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Posts Tagged Tim Groser

Morality, government and fossil fools (Bryan’s back!) Bryan Walker May 24

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I signed off regular writing for Hot Topic some months ago. But failing eyesight doesn’t mean failing concern, and my anger at the way our government heedlessly pursues the expansion of fossil fuel exploration led me recently to reflect I could still see sufficiently to write letters to editors. Publication of a letter by the NZ Herald emboldened me to try something for the dialogue page. It wasn’t accepted, on the reasonable  ground that they were about to publish an article by Jim Salinger which they described as along the same lines.

However I thought Hot Topic readers might be interested in my attempt to attack the government on moral grounds. I acknowledge that politics and morality make uneasy bedfellows, and that moral absolutism is hardly a suitable tool for political effectiveness. Nevertheless sometimes issues arise where shades of grey can legitimately be challenged by something closer to black and white, and that transition is certainly much earlier along the path of fossil fuel exploitation than our government (and many other governments) is currently inclined to allow.

The moral appeal is strongly made by many who write and speak on the climate issue. Al Gore sounds it regularly. Among the many books I have reviewed on Hot Topic I recall being struck by what William Calvin’s book Treating a Fever had to say on the question, as I summarised in the review:

“He also pins hope on religious leaders coming to see that climate change is a serious failure of stewardship and our present use of fossil fuel is a deeply immoral imposition on other people and unborn generations. Their arguments will trump the objections of the vested interests, just as they did when slavery was ended in the 19th century.”

Whether there’s any hope of an onslaught by religious leaders in church-going US, or for that matter in less religion-oriented NZ, is hardly yet clear, but the appeal to morality can be sounded just as well by those of no religion, and is worth making if we set any value on the finer human traits.

Here’s the piece I submitted to the Herald. Hot Topic readers will understand that it was written for a general public audience.

The relationship between morality and government is rarely easy to affirm, but if ever there was a clear moral imperative for government it is to mitigate climate change. Human suffering on giant scales is threatened as the predictions of climate science begin to prove correct in reality. Economist Lord Nicholas Stern, head of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change, warned recently of the massive movements of people likely to be triggered by the temperature rises our current greenhouse gas emissions trajectory will cause. He foresees hundreds of millions of people forced to leave their homelands because of disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts, resulting in serious and prolonged armed conflict.

Emissions continue to rise. This month the global concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached 400 parts per million, another milestone on the path to catastrophic consequences for humanity. According to paleoclimate research the last time this level of carbon dioxide was reached was some four million years ago, in the Pliocene epoch. Global temperatures rose perhaps four degrees higher than today, as much as 10 degrees higher at the poles. Sea level may have been 20 or more metres higher than today.  It’s a frightening legacy we are preparing for coming generations. For that matter there is plenty to be alarmed at already, in the intensification of severe weather events, the increasing acidification of the ocean, the diminishing volume of global ice, the rising sea level and many other manifestations of warming.

In the light of what we now understand of the consequences of climate change it is the clear duty of governments to lend their weight to a rapid transition from fossil fuel reliance to energy sources which do not emit greenhouse gases. That is why the present government’s intent to gain wealth for New Zealand by expanding the search for fossil fuels is ethically indefensible. According to Climate Change Minister Tim Groser the government has no dispute with the science. The Prime Minister acknowledges that changes are already occurring, sooner than might have been hoped. Yet somehow that does not mean the government is prepared to forgo what it sees as the possibility of considerable wealth from expanded fossil fuel exploration and exploitation.

Indeed it embraces the possibility with enthusiasm. The Prime Minister unashamedly appeals to consumer desire. He speaks of a possible $13 billion annually from royalties, assisting our “desire to spend like other first world countries”. When challenged, government refers to the way other nations are acting and proudly affirms that it will not allow the New Zealand economy to suffer by comparison. In an interview early in his premiership Key acknowledged that it would be irresponsible of us not to play our part when it comes to climate change but in the same breath asserted we should also not be prepared to “completely sacrifice our economy” in the name of climate change when other countries are just not prepared to do that.

It’s a convenient cop-out. It begs the question of whether there are other ways of running a successful economy than by exploiting fossil fuels. And once that question is by-passed it’s easy to accuse others of naiveté and of promoting economic ruin. Justifying immoral practice in the name of the economy has a long history. Slavery abolitionists in Britain and the US had to struggle for many decades against the accusation that what they were advocating would be disastrous for commerce and national wealth. It wasn’t, of course. Neither will turning our backs on further expansion of our oil, gas and coal resources spell disaster for the New Zealand economy.

The government needs to see its commitment to expanding fossil fuel exploration against the perspective of what a rapidly warming world is threatening for some current populations and all future populations. There are some ways of making money which offend human morality so deeply that decent societies cannot allow them.

Carbon offsets from a permanent forest sink project – keep it real Mr February Jan 17

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In which I guest-post as myself and describe a carbon forest sink project I am involved in and our debate about whether we should provide carbon offsets to anyone as part of the project. I originally wrote this for the Greens Frogblog Simon Johnson is a conservationist, tramper, accountant, former DOC worker and resource management [...]

