraging our savings to buy houses rather than invest in better, more efficient, cleaner, healthier cars, heat pumps, insulation and solar panels.
There are more high emitting cars on our roads than there needs to be and New Zealanders are allowing more high emitting vehicles into the country than are needed.
Promoting long haul, short stay tourism and welcoming international cruise ships, until low emission fuels are widely used, is seeking short term profit from pollution while poisoning the only planet we can live on. It’s shortsighted, reckless and selfish.
If asked, Dr Carr would probably say his biggest disappointment in four years is that voters have collectively allowed the politicisation of evidence-based climate policy.
Elected leaders have been challenged to see past the short term, to comprehend the risks and to act in the national interest and the majority of voters seem to be ok with that.
But no one said democracy was efficient and in times demanding urgent action, democracy is at risk, which is why delaying climate action is a threat to democracy as well as to our civilisation.
Dr Carr has been vice-chancellor of University of Canterbury, a past chairman of the Reserve Bank Board. He has worked in both the public and private sectors, and over the past 40 years has been an advisor to at least six governments on public policy covering tertiary education, health funding and provision,, financial services, monetary policy, bank regulation, infrastructure, and science and technology, as well as Climate.
Denial and delay on climate change decisions will leave New Zealanders poorly prepared, shocked, confused, alienated and angry as the fires, floods, droughts, cyclones, and changing consumer preferences destroy their homes, communities and businesses.
Government cannot follow the crowd, just in time is likely to be just too late. Government needs to help New Zealanders see climate risks, and more importantly see the opportunities a climate resilient low emissions future offers kiwis. Leading change can be hard if people do not see what is in it for them, their families and local communities.
Dr Carr says he advocates for reducing gross emissions at source by as much as possible, as soon as possible. His work on greenwashing for the United Nations Secretary General convinced him that net zero claims based on offsets are a dangerous illusion.
Only truly permanent, independently verifiable, legally enforceable removals of greenhouse gasses that are additional to what will happen naturally anyway and to meet existing commitments should be counted. Emissions avoided are not the same as removals.
No one should be paid for coal, oil and fossil gas not combusted, for virgin forests not felled, for wetlands not drained. Eroding the fundamental principle that humanity is entitled to a liveable planet and polluters should pay and be regulated, set’s us up for a protection racket on a global and inter-generational scale.
“In energy production and use, that means stopping the combustion of fossil fuels in the open air, particularly where there are known, available and affordable technologies.
“We should stop new fossil gas connections for residential use – it’s expensive energy and likely to become more so, it is unhealthy for households (moisture and nitrous oxide) and unnecessary as there are available better technologies especially modern stove tops and heat pumps.
“We should tighten not loosen tail pipe emissions limits for new to NZ vehicles, with reducing allowable emissions over next 10 years and bring in tail pipe emissions standards for vehicles already in New Zealand. The ETS price on carbon does not cover the health care costs vehicle emissions impose on New Zealanders.”
New Zealand should put a price on methane emissions at the flock / herd level as well as on farm effluent ponds. Political expedience may mean that initially the proceeds should be used to reward effluent pond emissions abatement and methane inhibitors in ruminants, he says.
Even if ways of reducing biogenic methane emissions are available, without a price on emissions no farmer will be rewarded for taking up the technology. There should not be a public subsidy for the use of inhibitors, that is a cost of business. Polluters should pay and be rewarded for reducing emissions by avoiding the cost of emissions.
With over 23 million sheep, six million cows, four million internal combustion engines in the light vehicle fleet, 700,000 residential properties with fossil gas connections, 10,000 on farm effluent ponds, 800 heavy trucks, there are too many points of emission to contemplate widespread gas capture. Removals by trees and offsets based on emissions avoided are risky. The only sure thing is to reduce emissions at source, at pace and at scale.
New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme is not a ‘cap and trade’ scheme that can be effective in meeting emission reduction targets due to the way we treat trees, the free allocations we hand out and high number of units already on issue relative to annual emission reduction targets.
Those who promote it as fit for purpose are either poorly informed or deliberately misleading others. We lack a national energy strategy consistent with mid-21st century technologies. Mispricing of the capital cost and operating impacts of heavy freight on our roads inhibits mode shift to lower emission alternatives.
Fossil gas is methane, a potent greenhouse gas with significant amounts of methane lost to the atmosphere in its production, distribution and incomplete combustion. In the absence of proven technology to capture and permanently store emissions at the point of combustion, we need to phase out fossil gas, along with coal and oil.
Until then we can rely on known reserves – 150 years of coal and 50 years of fossil gas and oil at current consumption rates. Using scarce resources to find more reserves only makes sense due to the tax treatment of exploration costs and if you believe reserve owners will in the future be compensated for leaving their reserves in the ground.
People are busy with the urgent things in their lives and perceive that someone else is the cause of the problem and someone else will find a solution, Dr Carr says.
Finally, Dr Carr says there are more potential jobs in the low emissions energy economy in New Zealand than there are in the production and distribution of fossil fuels. The worst thing New Zealand can do is subsidise jobs in high emitting sectors, to believe our emissions are too small to matter, to think that the world won’t notice our dirty business or to rely on technologies turning up just in time to make delay payoff.
A least cost approach ignores the distribution of those costs and benefits among people and over time, does not take account of the risks of tipping points, cascading effects, irreversibility and leads to poor choices when national security, public health and the environment are at stake.
If we are unwilling to empower our elected leaders to lead on climate policy, then that responsibility falls to our business leaders, us as consumers, investors, workers, civil society, academics, the media and the judiciary. It is time to declare peace in our war on nature, to call out bad faith actors and help fellow citizens feel empowered to take action in their own self-interest. We have time if we act now. For Kiwis a low emissions future will be cleaner, healthier, more secure, less vulnerable to global energy prices and supplies. That must be the definition of a more prosperous society.
