No point in our going it alone on climate change, says Hodgson

New Zealand will not go it alone with measures to combat global warming, says Energy Minister Pete Hodgson.

The director of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, Alex Sundakov, has warned of the danger of taking "expensive empty gestures" which would harm New Zealand's export competitiveness and attractiveness as an investment destination.

But Mr Hodgson said: "There is no likelihood of New Zealand taking a unilateral position which would damage us economically if other nations weren't to follow, if only because we would not secure the benefits of getting climate change under control."

NZ's greenhouse gas emissions represent about two-tenths of 1 per cent of the global total.

The Bush Administration has said it is opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, the closest the international community has yet come to an agreement to curb the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

NZ Foreign Minister Phil Goff, who returned from Washington yesterday, said the Americans had told him they would be putting a counter-proposal to the meeting in Bonn in July of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Mr Hodgson said he knew of no other country which had come out in support of the American position. Everyone else was saying the Kyoto Protocol was the basis for further discussion.

Herald Online feature: Climate change

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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Summary: Climate Change 2001

United Nations Environment Program

World Meteorological Organisation

Framework Convention on Climate Change