Graham Kennedy: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12164. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):It has been interesting to listen to Nicky Wagner and Maggie Barry in their analysis of Vote Environment. Of course we do not dispute the statistics: 40 percent or so on the environment itself and 60 percent or so on climate change which works out in the case of climate change to something like $195 million. But let us analyse that and ask ourselves what that money that $195 million is spent on. The short answer is that most of it has been spent on the allocation of New Zealand Units which amounts to little more than generational theft—generational theft. The emissions trading scheme as it is currently fashioned by this Government amounts to a fiscal time bomb that will explode on the next generation and not us. That is quite shameful. That needs to be scrutinised with greater transparency greater honesty and greater candour and this Government needs to respond with greater creativity to get this right.The deforestation that we are anticipating in the next 5 to 10 years is phenomenal. We have got through the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol by the skin of our teeth not because we brought down gross emissions—they went up—but by the fact that our forestry went up through plantings 15 years ago in the early 1990s and the mid-1990s for tax policy reasons totally unrelated to climate change. Then we have completely messed up our climate change policy in the last 5 years such that we are facing a massive amount of deforestation over the next 10 years. There is zero money under these estimates for the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative but $171 million to the allocation of units to polluters.Let me ask the Minister in the chair a number of questions about our emissions trading scheme policy. Just to pick up on the question that my colleague Eugenie Sage asked him earlier about how he will enjoy swimming with his children through faecal-contaminated rivers my questions pertaining to climate change are the following. With regard to the UN target—if the Government can remember back that far to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report—the prescription for annex 1 countries to keep within the 2 degrees Celsius and to play our share in reducing global emissions from 49 to 44gigatonnes is a reduction off 1990 from gross to net of 25 to 40 percent. This Government in the form of Treasury and Cabinet papers says it does not follow that New Zealand has to be within that range. Question No. 1 to the Minister: which countries does he wish to nominate from the annex 1 countries to make up the shortfall when we are not doing our share?My second question follows. The Government has in its ineffable wisdom turned away from the second Kyoto commitment period because that is a legally binding obligation. It says it will “elect to take its commitment under the framework convention”. Why? Well especially because it cannot afford a legal obligation because of the wall of wood coming down the track but particularly because it insists on looking forward and alluding to the 87 percent of emissions that are coming out of the developing countries. This Government like those of other annex 1 Kyoto countries is obliged to acknowledge the 77 percent of historical responsibility acknowledge the continuing relevance of the common but differentiated responsibilities acknowledge the difference that still obtains in per capita emissions and acknowledge that it has a responsibility to be in Kyoto II. That is the second question.The third question follows. The Government in the form of Treasury still bases its policy on the notion of global least cost. Does the Minister wish to acknowledge thatthere is no such thing as a global price or a global market on the carbon economy yet and that there will not be for probably at least 10 years? There is a chaotic regional market coming out of Europe from which incidentally Australia and the European Union protect themselves. But not this country. In its overzealous approach to an open global economy based on neo-liberal principles it allows itself vulnerability to that.Vote agreed to.