Source: Radio New Zealand
Dr Bill Hare has called the government’s climbdown on methane emissions dangerous and embarrassing. Supplied/The Australia Institute
New Zealand’s climbdown on its methane emissions target and an agricultural emissions tax is dangerous and embarrassing, an international climate science and policy expert says.
Speaking from the COP30 global climate summit in Brazil, Dr Bill Hare said the New Zealand government’s recent policy decisions were “completely contrary” to scientific consensus.
“It is unbelievable this has happened against a background of a rapidly warming planet, and increasing scientific concern that methane emissions have to be reduced absolutely and quickly,” he told RNZ.
The government announced last month it would lower New Zealand’s methane emissions target, from a 24-47 percent reduction by 2050 to a 14-24 percent reduction, considered sufficient to meet a ‘no additional warming’ goal, compared to 2017 levels.
Hare, a physicist and former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is currently the chief executive of the non-profit Climate Analytics.
He was responding to remarks made to RNZ by climate change minister Simon Watts, who said he was prepared to explain the rationale for the new methane target to other delegates at COP.
“If we get questions around that, which will potentially be the case, particularly from other countries that have pastoral farming systems, then we’ll be dialoguing on that,” Watts said.
Hare said it was “difficult to understand how New Zealand can make a constructive contribution to COP30 with this kind of attitude.
“Methane has contributed to around one third of warming so far, and I would be extremely worried if New Zealand, proportionally a country with a very large agriculture sector, were to be touting its methane rollbacks here in Brazil.”
The adoption of a ‘no additional warming’ target, rather than pursuing more ambitious reductions, was “an embarrassing and humiliating capture by industry”, he said.
“[It] is very dangerous at a time we have to reduce the warming impact of methane – and very, very quickly.”
There was a global agreement to reduce methane, he said.
New Zealand remains a signatory to the Global Methane Pledge, where several dozen countries have pledged to globally lower methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels, by 2030.
“There has been a global agreement to reduce methane – and what New Zealand has done is completely contrary to this. It seems hell-bent on maintaining methane at today’s high and unsustainable levels.”
Ralph Sims, an emeritus professor in sustainable energy and climate mitigation at Massey University, also said the New Zealand delegation might face awkward questions.
“I don’t think New Zealand is going to be held in high regard,” he said.
“There may be some agricultural countries … that might look over the fence to see what New Zealand’s got in mind, but I don’t think there’s going to be a huge acceptance of what the government is planning at the moment.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
