Smith Under Pressure On Greenhouse Gas Emissions Target
July 15th, 2009
• 40% by 2020 campaign has legs.
• Target impossible, says Smith.
• Farm lobby out of step.
Public meetings in urban centres will have left Environment Minister Nick Smith under no illusion that there is a well-organised lobby for the Greenpeace/Oxfam- sponsored greenhouse gas emissions target of a 40% cut from 1990 emissions levels by 2020. In heavily attended public consultation meetings in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch last week, Smith fronted lively crowds packed with supporters of the 40% by 2020 campaign.
This week’s meetings in provincial centres will be an interesting gauge of the public mood closer to the agricultural heartland. The consultations precede a government decision on a 2020 target which is required before talks in Bonn next month, ahead of this December’s post-Kyoto Protocol negotiations in Copenhagen. While Smith got brownie points for fronting up, he _had a hard sell when it came to arguing 40% by 2020 – a cut of more than 60% from 2009 emission levels – is unrealistic because of its impact on the wider economy.
Smith says of the 40% by 2020 target – “that’s Tiwi Point aluminium smelter gone, NZ Steel gone, and no emissions from the transport sector. I challenge those who take the that point of view, are they willing to be upfront with NZers?” The meetings are also exposing the gulf between supporters of a tough target and the farming lobby, parts of which believe agriculture should be permanently exempted from the Emissions Trading Scheme. Federated Farmers’ president Don Nicolson has summed up his organisation’s “bottom line”, saying primary food production “sustains life” and should therefore have “no role in any ETS. Period. This does not mean a free ride for agriculture. Farmers will pay through fuel, electricity, building materials, fertiliser and the many other farm inputs we consume. What we are seeking is an end to the biological calculation nonsense.”
Smith and Prime Minister John Key don’t sympathise with this view, but nor is it likely they will be willing to push harder than the current timetable, which at best sees agriculture entering the ETS in 2013, with full costs of emissions not borne until 2030. The recent Infometrics-NZIER review of the ETS suggested the difficulty of measuring GHG emissions from agriculture justified leaving it out of the scheme altogether while better measurement methods were established. However, pressure is building against the assumption agriculture cannot enter the ETS any time soon, with the Sustainability Council and Sustainable Energy Forum both arguing large reductions in GHG emissions are already available to the farming sector – at a profit – through the use of nitrification inhibitors and other new technologies.
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