Norman Russel: Climate Change (New Zealand Superannuation Fund) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Norman Russel: Climate Change (New Zealand Superannuation Fund) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7205. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Climate Change (New Zealand Superannuation Fund) Bill be now read a first time. 
 I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. This relatively simple bill has a relatively simple purpose and that is to ensure that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund invests its money taxpayers’ money in a way that both is sustainable but also in particular takes into account climate change. It does this by amending the Act that governs the New Zealand Superannuation Fund which is the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001 by essentially adding another guiding principle if you like to the investments of the fund. Currently the fund has three guiding principles the third of which is about avoiding prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community and essentially we add a fourth guiding principle to that which is that the fund would need to consider sustainability and in particular climate change when making its investments. 
Now is a particularly apposite time to be considering a bill around climate change. Even as we sit here tonight in Doha the world is assembled at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to consider what kinds of actions we can take as a global community to deal with climate change. I do not think anyone is particularly optimistic about the outcomes of those meetings unfortunately but it certainly does not prevent us in New Zealand and elsewhere from taking the actions that we can in order to address climate change. This bill is one part of doing that. 
The science around climate change continues to get more alarming as time progresses and I want to touch on a little bit of that science and a little bit of what is happening globally at the moment because what we are now experiencing are the early stages of human-caused climate change. Of course the Earth has warmed and cooled many times over past millennia but the warming that we are experiencing now is warming that has been caused by the release of greenhouse gases which we as a human species have been responsible for. It is I think remarkable to live in a time when the Arctic ice sheet is disappearing. We now have opened up the sea routes across the North Pole because the Arctic ice has reached its lowest level on record. As the planet has warmed the Arctic ice is melting further and further each summer—not only in its area but also in its thickness. We are seeing sea level rise of about 2 to 3 millimetres a year but the projections are for the rate of sea level rise to increase quite dramatically. As we have seen the melting of glaciers now we are starting to see very significant melting on the Greenland ice sheet and of course melting in Antarctica. Those great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica as they melt will change literally the maps of the world as they cause very large levels of sea level rise. 
Beyond that we have seen the very graphic example of what more extreme weather events look like with “Superstorm Sandy”—or Hurricane Sandy however you want to describe it—which happened of course in the lead-up to the US presidential elections. That storm alone is estimated to have cost around US$50 billion. We probably will not know for some time the real cause of that storm. The scientific community has come out very clearly to say that storms of this nature are more likely and will increase in their intensity and their frequency as a result of climate change. That is the kind of thing that we have loosed upon the world. It is one of the reasons why the global reinsurance industry—the people who insure the insurance companies—is so deeply alarmed about the current science and evidence around climate change. 
We are also seeing the beginnings of the acidification of the oceans. As the level of carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere it increases the level of carbonic acid in the oceans and we are seeing the acidification of those oceans with the result that we are seeing the early stages whereby sea animals and crustaceans—and particularly snails which cannot form their shells in such an acidic environment—are struggling to form shells. So we are seeing a fundamental change in the nature of the oceans themselves as we start to make those oceans more acidic. 
The World Bank recently released a report in the lead-up to the conference on climate change where it basically said that as a result of the existing projection on greenhouse emissions we are heading for 4 degrees of warming within a generation by 2100. There are people born today who will live to 2100. The people in this Chamber are very unlikely to live to 2100 but people are being born today who will live to 2100. The World Bank is very clear that as a result of our current trajectory we are looking at 4 degrees or more of warming by 2100. What that means is a very radical change in the world as we know it. It means we will have far more extreme weather events like “Superstorm Sandy”. It means we will have far more floods and extreme weather events and more droughts. We will have very significant sea level rise. Sea level rise is very important for a civilisation like ours which has built its major centres within a few metres of the existing sea level. Of course we never imagined when we built those great cities and civilisations that we would see significant sea level rise in the near future yet that is exactly what we are giving ourselves as a result of uncontrolled climate change. And that is of course exactly where we are heading. 
The World Bank also raised the alarm around food shortages. As climate change gets under way and the climate is destabilised what we are seeing is that the existing agricultural production systems which are designed to cope with the relatively stable climate we have had for 12000 years since the last Ice Age and the food production systems that we have developed which are adapted to that relatively stable climate will no longer function as well. So we are expecting very significant food shortages because of course this climate disruption is coming alongside a very large increase in human population. The World Meteorological Organization has also issued its own report and made its own warnings about climate change and I just want to quote it. The World Meteorological Organization said “Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which have risen constantly and again reached new records”. We are living in extraordinary times when all of our leading international and scientific bodies are telling us that we need to take action to reduce greenhouse emissions. Carbon dioxide levels have hit new records—around 390 parts per million—and we have seen methane levels start to increase again for reasons that are actually a little bit uncertain. Nitrous oxide levels are growing again as well. Nitrous oxide of course has a warming potential 300 times that of carbon dioxide. 
This bill aims to address that to some small degree by implementing responsible investment provisions around climate change on the Superannuation Fund. It will ensure that our taxes are invested in a way that does not damage our environment or prejudice our future through climate change. It says to the Superannuation Fund “Invest our taxes responsibly.” It is also about a broader principle of trying to make capital more expensive for those businesses causing harm and to make capital cheaper and more available for those that are doing good. 
There has been a very interesting move internationally amongst responsible investors. The Alliance of Institutional Investors representing US$22.5 trillion in assets has called on Governments to take action on climate change. We have also seen that the International Energy Agency has said that renewables could be the second-biggest power source by 2015. Last year renewable energy investments reached US$257 billion a rise of 17 percent on the years before. So we are seeing some change in investment in renewables and to save ourselves. But we know that the science is very clear that we are not doing enough. 
We have the ability through this bill to have a small influence on our own future and the future of Planet Earth by directing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to invest our taxes in a way that actually supports our future rather than a way that undermines our future. The Superannuation Fund already does this to a small degree under its current Act but we believe that it could do more than that. The purpose of this bill is to accelerate the Superannuation Fund’s current slow moves to invest in a much more responsible way. I commend this bill to the House.