Graham Kennedy: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Graham Kennedy: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4730. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will vote against this bill the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill on the grounds that it weakens an already weak emissions trading scheme to the point of irrelevance. The deliberate weakening of the emissions trading scheme reflects a fundamental misperception of the nature of the climate change challenge. The primary objective in the bill as stated is to “ensure that the emissions trading scheme more effectively supports the Government’s economic growth priorities”. This one sentence reveals the multiple errors in this Government’s flawed world view. It subordinates climate change to economic growth. It reflects a 20th century understanding of economic integrity. It implies that economic growth is the principal criterion of the quality of life. It asserts a narrow and myopic view of the nature of climate change. 
To appreciate the way in which this trader Government has proceeded down the wrong path we need simply to have regard to the global context. Let us be clear. Climate change is not just another tough problem today and a potential crisis tomorrow. It is part of an ecological crisis today. It is the first of the nine planetary boundaries we must stay within if human civilisation is to continue to flourish. It is 20 years now since we agreed to avoid excessive carbon concentration in the atmosphere that would cause dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. It took 18 years to identify a 2-degree temperate rise and a 450-parts-per-million concentration as the limit for avoiding that danger. 
The global carbon budget for the climate boundary is 1600 billion tonnes of net greenhouse gas emissions for the period 1990 to 2100. In 20 years we have used almost half of that. The remaining budget from now to 2100 is 870 billion tonnes about one-third of the remaining fossil fuel reserves. We have to learn to say no to fossil fuel extraction. Such a global budget allows future annual global emissions of 9.5 billion tonnes. This is 20 percent of current emissions so the global emissions reduction curve will need to be steep if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. This requires global emissions to peak before 2020 and to drop by 8 percent in 2020 and by some 56 percent by 2050. The developed countries—the Global North—are required now to reduce their national emissions by about 35 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. 
These are not matters of choice. This is not the stuff of currency speculation dealing with toxic debt or hedging risk through derivatives and futures trading. We do not hear breathless talk about such antics these days yet the Government is still acting as if we have free choice over macroeconomic policy with the climate. This is not a matter of choice. Emissions reduction is an ecological imperative. Nature does not do deals other than with itself and certainly not with humanity. Nature is what it is. Human notions of choice will prove as ephemeral as a feather in an evolutionary storm if we court dangerous climate change yet this is what we are doing. 
The United Nations says the current global emission level of 48 billion tonnes needs to drop to 44 billion tonnes by 2020—some say to 36 billion tonnes—yet our voluntary pledges adopted at Cancun will see emissions rise to 50 billion tonnes resulting in an emissions gap of 6 billion to 12 billion tonnes. Clearly the international community is failing to prevent dangerous climate change. 
So where does New Zealand stand? We are called upon to reduce national emissions by up to 40 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. What have we pledged? We have promised conditionally a mid-point of 15 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2050. It is simply not possible for New Zealand to achieve even these weak targets with the spineless market instrument it has fashioned for the purpose over these past 3 years. The 2020 mid-point of 15 percent means 51 million tonnes of net New Zealand emissions. The current projection for 2020 is 63 million tonnes a reduction of 12 million tonnes within the next 8 years. For 2050 a 50 percent drop means 30 million tonnes a reduction of 33 million tonnes from today. 
These are significant reductions yet they are nothing compared with what is required for the 2-degree boundary. An 80 percent reduction by 2050 would mean a drop from 63 million tonnes to 13 million tonnes. How might we conceivably achieve this? Not by the 2008 Labour emissions trading scheme not by the weakened 2009 National emissions trading scheme and certainly not by this limp legislative construct masquerading as a model of responsibility and balance that is before us today. Today’s bill will defer the inclusion of agriculture indefinitely defer any increase in the price cap defer the one-for-one surrender obligation allow a greater switch from forestry to dairying and enable importers to increasingly use dangerous synthetic gases. What remarkable steel-like resolve! 
We need a Green plan for achieving the scale of reduction required. When National was busy moralising about the impossibility of achieving a 40 percent reduction by 2020 the Green Party was compiling a practical plan to do just that. The document titled  
Getting There 
 identifies opportunities for reducing emissions across all sectors in ways that transcend the emissions trading scheme. These supplementary measures include 5 million tonnes off electricity 2 million tonnes off industrial and manufacturing fuels 5 millions tonnes off transport 3 million tonnes off agriculture and 22 million tonnes through enhanced forestry sinks. All up this totals 36 million tonnes taken off domestic emissions in 2020. The remaining 12 million tonnes required to reach the 40 percent reduction would be met through the purchase of international credits. 
National has been disposed to cast aspersion on our plan. This absolves it it believes of the need to develop a plan itself. Others have queried some of the details. That is fine. No doubt the details can be refined; we are dialoguing with experts as we go. The point is that the Green Party alone in this House has the foresight and the gumption to draft an ambitious and positive plan. It is possible to develop a plan for New Zealand that would allow us to achieve the national reductions required to do our fair share in avoiding dangerous climate change. The Green Party has prepared a draft. 
National complains about the inability of New Zealand to achieve deeper cuts. Its reasons are twofold: first we have a large agricultural sector whose emissions are hard to reduce; second we have a high renewable portion of our electricity. This ignores the fact that both arguments are accommodated in the Kyoto allocations so there is a limit to how often we can unveil this monument to inaction. It ignores the fact that comparable countries like Sweden and Ireland have reduced agricultural emissions by 10 percent and 7 percent whereas New Zealand has increased them by 16 percent. Here we are trumpeting our determination to help the rest of the world reduce agricultural emissions through the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases. I have nothing against the global research alliance just do not use it as a smokescreen for inaction on agricultural reductions here that can be achieved now. 
The amount of cant that National has injected into the climate change methodology is breathtaking. The difference between National and Green climate policy is driven by different underlying perceptions. National calibrates its policy in light of what other countries are doing. The Green Party calibrates its policy in light of what the science indicates is necessary. National then shapes its policy as a mechanism for deferring what it terms a financial burden on selected economic sectors. The Green Party shapes its policy as a societal opportunity to move to a high tech low carbon green economy. 
National sows fear and loathing about future emissions scenarios of the Global South with no acknowledgment of a historical responsibility or per capita differential. The Green Party acknowledges both historical and future responsibility. It embraces the need for contraction and convergence and for international equity and thereby global legitimacy to evolve. Above all the Green Party adopts ecological economics in its approach to macroeconomic planning and climate policy. This is a qualitative change from the traditional neo-liberal economics of National. We embrace a different cognitive framework from that of National. We have a different world view and thus employing the same logical reasoning we are all endowed with we emerge with different policies. We shall oppose this bill and when in Government we shall introduce a vastly different and more effective Green climate policy. There is something new under the sun. It is imperative that we act now.