Baldock Larry: General Debate 
Baldock Larry: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19251] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 United Future has serious concerns about New Zealand’s participation in the Kyoto Protocol ahead of our major trading partners. Despite an avalanche of newspaper and television reports recently which give the impression that every scientist in the world now accepts the so-called facts about greenhouse gases and global warming I think it is important to maintain a healthy objectivity and even scepticism about all the so-called facts. A visiting speaker to the transport conference in Wellington said recently that every doomsday prophet he had ever heard had been wrong so far. It is not so long ago that we were being warned about global freezing; in the 1970s a new ice age was just around the corner apparently. An example of the danger of relying too heavily on assumptions rather than on empirical data is that usually those assumptions turn out to be wrong. 
For example I saw an article the other day entitled: “Hydroelectric power’s dirty secret revealed” which claimed that even hydroelectric generation is not environmentally friendly as far as climate alarmists are concerned. That may also provide a clue as to their real agenda. In the article a consultant to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the famous and illustrious “IPCC”—by the name of Eric Duchemin said that contrary to popular belief hydroelectric power can seriously damage the climate. 
Mr Duchemin stated: “The green image of hydro power as a benign alternative to fossil fuels is false. … Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels.” Just so that we do not write off Eric Duchemin as one lone loony voice amongst all the wise scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change there are statements from Philip Fearnside from Brazil’s National Institute of Research in the Amazon at Manaus who stated: “Carbon emissions vary from dam to dam. But we do know that there are enough emissions to worry about.” In fact he estimates they are as high as 3½ times more than the emissions produced by generating electricity from oil. If members want to know more about that article I will table it after my speech so that they may have access to it. 
What will we do if hydro stations are not really part of the answer but part of the problem? What we should do of course is to be sensible use our heads and remain calm. We should not give in to the fearmongering and doomsday prophesying of the Green environmentalists who would have us all making decisions that would ruin our economy and send us back to the Dark Ages. Or is that their real agenda? Maybe it is not a concern for the environment per se that drives them but rather some kind of loony left-wing agenda to eliminate one by one all the reliable energy sources upon which our entire industrial and military structure and in turn our modern society depends. While the debate goes on regarding the effects of greenhouse gases on climate change and as we study new data and consider its interpretation we need to remember that we are not as smart as we think we are. Scientists are very important and we have much to thank scientists for in our lives. But we are all on a learning curve and we need to study the facts carefully. 
It is therefore prudent perhaps to take reasonable steps to reduce emissions pursue new technologies and plant more forests in the interim as the debate continues but we should not impose draconian measures such as carbon taxes on our industries and economy. Having been led into Kyoto and its treaty obligations by this Government—and by a previous National Government too; we must not forget that—we must all do our utmost to make sure that we at least have net credits under that crazy system so that as a country we do not find ourselves having to buy credits from Russia. United Future will act constructively in that regard but we are deeply concerned about the growing tendency to refer to carbon dioxide as pollution and to demonstrate against coal-fired power stations which in the light of the science I discussed earlier from that  
New Scientist 
 article may be less greenhouse gas - emitting than our hydro power stations. Someone will soon be telling us that oxygen is bad for us and that we ought to stop breathing. 
If we are serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions we should encourage forestry—not see forests converted to dairying land—and consider ideas like encouraging the planting of native forests along all our waterways and around our lakes in riparian strips. That would help in our battle against pollution in our rivers and lakes and would produce significant carbon credits to guard against the possibility of ever finding ourselves with an economic burden from the bureaucratic nightmare of Kyoto.