Alexander Gillespie: NZ maintaining the right Kyoto Protocol approach

The Perspectives article by Bryan Leyland and Chris de Freitas suggesting that the new carbon tax is riddled with contradiction and will have no benefit displayed a misunderstanding of the way that international law works, and was selective in its attempted scaremongering.

Their first contention was that the reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol would have no effect on global warming. If the protocol was the end of the road as it was negotiated in 1997, this would be the case. But, like many other international legal instruments, it will evolve to meet the emerging scientific, economic and political needs of the global community.

The protocol on the table is only the beginning of an international process that could take decades to conclude. The solutions to this problem are not easy and, unfortunately, cannot be based on science alone.

Although science is, and must remain, our compass for getting to the ecological bottom line of what the atmosphere can tolerate before the human and ecological capacity to adapt may be overwhelmed, the steps to get to the bottom line in international law are political.

The two big problems are the meaningful involvement of the developing world, and dealing with hold-out countries, such as the United States and Australia. The difficulty with the developing world is that by about 2010, most greenhouse-gas emissions will be emitted by them and these are set to grow exponentially. The solution is one of sticks and carrots.

The developing world will be allowed to increase its emissions in the short term, and will be given multiple forms of help to start to control the problem. The stick, in the long term, will be a regime that evolves to favour certain technologies, processes and products which are greenhouse gas friendly, and supports these choices by both favourable market mechanisms and trade privileges.

This stick will come to apply to both developing countries and hold-out countries. If the Kyoto Protocol follows the established patterns of other international instruments in this field, the economic benefits will end up accruing to those inside the regime, not the minority on the outside.

Irrespective of the ecological merit of the process, the trick for any country trying to protect its long-term economic interests is not to get ahead of the game. And that is what New Zealand has done by negotiating a greenhouse target which is considerably softer than most comparable industrialised countries.

The second contention of Leyland and de Freitas comes from a muddled assemblage of assertions about coal and nuclear power. The idea that coal is doomed in a Kyoto-driven world is mistaken. Advanced catalytic or chemical processes can remove carbon dioxide, just as they can remove sulphur dioxide and other air pollutants from coal emissions by decarbonisation.

Although the process creates waste, this has been dealt with by burying the captured carbon waste in the ocean floor or other suitable underground geological formations. Norway began using this option in the mid-1990s, and has deposited nearly a million tonnes of compressed carbon dioxide a year into former natural-gas reservoirs beneath the ocean floor.

Although this is a relatively expensive way to remove carbon, it is expected that it will become increasingly competitive. Thus if New Zealand wants to pursue a coal future it can, but it must use the correct technological options to do so.

The final assertion, that nuclear power is the only effective way of making major reductions in carbon emissions ignores economic and political considerations.

The full economic costs of nuclear energy, because of the problems of waste, safety and clean-up, are projected by 2020 to be more than double the comparable financial costs for onshore wind energy, and still more expensive than offshore wind energy. They may even be more expensive than the projected economic costs of energy generated from the oceans.

But the main risk with nuclear energy is political. It is not just that the world is struggling with rogue nations which have used civilian nuclear reactors to extract material for nuclear weapons, but that this technology is now a target for terrorists.

There are safer, cheaper and more ecologically responsible ways to solve this problem.

* Alexander Gillespie, a professor of law at Waikato University, is responding to the view of Bryan Leyland and Chris de Freitas that the carbon tax will succeed only in raising money for the Government.