Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with Climate Change Minister James Shaw speaking after receiving the End Oil petition from Greenpeace NZ at Parliament on March 19. Photo/File
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with Climate Change Minister James Shaw speaking after receiving the End Oil petition from Greenpeace NZ at Parliament on March 19. Photo/File
I want to offer a driving analogy to describe the Government's ban on any new deep-sea exploration for oil and gas.
It's like you've gone down a road only to see a sign that says, "Road closed due to slip".
You keep driving to see for yourself. The slip and the erected barriers come into view, and you slow down. You pull to the left a little, so you've got room to do a U-turn, your only option.
New Zealand has reached that moment when it comes to fossil fuels. All that Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First have done is slow down, put the indicator on to signal an intention to do a U-turn. They haven't completed it successfully yet. We'll see how that goes.
Protest vessels confront The Noble Bob Douglas drilling ship off Raglan in 2013 where oil giant Anadarko was to start exploratory drilling for deep sea oil.
National, on the other hand, would have us keep driving pointlessly in the same direction, with Simon Bridges promising to overturn the ban. Which is the kind of thing you say in opposition, but it's unlikely to happen.
Jacinda Ardern has been very smart linking climate change to New Zealand's nuclear-free stance. She knows a majority of us want to be proud of our record on the environment, not embarrassed. For National to even promise to backtrack is politically risky.
All this political game playing, kudos and criticism, however, has tended to overshadow the fact that the energy companies aren't that interested in what's beneath New Zealand's territorial waters anyway.
It was highly probable that the blocks of seafloor offered up to the oil and gas companies this year for exploration would have received no bids.
In 2016, National put up 62,040 square kilometres of land and sea for exploration. Only one permit, 0.35 per cent of that vast expanse, was sold.
This is about peak oil, not climate change. The easy oil and gas in New Zealand waters has already been found, most of it 50 years ago.
It will be pumped out over the next few decades. The Government's decision has done nothing to stop this.
What the energy companies would like, however, and why they're trying to kick up a stink, is for any future exploration to be subsidised with public money. According to researcher Terrence Loomis the oil and gas industry in New Zealand is currently subsidised to the tune of $88 million.
It's globally, though, that you see the real problem. A recent study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) argued the true cost of subsidising fossil fuel industries was US$5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5 per cent of global GDP).
Fossil fuels are on life support, at great cost to taxpayers worldwide. Nevertheless, the subsidies (with the exception of a handful of countries) aren't being unwound quickly enough, as governments fear the impact on the economy if prices spike. Our own government will have similar fears.
Banning off-shore oil and gas exploration was comparatively easy, much harder decisions lie ahead. Completing that U-turn, with the support of a majority of New Zealanders, will be the challenge.