New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over the second Kyoto period: part the second Mr February Dec 22

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USD or NZD? so confusing!

USD or NZD? so confusing!

Is Tim Groser a Kyoto pariah? Or a Kyoto visonary? A global emissions reduction emissary or is he tar-sanded with a Canadian brush? I once more try to make sense of New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period and the Doha hooha. This time with the aid of Tim Groser, who has written an opinion editorial in the Herald.

Tim Groser, New Zealand’s most forthright Minister for Climate Changes, contributed a shocker of an Op Ed to the NZ Herald this week. When I first read it, I wrote down my responses to what seemed the most misleading claims. The headline shocker is that either Tim Groser is so out of touch with his portfolio that he has no idea what the current price of carbon in New Zealand, or he is so incompetent that he can’t tell US dollars from NZ dollars.

But there are shockers for all of us.

I present Groser’s words in italics and in indented blockquote format, followed by my response in plain text and no indents.

TG: “It’s time to move past Kyoto agreement”

Canada, O Canada. Groser is channelling Canadian Minister of Environment Peter Kent “Kyoto for Canada is in the past.”

TG: “The unrelenting emphasis (on Kyoto) has sucked energy out of debate, diverting attention from the real problem.”

This is the classic PR spin tactic: diversion. Groser wishes to divert attention towards the USA, China and India and away from New Zealand’s double dealing.

TG “The science, as I interpret it, remains pretty clear”

Yes, Tim Groser does not deny the science, it’s just that National and Mr Groser have no intention acting domestically in any way consistent with the science. Perhaps that makes him a ‘policy denier’

TG “The international community needs to develop a more robust approach involving far more of the major emitting countries. Whatever New Zealand does will be completely irrelevant unless the major emitters participate.”

Canada, O Canada (first reprise): “We support a new international climate change agreement that includes commitments from all major emitters. That is the only way we are going to achieve real reductions and real results” Canadian Minister of Environment Peter Kent.

TG “some of the confusion has been deliberate”

Ah the old fifth column within, the extreme green economic traitors, those awkward truth telling ecologists like Mike Joy, Ha, I can just find some others with more comfortable opinions.

TG “First, the ETS has not been “gutted” by the changes passed recently in Parliament”

No, because the NZETS was “gutless” from day 1, as it has no cap, and it always allowed unlimited importing of international units. In 2012, National did defer indefinitely agriculture’s entry and extend indefinitely the provisions for half-price emissions for emitters (2-for-1 deal).

TG “No New Zealander – no household, no company – has to pay more, or subsidise anyone because of this decision”

Except New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Limited and Norske-Skog Tasman.

TG “Our top priority is to strengthen the recovery in extremely difficult international economic times.”

That really means Groser’s top priority always was to have an emissions trading scheme with a more-or-less zero carbon price.

TG “the (NZETS) legislation was, in effect a , a one-way bet taken on the last day of the Labour Government’s life in 2008 that the 2009 Copenhagen Summit would deliver a ‘single, comprehensive and ratifiable climate change agreement’ (the political mantra of the day).”

That statement is a totally revisionist Chairman Mao-like rewrite of history to suit a political agenda. The staggered entry of sectors dates back to Helen Clark’s MOU with agriculture signed after the Belch Tax debacle. It also reflects political lobbying by Business NZ and the need to find votes of support from Peter Dunne to get the legislation passed.

TG “We no longer have to pass amending legislation to avoid an automatic ramping up of the scheme, irrespective of either economic conditions or international progress.”

By saying this Groser lets us know that for National the delayed entry dates and the apparent all-sectors design were a “Potemkin village”. National never had any intention of bringing agriculture into the NZETS.

TG “At current low international carbon prices – they move around but they are clustered around $5 – there is indeed little petrol in the ETS tank. But that is exactly the way it was designed – to be aligned to world prices, whatever world prices are, up to a cap”

To me this is so gobsmacking it’s…Hekia Parata. Groser has no idea what the current NZ carbon price is! Groser can’t even read the price of a New Zealand unit (NZU) off the Bloomberg website without confusing US dollars and NZ dollars. What an idiot!

Bloomberg's NZ carbon price chart that Tim Groser can't read

Bloomberg’s NZ carbon price chart that Tim Groser can’t read

The NZU price is NOT “around $5″ Its around $NZ2.50/tonne

So Tim Groser says the NZETS is designed to import the international carbon price and that is a good thing. If it is so good being wedded to international prices, why has he taken us out of the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period?

TG “The domestic political debate has confused the structure of the policy with the international drivers of the carbon price.”

Thats just adding insult to financial injury to the Kyoto forestry sector where some have has lost 80% of the value of the post-1989 Kyoto forests. It’s a double blow, as the Government is keeping forestry removal units (earned for the same forests) to itself to fudge the Kyoto net position.

TG “watch what happens to the carbon price when the international recession is over and the EU moves to strengthen carbon markets and, hopefully, more countries start adopting carbon policies. You will then hear, no doubt, the exact opposite of the current political debate. Foresters will be happier as the carbon they sequester becomes more valuable (paper profits unless they sell them) and emitters will be less happy as they pay a higher carbon price.”

