New Zealand’s newly launched Climate Party aims to make addressing climate change a much more urgent priority.
It is now very well understood that climate change poses a threat to our whole way of life, and even to our ability to live on this planet. To hold this threat at what might be a manageable level of 2 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, as world leaders have agreed, scientists tell us that global emissions must drop to 40 to 70% below 2010 levels by 2050, and to near zero by 2100.
Despite this, New Zealand’s emissions are still increasing, and are projected to keep doing so until at least 2030.
We need to take urgent and effective action to start reducing our emissions, instead of just sitting on the fence. Doing so will be a win-win way forward because it will also create more jobs, reduce the almost $7 billion a year we spend on importing fossil fuels, and begin to restore New Zealand’s tarnished clean green image.
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Hi
Wish you had a Contacts on your site
I want to say thanks for the black flier received today , it is excellent
I want to know how I can help…I live in Torbay
Cheers
Roy
Embarrassing
You guys are embarrassing. You are willing puppets of Government.
No actual warming for 17 years. Only models that are ALL wrong. Doesn’t that tell you something.
Even if there were warming it would bring more good than bad. Currently unproductive land will become productive. Cold kills far more people than hot weather. More CO2 means more plant food.
And even if you wanted to do something about it, Government and regulation is not the answer. No Government “Green” initiative has ever been successful.
If you were at all serious you would be pushing hard for nuclear power. But you are not.
There’s plenty of warming worldwide (a spike 17 years ago is neither here nor there). Australia just last year had to add three new colour-bars to its heat-maps of the country, which had gone way off the chart. Yes, more CO2 for plants, but experiments show that heat-stressed plants would absorb less, not more, and extremes of weather, heat-waves and extended droughts are likely to kill off large quantities of biomass, releasing even more CO2 into the atmosphere. Last year’s heatwave killed off several mature trees in our native bush block, something I’ve never seen happen before.
Governments are already successfully tackling this. Sweden’s carbon tax has had a substantial impact on emission levels without cutting into economic growth. Germany’s legislation around sourcing sustainable electricity has already vastly reduced their coal-powered production, and they’re on track for 80% renewable power by 2050. Given all our pre-existing hydro power, we should be able to virtually cut coal plants entirely. Other countries are forging ahead with this while we keep investing in yesterday’s technology.
Nuclear power (obvious risks aside) is actually very expensive, slow to get off the ground, and not really suited to NZ. We have massive opportunities easily available for wind, solar and tidal power generation, which would be cheaper, quicker to build and more in line with our 100% pure brand.
European Energy Exchange AG Transparency Platform Data (2013)
You may have heard that Germany has proven that solar and wind are viable sources of energy. In fact, it’s proven that they aren’t.
In a given week in Germany, the world leader in solar and number three in wind, their solar panels and windmills may generate less than 5 percent of needed electricity. Thus, Germany can’t and doesn’t rely on solar and wind. As Germany has paid tens of billions of dollars to subsidize solar panels and windmills, fossil fuel capacity, especially coal, has not been shut down—it has increased.
In the first six months of this year, over 30% of Germany’s electricity came from renewable sources. 17% is from wind and solar. So they’re doing great, and they’re on target for the emissions goals they’ve set themselves.
The fact you allude to is that solar power especially is far from constant: it comes only during the day, and it peaks around the middle of the day, when there’s bright sun at the right angle. Germany doesn’t yet have sufficient storage capacity for all this power, so it can’t store it all up until evening, for instance. Instead, Germany is exporting its surplus to neighbouring countries.
This is actually a good thing. It has long been recognised that renewable sources like solar are often time- and weather-dependent, and that to benefit best from them we need to be sharing power widely. There is a push in Europe at the moment to build a more extensive HVDC (high-voltage DC) super-grid that would allow power to be shared over large geographical areas with minimal attenuation of power. The greater the area you can span, the more everything averages out, so that you don’t have to deal with inconvenient surpluses and shortfalls.
Currently, serious work is being done towards uniting the European UCTE grid with the IPS/UPS grid covering Russia, Mongolia and other eastern countries. This would cover 13 timezones, enabling much greater smoothing of power supply; and the grid could equally be extended into Asia and across the Baring Straight to North America.
Here in NZ we don’t have nearby neighbours we can easily sling a power line to, but we’re actually in a great position regardless, because of how much hydroelectric production we have. Hydro is like a big battery: in periods of surplus, when the sun is shining and solar energy is plentiful, we can just reduce how much water flows through the hydro dams. In periods of shortfall, such as in the evening when everyone is cooking, we simply open the sluices and put more water through. That’s already how our hydro production works; nothing needs to change in that regard.
