Saving the planet

By BRIAN FALLOW

Prime Minister Helen Clark is taking a keener interest in climate change policy and the upshot is almost certain to be that more weight is placed on the short-term risks to business confidence than the long-term risks to the planet.

The reaction from business lobby groups to the Government's declared intention to ratify the Kyoto Protocol this year has been overwhelmingly negative.

In part this reflects uncertainty about what policies will be adopted to implement the protocol. Business will have a better idea next month when the Government releases its preferred policy package for consultation.

But it also reflects a belief - evidently prevalent in Canberra too - that Kyoto cannot survive without Third World emitters and the United States, which are outside its ambit and lack any obvious reason to join. By 2020 that could mean two-thirds of world emissions were outside the protocol, an intolerable degree of free-riding.

Why incur costs which undermine exporters' competitiveness and discourage investment for the sake of an agreement that is unlikely to endure?

But there is another side to the issue. What makes it a dilemma is that the physical problem of global warming is not one which will go away if we just ignore it.

It will only increase, and so will the costs of tackling it.

And to be among the free-riders on this issue would not be a good look for a country whose national brand is clean and green.

The trick then for the Government is to devise Kyoto policies which comply with the protocol - and are to that extent climate-friendly - but which do not shoot the economy in its remaining foot.

The protocol requires that, by the "first commitment period" of 2008 to 2012, New Zealand would make no more of a net contribution to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than it did in 1990. The key word is "net".

As well as adding gas from car exhausts, belching sheep and cattle, New Zealand has been subtracting it by planting pine trees on land not previously forested. The trees take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Under Kyoto's rules New Zealand will get credit for that - more than enough to cover the likely increase in emissions.

Another card the Government has to play is that some measures to reduce emissions are "no regrets" ones which make sense anyway, notably increasing energy efficiency.

It may also be attracted to the idea of introducing a carbon tax set at a very low rate, just to get people habituated to the idea.