Thanks for lecture on prices, Tim. By the time the Eurozone has dealt with the over-allocation their carbon markets, and if they ever do, it will be way past 2015 or 2016, and New Zealand won’t even be in Kyoto’s second commitment period and Tim Groser will probably have canned the NZETS by then anyway!

TG “NZ continues to make remarkable progress in increasing the share of our electricity coming from renewable energy – it is 77 per cent and climbing.”

Tim Groser is taking credit for past Ministry of Works hydro projects. Does he really think the public are so stupid as to see that argument as in any way relevant to climate change mitigation? Meanwhile the younger generation are calling for the power shift to 100% renewable electricity. How long before Groser calls them ‘extreme greens’?

TG “So is this a great time to put new costs on our major exporting industry when we have a huge need to increase our exports?”

I could say how else could a carbon price work if it is not a real cost? How can any NZ carbon price policy be effective if half the economy is out? This is Groser’s and National’s real policy bottom-line. Exports uber alles! Exports above all else! National truly and obviously have no intention of pricing New Zealand’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

TG “Our agriculture sector is, by and large, the most carbon efficient agriculture sector in the world.”

Thats very Bruce Wills of him. So agriculture will be fine with a no-exceptions emissions trading scheme or carbon tax.

TG “This is the Global Research Alliance on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which we lead.”

Great but what pays for it? Thats right, taxpayers. So that’s a subsidy, then. Having agriculture in the emissions trading scheme would help pay for it.

TG “A few days ago we joined another international initiative on climate change – the Climate and Clean Air Coalition”

Great! so now we mitigate climate change by friending someone’s Facebook page. I think I will let William Nordhaus know he doesn’t need to run carbon pricing on the DICE global model anymore as it’s all on Facebook.

TG “It is time to move beyond Kyoto and find a solution that can have a real environmental impact.”

Canada, O Canada (second reprise). “Kyoto for Canada is in the past..”,”Copenhagen and Cancun agreements, which were negotiated in 2009 and 2010 as the world stared down the end of Kyoto, are the future.” Peter Kent, Canadian Minister of Environment.

TG “We are on track to meet or exceed our Kyoto commitment to 2012.”

Only because of the “Kyoto escalator” of the gross 1990 baseline for the net target forest fudge.

From 1990 to 2010, New Zealand’s gross emissions grew by 20%, from 60 million tonnes (mt) to 72mt. Net emissions grew by 59% (from 32mt to to 52mt (data New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990-2010) So both gross and net greenhouse gas time series show a relentless upward trend.

For my conclusion, I might just recycle some from a previous post. But with one difference.

• When we hear Tim Groser talking of focusing on a global climate solution that involves 86% of the emitters that can have a real environmental impact, we now know he is just recycling speech notes from Canadian Minister Peter Kent and diverting attention from New Zealand’s policy shambles.

• Tim Groser and National have absolutely no intention of doing anything domestically to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

• Tim Groser and National also have absolutely no intention of imposing any real carbon price on New Zealand’s industrial and agricultural emitters.

New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over Kyoto 2: part the first Mr February Dec 20

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Net emissions to 2020

The 2020 target and Net emissions to 2020

Is Tim Groser a Kyoto pariah? Or a Kyoto visonary? A global emissions reduction emissary or is he tar-sanded with a Canadian brush? I try to make sense of New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period and the Doha climate change talks hooha.

I am very confused about New Zealand’s climate change policy since the Doha international climate change talks (COP18) and New Zealand’s announcement that it would opt out of a second period of the Kyoto Protocol back on 9 November 2012.

The Kyoto opt-out has been described as a shambles and a disgrace and as a lose-lose decision that shuts New Zealand out of the international carbon markets. Tim Groser’s Herald Op Ed today just confuses me more.

So I have a question for all Hot Topic readers.

If Minister of Climate Change Tim Groser is serious about New Zealand’s 2020 greenhouse gas target, why would he forego formally lodging the 2020 target into the existing Kyoto Protocol framework (where the national institutions and arrangements are already up and running), in favour of pledging to meet the target on a voluntary basis in terms of a yet to be negotiated treaty?

Let me break that question down into several parts.

  1. Imagine you are the Minister for Climate Change in the government of a small developed country.
  2. This small gutsy quirky country as well as having exported comedians like Rhys Darby has signed an international treaty with a few other nations which states a short-term national target for emissions of greenhouse gases.
  3. This nation enacts the treaty by creating some new institutions; a national register for emissions units, national inventories of GHG emissions, national surveys of afforestation, and public servants to report the predicted progress towards the national target.
  4. The nation has adopted several policies relying on the treaty institutions; an emissions trading scheme, forest sink schemes, research alliances, and international trading of emissions units.
  5. The nation has a second publicly stated medium-term target for greenhouse gas emissions for the years following the expiry of the first target. It is to reduce net emissions between 10 and 20% from the gross 1990 baseline.

If you are serious about that second emissions target, why would you pledge the target on a voluntary basis, when you could have formally lodged your target into an existing treaty (where the national institutions and arrangements have already been set up)?

Any answers? Anyone? Would you like to phone a friend?

