Fitzsimons Jeanette: Urgent Debates — Greenhouse Gas Emissions—Release of Report 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Urgent Debates — Greenhouse Gas Emissions—Release of Report 
[Volume:627;Page:21769] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 In 1997 I was privileged to be an observer in Kyoto at the negotiation of the protocol when Simon Upton negotiated on behalf of New Zealand the framework for the agreement we now have. There are many things in politics that Simon Upton and I did not agree on but on this issue I have to say that he was staunch. He understood the science. He understood the need for global action. He understood that no country could go it alone and that we had to negotiate the best we could in the circumstances. If Simon were here today I believe he would be ashamed of the backtracking of his party since then. He knew that the Kyoto agreement was not about making money out of environmental disaster as most parties in this House seem to think but about facing collectively the worst threat to human civilisation for some centuries. We know that he proposed carbon charges in the 1990s to make the New Zealand economy more efficient by discouraging energy waste. We know that his Cabinet colleagues many of whom are still here today turned him down and said that we should stick with the energy inefficiency we have and with the financial losses that firms and individuals suffer when they use far far more energy than they need in order to make a dollar or to keep warm. 
Even in 1997 scientists were clear that evidence of climate change had accumulated to the point where we had to take action. Some uncertainties still existed but the balance of probabilities was that we could not ignore the risk until there was more certainty. Since then the science has become much more certain. The language of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has become stronger and more urgent with every report. Arctic sea ice is melting way before the models predicted it would. Ice shelves are carving off the Antarctic faster than expected. Glaciers around the world are retreating. Extreme weather events floods droughts and heatwaves are more frequent. Just in the last weeks the national academies of science of all the G7 countries have advised their Governments that it is urgent to address the problem of climate change. Last year the Pentagon that fringe greenie organisation in the United States advised the President that climate change is a greater threat to world security than terrorism is. 
The arguments we have heard this afternoon against New Zealand doing anything on greenhouse emissions are interesting. The first argument is that the science is not yet totally certain. Well there are still people who say there is no proven link between tobacco and lung cancer. The risk that the problem is underestimated by current science is at least as great as the likelihood that it is overestimated. Who wants to take that risk that in fact things may become considerably worse than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is predicting? 
The second argument is that our trading partners have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. When we look at what the Kyoto Protocol is we see that it was an agreement whereby the OECD countries that had historically caused climate change to date would take action first in a 5-year period and that when they had taken action the developing countries would join the party and make some commitments too. Only two significant countries in the OECD have not ratified the protocol—the United States and Australia. 
The third argument is that as developing countries are not part of the agreement why should we do anything? Why should we who have contributed for 160 years to climate change by cutting down two-thirds of our forest and burning large amounts of fossil fuel do anything when the likes of Africa which has always contributed very little has done nothing and when the likes of China which still uses about a tenth of the energy per capita that the United States does still wants to develop its economy? That argument will not stand up. In fact the only chance of getting those developing countries particularly China and India to join an agreement to take action against climate change is if the OECD countries act first. 
The fourth argument is that we are so small and insignificant that we should just free ride on the efforts of everybody else and that because we cannot make a difference on our own we should not do anything. Actually the United States cannot make much difference on its own either. No country in the world can make a big difference to climate change—only countries acting together can do so. 
Just for the information of those who think that New Zealand is so clean and insignificant I say that our total climate change emissions are double the per capita average for the world. When we include the developing countries as well as the developed countries we see that we are emitting twice our share of the total. What gives us the right to go on doing that? 
Of course the Kyoto Protocol will not solve the problem. It is a tiny first step in the incredibly difficult task of international negotiations to take action on the most difficult challenge we have ever been faced with. Energy cuts right to the heart of the industrial society and our way of life. It is much much harder to implement the Kyoto Protocol than to implement the ozone treaty and the Montreal Protocol that we agreed to in order to prevent ozone destruction. Chlorofluorocarbons are much more dispensable than energy is. So the Kyoto Protocol will not solve the problem but there is nothing else on the table. There is nothing else that will bring countries together around the table every year to have negotiations to build on it. As the science accumulates there will be a forum under the Kyoto Protocol for countries to discuss how to take action. The second commitment period may have an entirely different approach to targets from the first commitment period. That period has not even been negotiated yet. Anybody who thinks like Alex Sundakov—who thinks he can predict what our commitments will be in the fourth commitment period when nobody has even started negotiating the second commitment period—is quite frankly away with the fairies. I am amazed that people in this House would believe that kind of rubbish. 
I move on to the projections that were released as something of a bombshell last week. They are actually just that—a set of a predictions. They are based on a whole lot of assumptions some of which I think are very questionable—such as that the price of oil will go way back down from US$59 per barrel where it is today to US$30 per barrel and stay there right through the Kyoto Protocol period. Does anybody actually believe that? Even if we did we would have to accept that there will be no effect from our investigation and research into agricultural emissions and from our attempts to control methane and also have to believe that there will be absolutely no effect at all from our National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy. I think that that is a pretty extreme set of assumptions. The set of predictions state that 7½ years from now we will have overshot our target. When other people and other parties see those figures they see a financial loss—New Zealand might have to pay some money to Russia. When the Greens see those figures they see an environmental loss. They see accelerated climate change. They see drought that causes mass starvation in Africa. They see the vulnerability of New Zealand to new pests and diseases. They see huge shifts to our rainfall patterns agriculture and coastal settlements. 
Labour crows that the figures have changed because of our huge success in increasing economic growth. I am sorry but the atmosphere does not care how fast Labour has grown the economy; it cares only whether Labour has managed to manage its greenhouse gases while it did that. Labour has not been prepared to face up to the costs of growth. We cannot just grow the economy indiscriminately without taking care of the side effects caused on the way. Those projections show a trend but they do not show destiny. It is entirely within our power to turn that loss into a profit if we decide now that it is what we want to do. It is 2½ years until those administering the Kyoto Protocol even start counting and it is 7½ years until they finish counting our emissions. Energy drives our economy but energy waste does not. There are huge opportunities in New Zealand for greater energy efficiency. People who work in the field tell me that they can walk into just about any industry and find ways of saving very cost effectively 20 to 30 percent of the energy used by that industry with measures that will pay for themselves in a year or two. Is that not better than either changing the climate or paying Russia? 
Some people have been pushing for fuel efficiency standards for vehicles for 30 years. We still have no efficiency standards for vehicles. We are still spending money on vast motorways that we will not have the fuel to use. We are not developing our rail and public transport to the extent we could. We are accelerating the use of coal. Instead we need to plant more forests for fuel and for catchment protection. If the Greens get into Government we will not be paying $1 billion; we will have future-proofed and carbon-proofed our economy with renewables energy efficiency and forestry.