Fitzsimons Jeanette: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20402] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 We have heard the knockers as we always do when the Kyoto Protocol comes up in this House. It is not surprising that ACT is challenging this because ACT does not believe that climate change is real. [ 
Interruption 
] Except it has changed its position. It has changed its view over a very short time. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Standing Orders are quite clear. When a member in his or her speech deliberately misrepresents what a member has said—which through implication Jeanette Fitzsimons has done—then a member has a right of reply and certainly a right of interjection. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No if the member considers that he has been misrepresented then he should look at Speaker’s ruling 35/3. I also point out to him Speaker’s ruling 57/5. When a member is speaking and other members sitting close by on the cross benches interject it muffles the microphone. Members know that it is a longstanding convention that that is out of order. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: I have sat in the House many times and heard ACT party members argue that the climate is not warming. They base this stance on satellite records that state the temperature is not warming 1 kilometre above the Earth therefore we can discount what is happening on the surface of the Earth. They state that the science is all wrong. But ACT cannot carry on that line any longer because the evidence is becoming incontrovertible. So now all of a sudden its members say that the climate is warming after all but it is not humans who are causing it. I wonder how long ACT will be able to sustain that argument. However we cannot expect a Plan B from ACT because it is not prepared to engage with the issue at all. 
The National Party however does not claim that climate change is not real but once again it has opposed the Kyoto Protocol and opposed as it always does any measures that anyone has ever suggested. Whether it be energy efficiency renewable energy low-energy transport or any other measure for tackling climate change other than the protocol the National Party says no. We have not seen it come up with any positive alternative to do something about the problem. 
New Zealand First does not believe in collective action. If reducing our emissions or absorbing more carbon here will not help our climate in New Zealand it does not believe that we should be part of any collective international action to do something about it on a global scale. Of course nobody’s emissions affect just their country’s climate; it is only if we all act together that there will be an effect. The Kyoto Protocol is a very flawed instrument but it is the only one on the table. 
We had a nice geography lesson from New Zealand First with a map of the world. But the member neglected to say that it is quite simple: countries that are part of the OECD have the highest emissions over history and have caused the problem and therefore they are required to take action first; those countries that have developed more recently or are still developing and do not have a long historical record of changing the climate will join in later. So we have had denial of the problem denial of any alternatives and denial of collective action. 
The indications that climate change is proceeding faster than anybody predicted have been accumulating over the last year. Arctic sea ice has melted at a rate that has staggered the scientists working on the models. There is the risk that the exposure of dark ocean instead of pale ice will increase heat absorption and accelerate warming even if we were to miraculously stop emissions. Huge shelves are carving off the Antarctic ice sheet into the sea at a faster rate than anyone predicted. Glaciers are in retreat around the world. The incidence of unusual floods storms droughts and heat waves has increased—none of which can be proven to be directly attributed to global warming but the pattern is consistent with that predicted by the climate change models. 
Carbon credits in this country have got wind power going. The Government’s policy on carbon credits has got the best new source of clean and renewable electricity off the ground. We have several wind farms up and running and quite a lot more being built. This is a new industry that needed some help to get going but that can now stand on its feet. It will not continue to need carbon credits. I think that is a victory. Although there is much I disagree with in the Government’s energy policy I congratulate it strongly on that move. 
The Greens support the provisions for reforestation that this bill makes possible. We need permanent forest sinks. It is too risky to allow people to claim carbon credits for planting a forest that they intend to clear-fell in 25 years when nobody will be able to force them to take responsibility for the emissions caused when the forests are clear-felled if they are not replanted. We need to encourage permanent forests and this bill does that. There are so many reasons why we need to establish more permanent forests particularly of indigenous species although that is not the only thing that this bill allows. These reasons include soil conservation water conservation flood control and protection erosion prevention biodiversity and landscape. We have ranges and ranges of bare hills around New Zealand that have lost their forest cover. The farmland that has been provided through that loss of forest is in many cases of very low value but it is too expensive to replant the forest. This bill is a mechanism by which that can happen. 
We need a regular supply of New Zealand indigenous timbers from forest that is planted because we have so little of the original forest cover left that we cannot afford to hack into old-growth indigenous forests to supply timber. But it will be a shame if future generations have to get all their furniture just from pine or worse still from imported old-growth timbers from other countries which is what is happening at the moment and which the Greens very strongly oppose. The provisions in the bill for the forests that get the credits not to be logged for 35 years and then only to be logged selectively under a closed canopy system gives us the opportunity to recreate what we could once have had in this country if we had stopped logging soon enough—that is some sustainably managed indigenous forests for timber. 
The Minister for the Environment said that the bill is about markets and not regulation. Then ACT told us that markets are all good and regulation is all bad. That is a totally false dichotomy. Therefore economic instruments cannot achieve environmental goals without putting them in a regulatory framework. That is what the Kyoto Protocol does. It is a “cap and trade” system. The trading is the market bit; the cap is the regulatory bit. The trading of emissions that the National Party suggests will not achieve anything at all without a regulation setting a ceiling to those emissions. This system is supposed to work in the fishing industry where everyone talks about individual transferable quotas being the great thing. They are the trade part of the system and are of no use at all in sustaining fish stocks unless there is also a total allowable catch which is the regulatory bit of the system. So we should stop getting hung up on ridiculous arguments about regulation or market and accept that we are a mixed society and that a mixed system works best. Regulation is used to ensure the environmental goals are met and markets are used to ensure the goals are met in the most efficient way by those who can most easily meet those goals.