NZ is thus uncommonly well set for renewable power production. All we need is a few policy changes and we could be underway. For instance, until recently, Meridian Energy was the one power company that would buy privately-produced power at the same price it sold it for. Now it has substantially reduced what it pays.
If legislation were introduced requiring power companies to pay a reasonable price for all power they use, and if they were furthermore required to purchase renewable sources first, in preference to dirty sources, we would see an explosion of private power production just as there has been in Germany. Home-owners could save a huge amount on bills just by installing some PV panels, and instead of needing expensive batteries they could rely on the grid to be their battery. Feed in when the sun shines, feed out when it doesn’t. Very efficient, cheap to install.
We could see substantial gains for individual households, the country, and the climate, without any major spending required of the government.
It’s working for Germany; it would work even better for us.
The only sensible part of your comment is the reference to nuclear power. You really need to do some serious scientific research on climate change (and there is a wealth of information available on line) before writing such nonsense.
Nuclear is not suitable (and not needed) in NZ. Regarding most other countries, renewable power coupled with a HVDC network to even out shortfall and surplus could go a long way towards fulfilling power requirements.
I’m very suspicious of nuclear: if the risks could really be brought down to reasonable levels then reactors would be able to be fully insured against accident, but they are not. Perhaps new types of reactor will solve the inherent risks, but the damage caused at Chernobyl and now Fukushima can barely be quantified in terms of money.
I believe climate change is a more pressing issue than the dangers of widespread radioactive contamination, but I’m reluctant to turn this into a sales-pitch for the nuclear industry when so many other good options are waiting to be explored.
Did you just say more CO2 means more plant food? I that’s beyond wrong it’s just stupid. Stop wasting our time. This party is not for debate, it’s for action.
Hi
I have lived in Christchurch for 15 years on the same property.How come if there is climate warming my grapes ripen every year on the same week.?Just like clockwork.Surely after 14 years I would have noticed something different?
I’ve been farming in south-east Auckland, and I’ve noticed plenty different. Extended droughts and unusually warm seasons, plus sharper cold snaps and extremes of weather.
But perhaps you can count yourself lucky. The one positive prediction by NZ’s leading climate scientist Jim Salinger for our agriculture was that grape-growing would get better in the Christchurch area.
Hi, thanks for flyer and good on you for doing something. I financially (a bit anyway) and politically support the Green party.
Given the Green party already exist whats your rationale for existence in addition?
regards
Chris
Thanks from me too for the black flyer. Happy to help donate towards cost of sending them out.
Tom (Wellington)
Hi there, while it ‘s great that you’re taking on this issue I think you need to provide info how important a vegan diet is for the planet and look at the whole picture rather than just fossil fuel emissions. Anyone who’s wanting to make a difference to climate change and ignores intensive animal agriculture/the dietary component of the masses is hard to take seriously.
Intensive agriculture such as practiced in the USA is highly dependent on oil and on the destruction of rainforests where grain feedstock is grown. NZ agriculture is very different.
Some NZ farming practices are certainly increasing our emissions, particularly in dairy, where animal stocking levels have been increasing over the last few years. Suitable carbon pricing would certainly encourage better farming practices.
But the big picture is squarely dominated by fossil fuels. They’re the real culprit. Reform agriculture and you make some modest gains. Reform fossil fuel use and you fix the problem entirely.
your pamphlet asks for donations towards the cost of the pamphlet. I was thinking of donating, but it’s proving a real uphill struggle to work out how! Email me if you like. Also, a comment on this site would be a good idea.
Also please note: when I was first trying to get to this site, my browser kept telling me not to go there because it wasn’t secure. Perhaps you should look into that.
Also, while we’re talking about the environment: the National Party now wants to ramp up it’s efforts to put through it’s staggeringinly evil proposed amendments to the Resource Management Act. They want to clear tons more native bush, destroying ecosystems and all the native flora and fauna therein, and why? So they can put intensivised dairying on the land instead, the run-off of which will pollute our rivers and lakes even worse than they already are!! Tell everyone about this utterly attrocious bit of policy aimed at a quick, incredibly short-sighted buck (because they only care about money, not the environment.) Oh, and their proposed amendments also weaken democracy by making it harder or impossible for public interest groups like NZ Forest and Bird and the NZ Law Society to make submissions on proposed legislation around environmental issues.
Email/call/write to your local MP, write letters to the editor, tell everyone you know: this evil bit of proposed legislation must be stopped.
Thanks for the great flyer – finally, the start of a party that actually gives climate change the attention it deserves.
Looking forward to hearing more about your progress and giving you what support we can.
I understand your concern with the perceived danger of Global Warming. I have to tell you some truths about what you are being told.
