Duynhoven Harry: Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Duynhoven Harry: Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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Yesterday we had advice from Mr Ken Shirley that sea levels are not in fact rising despite the advice of the world scientists. It was really interesting that as I left the House yesterday a member of the public who was in the gallery came up to me on the way out and introduced himself as a scientist. He said that I might be interested in the latest paper in this week’s issue of  
Nature 
. One could not get much more prestigious science than  
Nature 
 so I looked it up. This is a satellite measurement study that sets out to resolve the contradictions between previous different ways of measuring sea-level rise that had come to different conclusions. It has resolved the nature of the uncertainty between those predictions and it has confirmed the upper measurement that globally the world’s oceans are rising by 1.5 to 2 millimetres a year. 
I ask those who will not accept anything that Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control writes anything that is published in  
Nature 
 or science or anything that derives from Europe—and that seems to be the general feeling around here; that is all of those sources are totally discredited—whether they will accept the word of the Pentagon. Will they accept the word of the Global Business Network? Last week the  
Observer 
 made public a report by Peter Schwartz a Central Intelligence Agency consultant and the former head of planning at Royal Dutch Shell Group and the other author Doug Randall from the Global Business Network. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Well-known networkers! 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Absolutely! One could say a lot of “pinko-greenies”. That report was suppressed for 4 months by the Bush administration because its findings were so devastating. That report stated that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy. It states: “The threat to global climate stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism.” That is something we have been trying to tell anyone who will listen for quite some time. It states: “Climate change should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern. An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.” 
If there are two groups in the world that President Bush and his administration listen to they are the Pentagon and the oil industry and here we have both of them advising him that climate change is a more serious threat to the security of America than terrorism. In the light of these statements this bill is timid and lightweight. It does a little bit of good; it potentially does a little bit of harm. That gives us a difficult decision to make at the end of this debate. Elevating energy efficiency and renewable energy to the list of matters to which Resource Management Act decision-makers must pay particular regard is a little bit of progress. That progress is weakened a bit by the inclusion of geothermal energy—which is often not renewable and we still do not know enough about it—and the inclusion of hydro which is renewable from the point of view of the water but unfortunately not from the point of view of the braided rivers that it runs through or the black stilt and rare native fish that live in it. So renewability is a problematic definition depending on what one applies it to. 
Jim Peters was absolutely right when he said that despite my energy efficiency legislation that went through in the year 2000 we still have almost no energy standards we have no national policy statements and energy policy is still not particularly coherent. We have to admit that the present Minister inherited some ghastly problems from the previous administration and he has spent a lot of time trying to fix those but we are just about running out of time for that and we do need to see a coherent national energy policy in New Zealand. I look forward to discussing this further with Mr Peters perhaps in our select committee. 
However this bill also does another thing that is somewhat positive in that it allows councils to plan to mitigate the effects of climate change. Local government itself asked for that and it may well help Rangitikei and others planning to limit the repeat of the flooding that has happened recently and the slips of recent days. Substantial guidance has already been produced by the Ministry for the Environment to assist councils that want to know what the effects of climate change are likely to be and how to mitigate them. I do not agree with Mr Peters that the effects of climate change should have been listed in the Act because I think there is still quite a lot of uncertainty around that and we need to be able to adapt that advice in terms of the best and latest science. 
However this bill may also do some harm and that is what gives us a difficult decision in terms of how we will vote in a few minutes. The power of regional councils to control greenhouse gas emissions has been removed yet the Government refuses to legislate for the national instrument that ought to replace it. Of course a national economic instrument is a much better way of controlling greenhouse emissions. We have always acknowledged that but we now face the real possibility that there may never be one especially in light of the refusal to accept my amendment yesterday which would have linked the coming into force of the removal of the regional powers to the coming into force of a national economic instrument to replace them. Instead we will have a gap which at best will be 3 years but possibly will be for ever. 
The decision for the Greens is not easy. On balance we have decided that we will vote for the bill in recognition that section 7 improvements are worth having and that we will double our efforts to shift some taxation off income and wealth generation and on to carbon and other forms of pollution in the form of a carbon tax so that there will be a national economic instrument to take the place of the regional council powers. 
Debate interrupted.