Okay, here’s a hint. Tim Groser says in his op ed

“So is this a great time to put new costs on our major exporting industry when we have a huge need to increase our exports?”

and

“Our top priority is to strengthen the recovery in extremely difficult international economic times.”

Here’s another hint. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Jan Wright has said that we are on track to exceed the 1990 emissions baseline by 30% rather than meet the 2020 target of reducing emissions by 10 to 20% compared to 1990.

Net emissions to 2020

Net emissions to 2020

Now just because New Zealand’s net emissions are likely to consistently increase through to 2020 doesn’t automatically mean New Zealand would not meet the 2020 target if translated into a Kyoto second commitment period target. We could just buy extra emissions units from the international Kyoto carbon markets.

That is, if there was a sensibly designed emissions trading scheme that passed the carbon price to emitters. Such a scheme would be 100% “emitter pays”, with emitters making their own market-based decisions to either reduce emissions or to buy the emissions units. Well we certainly don’t have that.

So my conclusion is that it is not just that Tim Groser has absolutely no intention doing anything domestically to achieve the 2020 target of a 10 to 20% reduction in GHGs.
Groser and National also have absolutely no intention of imposing any real carbon price on New Zealand’s industrial and agricultural emitters.

Stuff and nonsense (ministerial condescension and media fossil fools) Gareth Renowden Dec 11

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A select few politicians have the ability to make me (and others) shout at the radio. New Zealand’s minister of climate change issues Tim Groser is one such. On Radio New Zealand National’s Morning Report this morning he gave vent to his feelings on NZ’s Colossal Fossil winning performance at Doha. It was an “absurd and juvenile prank”, apparently, put together by “extreme greens and youth groups”. He definitely had it in for the youth groups, referring to them twice. His extreme condescension to young people who think that his policies are at best wrong-headed, at worst disastrous for the country they will inherit, caused me to interrupt my tea making to shout at the radio, much to the dog’s surprise. Hear the full interview here, and see if you are immune to Groser’s aggressively smug assumption that only he holds the key to climate action:

Tim Groser on Morning Report

And then, over the now brewed cup of tea, Google’s morning newspaper presented me with a news item from the Dominion Post (via Stuff) about a new paper in Nature Climate Change co-authored by Dave Frame of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute. The basic news item’s straightforward enough: Frame and co-author Daithi Stone, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have looked back to the IPCC’s 1990 projections, and found that they were remarkably close to what has actually happened over the last 20 years — bad news for climate deniers who insist that model projections have failed and that warming has stopped. (See also VUW press release, Phys.org, The Conversation). Perhaps that’s why the journalist, one Tom Hunt, chose to close his piece with a quote from physics denier Bryan Leyland (cue coughing and spluttering):

But Bryan Leyland, from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, said science had shown global temperatures had not risen in 16 years and the world was more likely to get cooler.

Leyland, as we discussed at Hot Topic recently, is now happy to align himself with the über cranks who deny the reality of the greenhouse effect. Quoting him on climate research is about as meaningful as seeking the flat earth society’s opinion on orbital mechanics.

For that stupid piece of false balance, Tom Hunt and the Dom Post win my inaugural Media Fossil Fool award. Anyone care to design a nice badge they can wear with shame?

Tim Groser shuts the stable door after the Mickey Mouse carbon credits have bolted Mr February Nov 28

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Mickey explains over supply in the offsets market

This week the Ministry for the Environment is consulting and seeking submissions on a proposal to ban some of the more ‘Mickey Mouse’ international carbon credits from the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. Apparently this is because Climate Change Minister Tim Groser “wants to maintain the integrity of the ETS” (New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme).

Thats really too much brazen and intentional cognitive dissonance, especially since Groser said that only five days after he indefinitely excluded agriculture from the ETS and only four days after he announced New Zealand would not sign up for a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol of binding greenhouse gas reductions.

I apologise if you had an extreme reaction to the close conjunction of the terms “Tim Groser”, “emissions trading scheme” and “integrity”. My apologies if you just coughed your coffee/beer/tea over your laptop or punched out your PC monitor.

Assuming you have cleaned up, I should provide the context for Tim Groser’s unintentional irony in claiming to be concerned about the integrity of an emissions trading scheme where emission units trade for less than $3 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent gas.

Here is the quote from Groser about the consultation.

“The Government has considered whether Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from HFC-23 and N2O destruction projects, and Certified Emission Reduction Units (CERs) and ERUs from large-scale hydroelectricity projects should be ineligible in the ETS. There are legitimate questions about these types of international units and the Government wants to maintain the integrity of the ETS“.

Whoop Dee Doo

The consultation is asking the wrong question. It is ignoring the “elephant in the room” for the NZETS, the rock-bottom price of the international emissions units.

Here is the latest chart of the collapse of the NZ carbon price from OMF Ltd.

NZ carbon price 2009 to 2012 c/- OMF Ltd

NZ carbon price 2009 to 2012 c/- OMF Ltd

Fiddling and faffing about over the specific attributes of some subset of the allowable international units, when all the international units are over-supplied and under-priced, is just shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

We have already been through one futile cycle of banning a few dodgy international units with Groser’s predecessor Nick Smith. And that didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the NZ price.