Bear in mind, that to reduce the temperature of the world by limiting or abolishing the production of CO2, is a horrendously expensive task world wide. This attempt, regardless of the climate, can only lead to disastrous rises in the cost of energy which in turn will lead to economic collapse of world economies along with disastrous effects on the world populace. (Yup I majored in economics – class of 1981 – and for me this is easy to see).
You see, our economies are based on fossil energy, Coal, Gas and Oil etc and unless equally or less expensive substitutes are found, without them most of us will starve and/or freeze to death. But perhaps, as you are not doubt postulating on your site, if we avoid ruining the planet, maybe that cost will be worthwhile?
At the very least, trying to cool the planet is a very serious thing to attempt, and I am sure that you would agree that we should not go down this road unless we have absolute proof that humans are warming the planet and that the predictions we are hearing from some sources are scientifically confirmed.
Fortunately there is a scientific method which allows us to decide whether the above is true or not. If you read Karl Popper and if you wish to take it even further, William of Ockham, you can find the basis of the scientific disproof of a hypothesis.
This quick video may help: Richard Feynman on disproving a hypothesis. And Dr Roy Spencer’s Graph showing Models and empirical measurements. (Accompanying commentary can be found on Dr Spencer’s blog archive, June 2013.)
This is a good example of Popper’s disproval of a hypothesis. In this case the models are the hypothesis, (or law as Feynman describes them) and the actual temperature measurements, some of which are satellites, represent the empirical measurements. It is very obvious that the models fall under Feynman’s rejection. There is therefore no scientific evidence that the earth is warming (or cooling), other than what has already been observed throughout history.
Unfortunately, governments like excuses to issue new laws. As most governments nowadays, (including that of New Zealand), are sliding steadily to the left, this gives them an excuse to issue more laws and regulations of the sort which we must obey at the cost of trading a little of our freedom and democracy. We see this happening in our society at this very moment as common law is replaced with regulative legislation in most sectors. Common law traditionally is/was at arms length from governments. Regulations by legislation are not.
So please take the time to study these things. I understand how difficult it is to give up beliefs that you have accumulated, but one must remain logical and scientific in these things. To be otherwise one must be dishonest with one self. Cheers,
Roger
Hi Roger. First off, 95% of expert economists with climate expertise agree that cuts are needed to carbon pollution. Your warnings about economic collapse seem simplistic at best. Renewables are now becoming cheaper even than coal, even despite coal’s depressed value in the current glut of overproduction. No-one can predict how the economy will respond to worldwide technology changes, and the gradual reorganising of transport and production. Who predicted in 1995 how the internet would affect the world economy today? And if there are current foreshadowings of economic collapse, that has little to do with the costs of moving to new energy sources; it’s more to do with decades of neoliberal policies.
We do know, though, that if global warming continues unabated, it will impose severe costs on humans in terms of decreased agricultural yields, human health and decreased worker productivity. There are many estimates for the actual social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, but it may be around NZ$200 per tonne of CO2, or greater. On a cost*risk basis, we should absolutely be reducing our emissions. Let’s say the cost by 2050 of reducing emissions is $21 trillion (as per this article.); let’s say the risk of this being unnecessary is 2% (a generous figure). $21 trillion * 0.02 = $420 billion. On the other side, failing to reduce emissions may cost us $33 trillion by 2050, at a risk of 98%; $33 trillion *0.98 = $32.3 trillion. You’re the economist; you should be able to follow the math. If we look further, to the end of the century perhaps, the cost differential grows drastically: how do you put a price on civilization-as-we-know-it?
Don’t rely on Roy Spencer for accurate information. A quick google search easily finds the explanation of how he’s fudged his data: see here. You need to question what you read. You talk of science; well, a key aspect of science is trying to invalidate one’s own beliefs, and that’s what climate scientists are doing all the time. I, too, look for opposing views, to see if some new denialist claim holds any water at all. If there really were some strong piece of evidence to undermine the scientific consensus, I’d expect every denialist to be trumpeting it as loud as they can. But they all repeat the same shoddy misrepresentations and cherry-pickings. This is now one of the most studied areas of science, with both legitimate scientists and fossil-fuel-funded shills like Spencer putting huge effort into trying to invalidate the models. Yet the evidence supporting these models is vast and extremely strong, and growing by the day; and the evidence against is … not there.
Your hypothesis that governments are eager to issue new laws regulating carbon is frankly absurd. Governments are absolutely terrified of doing this, which is why it’s taking them so bloody long to act. It’s politically hugely difficult, and the main reason politicians are finally starting (just starting) to act is because they know that they can’t feign ignorance any longer.