Tim Groser, the Government climate guy, unveiled our target for 2030: an 11 per cent drop on emissions compared to 1990. He was reported as describing the goal as "fair and ambitious", which is just as well, given the INDCs are required by the UN to be "fair and ambitious".
Really, though, it wasn't all that ambitious. Of all the climate scientists' comments on the target, about the most generous was "bare minimum". In 2010, shortly after the Copenhagen talks fizzled, Groser pledged "a conditional emissions reduction target range of 10 to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020".
That is much more ambitious than this latest target, itself also conditional.
An 11 per cent cut by 2030 hardly looks consistent, what is more, with the overarching goal of the National Government, of halving the 1990 level by 2050. "A 50 per cent cut by 2050. 50 by 50," declared Key, then leader of the opposition, in 2007, as part of a largely deserved condemnation of the Labour Government's environmental record. "If I am Prime Minister of New Zealand I will write this target into law," he said. That goal, pledged repeatedly, is yet to be written into law, and in the absence of any coherent plan to cut emissions, looks a long shot. Even 11 per cent by 2030 has something of the Hail Mary about it. Groser's strategy amounts to: calm down dear, technology will provide.
As our parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Jan Wright, noted in her submission on the INDC, "the measures currently in place to achieve [the 50 by 50] target are inadequate", and reliance on purchasing carbon credits offshore under the Emissions Trading Scheme will only continue to prove "ineffective in encouraging the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions within New Zealand".
The refrain nowadays is that New Zealand is but a drop in the rising oceans, powerless to make a difference. That rationale, as the nonpartisan Dr Wright points out, stinks. "Every city in China and every state in the United States could make the same argument."
It is not for us to lead, says Groser. Far from leading, however - apart from on emissions, where we're fifth per capita on the table of developed countries - we're dragging our heels, well behind, for example, the European Union, which has pledged a 40 per cent cut on 1990 levels by 2030. Yeah, their task is different given they're shifting from a carbon-intensive energy industry, but still.
We're only little, but we're a superpower in the South Pacific, parts of which are literally sinking amid rising sea levels. The importance of New Zealand to Samoa was mistakable in the All Black visit this week - a brilliant and morally laudable occasion, but also an exemplar of soft power. Similarly, the commitments and noise New Zealand makes on climate change really matter in vulnerable places like Samoa, Kiribati, Tokelau and Tuvalu.
The emissions trading scheme is up for review next year. That is overdue. But why not go further, and look at establishing something like Britain's Committee on Climate Change, an independent body tasked with advising the Government on carbon reduction and all that? Its creation, as part of a Climate Act which also mandated a whopping 80 per cent reduction from 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, was almost unanimously supported across Parliament.
In the UK, where the level of vitriol between parties sometimes makes New Zealand politics appear an idyll of bonhomie, the leaders of the main parties took a break from a rancorous election campaign this year to sign a joint pledge on climate change, promising "to work together, across party lines, to agree carbon budgets" and "to accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy-efficient low-carbon economy".
It's all a bit sad that the advances of New Zealand's newbie Green Party co-leader, James Shaw, seeking a cross-party approach on climate change, were summarily rebuffed last month. There's little doubt that Key is genuine in his belief that the science on climate change is clear, even if a few of his knuckle-dragging backbenchers obviously don't.
And if the moral and long-term economic arguments don't grab you, how about the brand thing? "In the decades ahead, people's perceptions around climate change will affect the brand image of New Zealand and its exports," said one expert a few years back. "New Zealand must take credible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or risk becoming a trading pariah. We're going to need some serious climate 'cred'."
That expert? The greatest political weatherman of them all, John Key.
Debate on this issue is now closed.