Last December (2011), Nick Smith authorised the Ministry for the Environment to ban certified emissions reduction units (CERs) from the UN Clean Development Mechanism projects destroying HFC-23 and N2O from the NZETS. There is no doubt that the gas-destruction CER units did not represent real removal of greenhouse gases and that the awarding of CERs was incentivising the deliberate extra production of HFC-23 and N2O.

According to Wikipedia at September 2012 about 418 million CERs had been issued for HFC-23 destruction and about 214 million CERs had been issued for N2O destruction. So in theory that took 632 million CER units out of the picture for the NZ market.

However, as of today there are 1,061,399,151 issued CERs. So with 60% of the CERS banned from the NZETS, there were still 429 million (1061m – 632m) that could still be imported to NZ.

In terms of influencing the carbon price in world’s worst ETS and in the world’s smallest and most open carbon market (where 2011 demand from emitters was 16 million units), it makes no difference whether quantity of available CERS is 429 million units, 1 billion units or 10 billion units. The international price will still set the domestic NZ price.

Another day, another potentially eyes-glazing-over carbon credit three letter acronym; the E.R.U. These Emissions Reduction Units, are units from UN Joint Implementation projects located in Kyoto Protocol Annex 1 countries. It’s similar to the less-developed countries Clean Development Mechanism, except that Joint Implementation projects tend to be in the Former Soviet Union countries.

As of today about 250 million units have been issued. About 80 million ERUs (or 32 percent) are for HFC-23 and N2O destruction. So if these gas ERUs were banned from the NZETS, there would still be 172 million under-priced ERUs able to satiate New Zealand’s demand for international units.

The number of CERs issued to large hydroelectricity projects CERS at 1 November was 108 million, or 10% of the 1.061 billion CERs total. Again, this proposed ban would make no real difference to the international over-supply or to the NZ price.

Submissions can be made until 5.00pm this Friday 30 November 2012 and can be can be emailed to or posted to Ministry for the Environment, PO Box 10362, Wellington 6143.

I have not drafted my submission but it will roughly say: the proposal is slamming the stable door after the horse has bolted, and that it ignores the ‘elephant in the room’ – the flawed design of the NZETS which imports the collapsed international carbon price into the New Zealand carbon price. And conclude that NZ should move to a all-sectors no-exceptions no-offsets carbon tax ASAP. The outcome of the consultation will, of course, be to adopt the partial ban.

Don’t worry Kyoto (National’s Only Looking Out For Its Friends) Gareth Renowden Nov 12

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The New Zealand government has announced that the country will not join the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (CP2), but will instead make voluntary commitments within the Kyoto framework [Herald, NBR]. Climate change minister Tim Groser presented this move as:

…aligning [NZ's] climate change efforts with developed and developing countries which collectively are responsible for 85% of global emissions. This includes the United States, Japan, China, India, Canada, Brazil, Russia and many other major economies.

To put it another way, New Zealand has chosen to abandon the 36 countries already signed up for CP2 — which runs from 2013 to 2020 — and instead aligns itself with the world’s worst polluters. Ironically, Groser rejected CP2 on the same day that Australia, only recently equipped with a meaningful carbon emission reduction scheme, announced it would sign up. The move completes the National-led government’s programme of gutting and dismembering the climate policies it inherited from the last Labour-led government when it took power in 2008.

Reaction from political opponents was swift and, as you might expect, damning1, but more telling from my perspective was the response from scientists, compiled by the Science Media Centre.

Jim Salinger, currently the Lorry Lokey Visiting Professor in the Program in Human Biology, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford:

…the New Zealand Government must take its head out of the sand and step up to its scientific responsibility collectively together with the nations of the world in order to save future generations from the horrendous future impacts of a dramatically warming planet.

Martin Manning of the Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University:

This move now leaves any sense of legal commitment to limiting future climate change to the EU and Australia. And while it probably has only a small direct effect on total global CO2 emissions New Zealand’s retreat seems to be part of a growing reluctance by several developed countries to play any leadership role. So New Zealand’s move is part of a pattern that just leaves the problem to others.

Associate Professor Euan Mason, School of Forestry, University of Canterbury:

The government’s failure to commit us to a second Kyoto commitment period is consistent with, and is perhaps a consequence of, its failure to secure our NZU currency, and represents a failure to take opportunities to contribute to a better environment for us all.

Associate Professor Ralph Chapman, Director, Environmental Studies Programme, Victoria University:

This move has to be interpreted in the context of other signals New Zealand is sending on climate change policy. These signals are sadly pointing in the direction of easing back, rather than doing more, despite the climate change problem steadily worsening. The signals that the NZ government is not serious about climate change include its weakening of the ETS, a hiatus on renewable energy, a determination to build more highways that encourage carbon emitting land transport, and so on.

What’s interesting about these comments is not so much what they say — Hot Topic readers and anyone who has been following developments in climate science and policy would probably say much the same things — but who is saying it. These are working scientists who understand the issue in all its seriousness. They have an intelligent appreciation of the risks we and the world face as the planet warms. It’s becoming all too obvious that those risks are not understood by Key, Groser and the rest of the leadership of the National party.

