Paying the price to keep cool

By BRIAN FALLOW

New Zealand is on track to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to curb emissions of the "greenhouse" gases blamed for global warming, by the end of the year.

On Wednesday night, Parliament passed the Climate Change Response Bill, the legal framework for ratification of the protocol.

So New Zealand is headed for a future in which the right to emit greenhouse gases is no longer free.

The Government justifies this on the grounds that global warming is a threat to the mild and equable climate on which the economy depends.

The problem is the apparent acceleration in the pace of warming. Eighteen of the 20 warmest years of the 20th century occurred after 1980.

Climate scientists say this is linked to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

These gases work like the glazing that traps the sun's warmth within a glasshouse.

The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, produced by burning billions of tonnes of fossil fuels each year.

To figure out what will happen if we carry on like this, the United Nations set up the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, to distil some sort of scientific consensus that Governments can rely on when making policy.

A lot of uncertainty surrounds projections about the extent and impacts of global warming.

But the UN panel's bottom-line conclusion is that the planet will warm by between 1.4C and 5.8C this century.

Not all climate scientists agree, though the sceptics are in the minority.

If it is at the low end of that range, it will be more than twice as much warming as occurred in the 20th century.

If it is at the high end, it will be as much warming as has occurred since the last ice age.

Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson says that in New Zealand's case, climate change would not be all bad news.

Positive effects would be extended growing seasons and ranges for some plants and improved growth rates.

"The negatives are increasing temperatures to the point where there would be increased droughts on the east coast, increased rainfall on the west coast, increased storm events and increased biosecurity risks [of incursions of pests and diseases]," he says.

Over time, the effect would become more and more negative.

Since the oil shocks of the 1970s, a lot of work has been done on harnessing renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind and wave power and bio-fuels.

But adoption of these technologies has been limited.

One reason they are not competitive is that the reigning technologies, such as internal combustion engines and steam turbines, benefit from the fact that their environmental costs are not sheeted home to their users.

Greenhouse gas emissions from their use are diffused over the whole planet and accumulate in the atmosphere.

So a kind of subsidy flows from poor countries to rich ones, and from future generations to the present. The question is how long can that free ride last.

At Kyoto five years ago, 39 developed countries set themselves targets to reduce their emissions by the "first commitment period", 2008 to 2012.

New Zealand's target is to get back to 1990 levels.

Overall the Kyoto targets are a 5 per cent cut from 1990 levels.

But only from developed countries. It is estimated that developing countries' emissions, now about a quarter of the global total, will overtake developed country emissions within 20 years.

The Bush Administration has cited the fact that developing countries have no Kyoto obligations as one of its reasons for walking away from the agreement.

The United States produces about a quarter of global emissions.

So Kyoto's scope is limited, and its modest targets only nibble at the problem.

If achieved, they would mean that whatever degree of global warming would otherwise occur by 2100 will occur six years later.

So is the agreement worth it? No, say many business leaders. Yes, say the Kyoto defenders, because it's only a start.

The protocol, the product of years of arduous negotiation, is the first stage of a continuing process.

The hope is that more countries will come aboard and more stringent targets will gradually be set.

Kyoto has the weaknesses to be expected from compromises struck to secure voluntary agreement among nations, but it also has strengths.

It sets up systems to hold countries accountable for emissions, and creates mechanisms allowing them to reduce those emissions in a least-cost way.

Countries which reduce their emissions by more than their Kyoto target will be able to sell their excess emission credits to countries which find it more difficult or expensive to reduce emissions.

Another source of credits will be "forest sinks." Some changes in land use, such as planting a new forest, offset emissions by taking carbon dioxide from the air.

For New Zealand, the credits from forests would more than cover the expected increase in emissions to 2012.

This has given the Government a lot of leeway. It can ratify the Kyoto Protocol, confident that New Zealand will meet its obligations while shielding industries whose international competitiveness would be jeopardised if they were subject to the same carbon tax as the rest of us.

A tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels is due to take effect in 2007.

It will be capped at a rate that would add up to 6c a litre to petrol and 7c to diesel, and boost residential power bills about 9 per cent.

All up, it would cost a typical household about $5 a week.

Critics say this will do little to alter behaviour. Rises in petrol and electricity prices make little difference to the amount people consume.

But the point seems to be to put a carbon tax on the books. The rate can always be increased later.

And the carrot is that revenue from the carbon tax and from the international sale of forest sink credits will be "recycled", Hodgson says. That might take the form of tax cuts.

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/climate

Climate change links

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