Public less keen on climate steps if too costly

Most New Zealanders want the Government to do more to deal with climate change but aren't so keen if it costs them money or impacts on their quality of life.

So says Australian environmental economist and researcher Steve Hatfield-Dodds, visiting New Zealand for a climate-change conference.

He and New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics researcher Nigel Jollands recently quizzed about 1000 New Zealanders and a similar number of Australians about climate change - and their reaction to the cost of doing something about it.

Dr Hatfield-Dodds, a senior researcher at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, said a key finding of the study was that people were less keen to support climate change policy if they thought it would cost them personally.

"People are very reluctant to give up things they already have. But we are already giving up something - our climate." Dr Hatfield-Dodds, a key speaker addressing a climate-change symposium in Wellington today, said technology would continue to drive economic growth regardless of whether Governments became more eco-friendly.

The long-term economic impact would be almost negligible, he said.

"By 2050 - the next time incomes will double - it will only take 2 years to get to the same income level if we take greenhouse action. And that result is robust across all the different models."

He said consumers - particularly those with low-level incomes - were right to be concerned about how prices would swell, but often did not consider increasing incomes.

"Prices would rise and rise a lot. Electricity in real terms in Australia would rise 80 to 90 per cent, but incomes rise more and people would spend less on electricity as a share of income."

But he warned policy-makers that the clock was ticking.

"Delaying action by 20 years increases total carbon emissions by 50 per cent, which probably pushes us over the threshold. Most of the science suggests that we need to limit the temperature increase to 2C, and if we don't take decisive steps in the next 10 to 15 years, we won't achieve that. So this is the crunch time."

He said the public often supported action when the issues were properly presented. "When communicated properly, you get higher than 70 per cent support for action in Australia."

- STAFF REPORTER, NZPA