In radio interviews over the weekend, Tim Groser described the move as in New Zealand’s national interest, and this morning prime minister John Key was forced to defend the move by rewriting history2:

I think we never wanted to a world leader in climate change we’ve always wanted to be what is affectionately called a fast follower.

Key conveniently forgets that Helen Clark’s government most certainly did want NZ to be a world leader on tackling climate change3 — in fact, Clark suggested we should be one of the first carbon neutral economies. Her government put together a coherent blend of policies — an emissions trading scheme backed by a suite of regulations, commitments to renewable energy, solar heating initiatives, home insulation and so on — that backed up that position. Key’s government, as Ralph Chapman notes, has been busily unravelling all that policy.

Groser’s view that this latest move is somehow in “the national interest” seems to depend on a definition of national interest that focusses only on the economic interests of fossil fuel and mining companies and his party’s supporters in the agricultural sector, as well as the frankly daft idea that economic interests can somehow be balanced against environmental issues4. National interest is about much, much more than is dreamt of in his philosophy — and includes taking prudent steps to prepare for an uncertain, but much warmer future. A strategic approach to the risks posed by rapid climate change5 would involve taking immediate steps to ensure that the ETS prices carbon at a level sufficient to ensure emitters take action6.

If Key, Groser, Joyce, English and the others are not listening to what the scientists are saying, perhaps they will listen to the International Energy Agency, who have noted that we are currently on a trajectory that will take us a long way beyond two degrees of warming. The world’s biggest accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, recently suggested that current policy settings were pushing the world towards six degrees7 of warming. These organisations speak the language that one must presume National’s leadership understands, so it would behove them to pay attention. But of that there is no sign.

One voice they will almost certainly dismiss out of hand for purely political reasons is that of our last prime minister, Helen Clark. Clark is now the administrator of the UN Development Programme, and recently addressed a meeting at Stanford about “Why Tackling Climate Change Matters for Development”. The full text is available here8, and shows Clark joined the dots on the importance of climate change years ago9, while John Key is still playing with his Etch A Sketch.

Wedded to an unrealistic view of the world, where climate change is just another policy setting that can be fiddled to the advantage of supporters or to suit ideology, New Zealand’s present government is stuck inside an epistemic bubble of considerable size. They are, quite literally, divorced from reality. What the national interest requires is that someone burst that bubble and force them to confront the need to take serious action on mitigating, and — crucially — adapting to the climate changes that are now “locked in” to the system. Perhaps a group of senior scientists equipped with a very large pin might seek an audience with the National Party caucus…

[Yoko Ono - should be played at full volume during all cabinet deliberations until such time as they fully understand the risks we face.]

  1. Labour: Day Of Shame As National Pulls Out Of Kyoto, Greens: ETS destroyed, now Government gets to work on Kyoto.
  2. Or perhaps he conveniently forgets recent NZ political history.
  3. Although his use of the “royal we” suggests he has other problems beyond memory.
  4. A clue: without a functioning environment, a vibrant economy is impossible.
  5. Which is exactly what we’re witnessing today.
  6. And doesn’t stuff up an entire industry, as Euan Mason’s full comment at the SMC notes.
  7. If six degrees is where we’re heading, I’d recommend reading Mark Lynas’ book of that title to get some appreciation of just what sort of Dante’s Inferno that might be.
  8. With short video.
  9. And did so while NZ PM.

How fast shall we drive over the cliff? NZ’s ETS watered down (again) Mr February Sep 04

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How fast shall we drive over the cliffSimon Johnson looks at the Government’s amendments to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme and concludes we are arguing about what gear to drive in as we speed towards the cliff. The Government has kindly given us the opportunity to make a submission about how fast fast we should go over the emissions cliff. Time to fasten your seatbelts.

Back in July, Tim Groser announced more watering-down of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS). About a week ago, on 23 August 2012, Groser introduced the amending legislation – the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Consistent with previous emissions trading scheme legislation, the bill will be fully and rationally considered by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Select Committee in an insultingly short period of time – ten working days. The closing date for public submissions is Monday, 10 September 2012.

What does this ETS amending bill do?

  • It indefinitely postpones the entry of pastoral agriculture into the NZETS.
  • The ‘two-for-one’ deal, which halved the number of carbon credits each emitter had to surrender for a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases, is extended for another three years. It was to end on 31 December 2012, but will now run on at least to 2015.
  • The price cap of $12.50 per tonne ($25 for two tonnes) will also extended. It was to end on 31 December 2012, but will now run on at least to 2015.

What doesn’t the bill do?

  • It ignores the recommendation from the 2011 ETS review committee to stop the unlimited use of international carbon credits by New Zealand emitters. Which as we know, makes the NZETS the weakest link.

Whats the cliff we are driving off? Well, it’s climate change. And it’s the price of the New Zealand emissions unit.

NZ Unit price 2009 to 2012 from OMF Financial Ltd

Who said what about the bill?

Simon Terry of the Sustainability Council said that the NZETS is now in a state of eternal transition”.

Helen Clark stated the obvious, that pastoral agriculture must be in the NZETS; “You can’t have your major sector generating greenhouse gases outside the scheme.”

