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PAUL Well it's a most interesting picture the Climate Change Minister paints so what do our panel have to say. Let's go straight away to a clip of what the Minister said about the possible target for cutting emissions by 2020 will be.
Nick Smith: 'For a target, one I don't think it's achievable, I don't think you'd get there, I think you'd do more damage to New Zealand's reputation and certainly you're not going to get.'
And that's the clip in which he is ruling out what Greenpeace wants which is a 40% reduction. So what do you know of the report, what do you think the new report is going to suggest we try and aim for Jeanette?
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS - Green MP
Well I've seen reports from NZIER before, and they start from
the premise that everybody in the economy at the moment is
optimally efficient in terms of energy and transport fuels and
farming and that there are no savings that can be made without huge
costs. That's simply not true. We know for example that
if everybody used the same amount of petrol as my car did coming to
Auckland and back today, we would halve the emissions from our
transport fleet, that's 50% from our cars, and that's entirely
feasible, it's not even an expensive car. We know for example
that this government abandoned the moratorium on new coal and gas
fired electricity stations so that more could be built. We
actually need to start from the ground and plot the measures that
we're going to take, we won't do it just with an Emissions Trading
Scheme, we've gotta have a lot of complementary measures in terms
of energy efficiency, vehicle fuel efficiency, better public
transport.
PAUL So we can aim for a more ambitious target than he appears to be thinking?
JEANETTE I believe we can aim for a more ambitious target, but I think that someone should be doing the analysis and I'm amazed that the government just asks for a macro economic view and doesn't start adding up from the bottom where could the savings be made, how could they be made and what would it add to.
PAUL What do you think the target's looking like Simon Upton.
SIMON UPTON - Former National Cabinet
Minister
Paul, governments won't make decisions on the basis of
economic modelling, I mean they commission it every time and it's
not bad but it's not brilliant either. At the end of the day
there's a political judgement going to be made and it will be made
internationally as well as domestically. Now look 40% is more
than anyone else is committing to. I cannot see a government
going for 40% when Europe - if the rest of the world does
everything - would go to 30, and we have a more expensive path than
those economies. So just pragmatically I would predict the
government would go for the less ambitious end of the spectrum.
PAUL Because he said of course you aim too high and the politics start to look ugly Therese?
THERESE ARSENEAU Yes and I agree with Simon, I think the government's basically ruled out that they're not going to go for the 40, but what Greenpeace's campaign does tend to do, and we've seen so many examples in politics, where you have a more ambitious target being put out very strongly, what it does tend to do is perhaps move the centre to a slightly more ambitious target than they would have had it. So you know those people on either side and either extreme do tend to move the target, I don't think anyone's expecting that they'll get all the way to 40, but it might move where the government ends up.
PAUL It's a very difficult political balance isn't it, because you know you want to be a good international citizen but you've got to take the people with you. How difficult as policy do you think this is to develop?
SIMON I think it's incredibly difficult, let me answer that first because I was there in Kyoto in 1997, and I have to say we did much less analysis then and the whole world did much less analysis, and I think what we did in Kyoto was agree to things that none of knew how we could meet, and that's the reality, I've had that from the mouths of American negotiators. This time round much more work's been done, and even if the outcome is modest in terms of Greenpeace, I think it will be real and frankly a real outcome that starts a process is going to be better than something built on clouds.
JEANETTE But there's something nobody is saying here, and that is that the target doesn't all have to be met domestically in New Zealand, we meet what we can here and we pay for reductions in other countries around the world to meet the rest of our target and that's where the technology and capital transfer comes from to the developing world, so that they can get their emissions down.
THERESE Paul can I say it's the most complex policy issue I have ever seen in my life, and it is about finding the right balance, and I think the Minister hit on that very well.
PAUL He seemed to be very reasonable.
THERESE Well it's balancing into the environment, you know it is the issue of our generation, and we have to balance it up against truly our economic conditions as well, it's an international problem, it does depend what our trading partners do, and I also thought that Helen Clark gave us a timely reminder, it's one of the many issues at the international level that we have to be taking into account.
PAUL And it will be a very big issue domestically particularly if power prices which are already astronomical shoot even further into the galaxy. The Minister commented on power price rises.
Nick Smith: 'The advice I've had, the existing law, the existing ETS would have petrol price go up by about six cents a litre, power price up by about 10%.'
So that's going to cause trouble isn't it?
JEANETTE And that's why last year in negotiating with Labour we agreed that some of the money that comes from that will go into insulating people's homes. We've managed to restore that scheme with the National government, and that home insulation scheme will bring power bills down for many people even when power prices go up.
SIMON Those are real costs people have to meet, but on this I think the government has to be quite honest with people, anything we do will be costly, there is a price to tackling the issue. What these numbers like 10%, 6%, don't and can't show us is the real ability to react and actually minimise use. Every single New Zealander wastes energy, every single person in this country wastes energy, it is cheaper here than in many countries in the world, and I have to say that at the sort of modest end of the spectrum that the Minister I think probably has in mind, I think most New Zealanders can actually make the adjustments, and we'll never make them if the price doesn't go up.
PAUL You've just come back from Singapore where you were chairing I think the OECD meeting on sustainable development or sustainability. Is there a world appetite for this, are all governments struggling to take the people with them on this?
SIMON I'm sure governments are struggling but there is an appetite to do something. The world changed when the Obama administration came to town. The fact is that quite a lot if developed have done things and countries that aren't even required to like China, are taking it very seriously. I've just recently been in China and I really have little doubt that this is actually a major issue, because they can see with their population their economic growth...
PAUL Are China and India going to come with us?
SIMON They won't come with us in terms of required reductions this time round, but what they're lo9oking for is some real evidence of action by the rest of the developed world and that really means by America, once that's happened then I think the pressure will come on and you'll get some action, but to date frankly China can say listen come to us when you've done something.
THERESE I thought it was interesting Guyon criticised the Minister I think for he is probably not going to make the nine month election promise to have the Emissions Trading Scheme reviewed. I would say we're far better off taking our time and getting it right, and I think the second issue is, this is a very important policy issue, it's complex, and it is really worth trying to get as broad a consensus in parliament as possible.
PAUL And to get it right of course.