A Federated Farmers spokesperson said the deferral of agriculture was huge win for New Zealand’s farmers.

Business New Zealand seem unusually silent. I guess for them it is all going to plan. Back in July they welcomed Tim Groser’s announcement of the delays to the NZETS. So why waste space repeating the message?

However, I do offer some relief from this dreary “business-as-usualism”. Green MP Kennedy Graham has given some strong speeches accurately reflecting both the scientific reality of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and the ethical challenge of the failure of politics and governance to respond.

None more so than in his ‘first reading’ speech in which he summed up the bill thus:

Today’s bill will defer agriculture indefinitely, defer any increase in the price cap, defer the one-for-one surrender obligation, allow a greater switch from forestry to dairying, and enable importers to increasingly use dangerous synthetic gases. What remarkable, steel-like resolve!

I do recommend you read Kennedy Graham’s speech in full. Graham, a much more experienced diplomat than Tim Groser, walks us through more than 20 years worth of futile international climate change negotiations, all the while as the relentless accumulation of emissions in the atmosphere uses up the carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to two degrees. And with no faux-realist “get people on the bus” cliches we have come to expect from Tim Groser.

Kennedy Graham concludes that we don’t have to accept this state of affairs. He calls on us to make a submission to the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

Greenpeace are also saying get stuck in with a submission. What should one say?

How about “the NZETS is completely ineffective in reducing GHG emissions due to it’s many design flaws – the use of unlimited international junk credits, the delays and exemptions, the partial coverage, the lack of a cap, the price ceiling, the lack of revenue recycling due to the excessive free allocation to emitters.” Something brief and to the point.

However, I will leave the last word to Jeanette Fitzsimons speaking on TV Ones’s Q+A: Panel after a Nick Smith/Russel Norman debate back in September 2011.

“Look, its like we are in a very fast car, we are heading towards a cliff, which is getting really close, and we are arguing whether to change from fifth to fourth gear”.

Low hanging fruit and lost opportunity Bryan Walker Sep 03

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I hope the New Zealand Government feels shamed by the news that incandescent light bulbs can no longer be sold in Europe. It could have been so here but following the 2008 election, proclaiming the sanctity of consumer choice, one of the early actions of the then Minister of Energy Gerry Brownlee was to reverse the Labour Government’s decision to phase out incandescent light bulbs. Almost equally dismaying was the statement by the Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff in 2009 that the Labour Government decision was a mistake in the first place. “We’d stopped listening to what people’s priorities were,” he said.

It’s hard to make any sense of the reversal of former Government policy on incandescents other than in the most cynical of political terms. It is in direct contradiction to any concern they express to tackle climate change. Lighting has been estimated to use nearly 20% of the world’s electricity and six years ago the International Energy Agency produced a report which concluded that a global switch to efficient lighting systems would trim the world’s electricity bill by nearly one-tenth. It is a low-hanging fruit in the reduction of carbon emissions. Even the US is to phase out incandescents.

Many people are making the switch to efficient bulbs without Government direction. It makes economic sense to do so after all, in addition to the clear environmental benefits involved. But Government also has a responsibility to advance energy efficiency by appropriate regulation, as other free market economies have recognised. Climate Change Minister Tim Groser makes much of New Zealand having taken a seat on the mitigation bus. He’s made it clear often enough that we won’t go out ahead of others. No danger of that in relation to efficient lighting. We’re a deliberate laggard. If Government won’t act on a relatively easy matter like this what conclusion are we expected to draw as to how serious it is about tackling climate change on a broad scale?

During the weekend I went to see the outstanding Film Festival documentary Chasing Ice, a record of the work of photographer James Balog, whose book, Extreme Ice Now, I reviewed over three years ago. The film, which I highly recommend, could not but carry an underlying elegiac tone as we watched the photographic record of glacier loss and reflected on what it means for the globe and for human civilisation. Balog clings to the hope that we will yet act in time to prevent the loss of ice at the level for which we are currently headed, but if the bullying bluster of some of the confident deniers which occasionally punctuated the film carries the day his must be reckoned a slim hope indeed. We are thankfully spared that kind of bluster from most of our New Zealand politicians, but casual neglect can serve the same end.

Put bluntly, even in such an apparently small matter as light bulbs is consumer choice more sacred than the preservation of the natural world on which our human life depends? Is it asking too much of Government to look steadily at the accumulating evidence that dangerous climate change is upon us and to take every conceivable step to reduce the harm we are doing? Mandating efficient lighting is surely a no-brainer.

 

Realism and risk: waiting for the bus Bryan Walker Sep 02

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Climate Change Minister Tim Groser gave a substantial and intelligently argued speech recently to an informal meeting in Auckland of international climate negotiators met to discuss the  way forward to a new agreement in 2020. Groser makes the case for political realism in climate negotiation. He records his sense after attending a COP conference at Poznam a year before Copenhagen that the negotiation was not on track and that if more reality did not prevail Copenhagen might be a train wreck. It was, and he says that it was only some superb political leadership by the Mexican hosts at Cancun which got the UNFCCC process back on the tracks. “My conclusion is simple: negotiating scenarios which are developed without any political realism behind them cause great and unhelpful friction.”

The claim to political realism is always difficult to argue against, particularly with someone who has spent literally decades in difficult international trade negotiations, as Groser has. But those of us who aren’t negotiators or politicians can’t allow the question to be arbitrated only by those who are.

To be fair to Groser he doesn’t push political realism to the point of helplessness in addressing the problem:

“Our objective must be to aim for a high quality comprehensive agreement that actually deals with the problem of global emissions, not finds a political fix to a diplomatic problem.”

“Fresh thinking is possible.”

“As we look towards the task of delivering a long-term comprehensive agreement that might actually deal with global, not regional, emissions, the first order requirement is around participation. And by ‘participation’ I mean mitigation — the ultimate and agreed objective of the Convention. I am convinced this can be achieved within the framework of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

He also stresses that the eight-year transition period between now and when the new agreement is timed to come into effect should not be treated as of little consequence:

“Well, my strong view is that ‘the transition’ is not a vacuum, and the way that we all shape our actions, the way we report them, and the way we are held accountable for them — now and over the next few years — will be critical to whether we can succeed in building a new global agreement.”

To turn to his argument for political realism. At its heart is the notion that we must first get everyone on board the mitigation bus before we worry about picking up speed:

“In political language — ie, not to professional negotiators — I have often talked about the importance of ‘getting people on the bus’, rather than worrying about the speed limit. If we get more and more countries on the mitigation bus, doing what they can to drive towards a lower carbon future for their own country, we can later look at the speed limit, or pace of adjustment. The logic of this is straightforward: we are trying to get lower carbon economic strategies embedded administratively and politically. There is huge resistance to this, for a variety of reasons. Look at the debate over comprehensive carbon pricing proposals in any number of countries if you are in any doubt. It is still unsettled in many countries.”

It sounds sensible enough, but it founders because it doesn’t properly reckon with the urgency now required. Groser’s reply to that objection is clumsy and overlooks not a political reality but a scientific reality:

“I know the counter-argument. It starts by taking the most extreme of the IPCC scenarios of future climate change and arguing that ‘nothing less’ than immediate and drastic action will suffice.”

It’s significant that he goes on to make a slight acknowledgment that the scenario issue may be a little more complicated than that, while at the same time affirming that even if it is, the political reality is not affected and that “later” is the time to consider a more serious economic response.

“What I know is that there is a range of scientific views about the time dimension of the risk and which scenario is the more probable. But the one thing that will absolutely guarantee failure to develop a meaningful response to this global challenge is if we do not get most of the large emitters, plus a large number of small emitters like New Zealand who are absolutely prepared to join in genuine collective action, on board the mitigation bus. It is a global problem; only global action or something close to it, can work.

“Further, at this stage in the evolution of a global response, you are more likely to persuade countries, where climate change policies are very immature, to get on board the bus if they can persuade their political masters that the commitments are realistic and doable. Later, when lower carbon strategies are more deeply embedded, then we need to return to the matter to the pace of adjustment and the development of a global carbon price.”

That is too complacent about the level of risk. Groser’s use of the word “extreme” in relation to some scenarios carries the suggestion of exaggeration, of pushing something further than is necessary. As I understand the projections of climate science, though they cover a range of possibilities none of them are fanciful and it is not safe to dismiss any of them on the grounds that they must be extreme. As George Monbiot wrote in in his column on the same day that I read Groser’s speech:

“As I’ve warned repeatedly, but to little effect, the IPCC’s assessments tend to be conservative. This is unsurprising when you see how many people have to approve them before they are published.”

Groser’s appeal to political realism needs to far more disturbed than it appears to be by the magnitude of the threat that climate change is already disclosing. His wide experience of international negotiations is not as relevant as he appears to think.  Monbiot again:

“There are no comparisons to be made. This is not like war or plague or a stockmarket crash. We are ill-equipped, historically and psychologically, to understand it, which is one of the reasons why so many refuse to accept that it is happening.

“What we are seeing, here and now, is the transformation of the atmospheric physics of this planet. Three weeks before the likely minimum, the melting of Arctic sea ice has already broken the record set in 2007. The daily rate of loss is now 50% higher than it was that year.”

Or from our own climate scientist James Renwick, who describes the break-up of Arctic sea ice as “just jaw-dropping”:

“This event unfolding in the Arctic Ocean right now should be a wake-up call to governments world-wide, that climate change is a serious threat, and it is not distant menace, it is on our doorstep today.”

Groser’s claims about political realism do not seem to have been exposed to the full impact of scientific realism. He does not say that human society is in grave danger. I have not heard that from any government Minister. Maybe the political realities will remain problematic even when that is said, but we would have more confidence in our negotiators if we knew that our government was fully cognisant of what climate change is threatening.  We would also expect such cognisance to put a dampener on the government enthusiasm for an increase in fossil fuel exploration and mining which sits very ill with the claim that we are attempting to persuade others to get on the mitigation bus.

In the eight years before the new international agreement we should not just be sitting on the bus waiting for it to fill up with passengers. We should be acting vigorously on our own account with serious mitigation measures because we understand the great danger of climate change.

[The Hollies]

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