Scientists talk of “tipping points”, the point at which the environment changes from one stable state to another, often abruptly, causing significant disruption. I believe New Zealand may be on the cusp of a tipping point – not in the state of its environment, but rather in terms of people’s awareness of the gravity of the environmental issues we face.

Despite our much-vaunted (but somewhat tarnished) “clean, green” image, we face some major environmental challenges. Many of our indigenous species of animals and plants remain under serious threat in spite of efforts to control pests and halt the decline of indigenous habitat. Many of our waterways and aquifers are under severe pressure from pollutant-laden discharges and increased extraction for irrigation.

New Zealand’s response to climate change to date has been characterised either by inaction (the “wait and see” approach) or potentially effective measures (such as the emissions trading scheme) considerably weakened by the meddling of subsequent governments.

But in the past few years, chinks of light have been starting to penetrate through the stubborn reluctance of successive governments to risk political power for the sake of the environment. Partly this is generational – the new leadership of both main parties are in their 30s and 40s, representing a generation that is less inclined to see environment as subservient to the economy.

But there has also been a growing public realisation that values that we hold dear, such as the ability to swim at our local swimming spot, or to drink water from the tap without falling ill, are in jeopardy. There is also a growing recognition of the inherent unfairness of ordinary people shouldering the burden of environmental degradation (whether it be the cost of remediation of degraded environments or the reduced ability to enjoy the environment) while others profit from the exploitation of “public goods”, such as fresh water.

Nevertheless, as a recently colonised nation, the pioneering mentality remains strong, where private property rights and personal freedoms predominate over values such as the collective good or social licence. (By way of contrast, in Japan, the subject of much of my previous research, rice farmers were traditionally compelled to co-operate with each other to guarantee an equitable and ongoing share of the limited freshwater resource, so vital to wet-rice agriculture.)

In Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics in New Zealand, I trace the history of environmental politics since the nationwide campaign of 1969 to stop the government from raising the level of one of our most spectacular lakes. Since then, environmental governance has progressed markedly. Whereas 50 years ago, there was no government body dedicated to environmental policy, there are now three agencies with major responsibilities in this area. And there is a body of law relating to environmental decision-making and governance, central to which is the Resource Management Act, hailed internationally as ground-breaking at the time of its enactment. Scientific knowledge, public awareness, and the public’s ability to participate in environmental decision-making have also grown exponentially.

But at the same time, environmental issues have grown significantly more complex – making them vulnerable to obfuscation, as was so patently seen in the government proposal in 2017 to make 90 per cent of rivers and lakes “swimmable” by 2040. Confusion reigned in the wake of the announcement, and it was finally admitted that the threshold against which “swimmability” was being measured had been lowered.

The signs of a growing impetus for meaningful change to address our most pressing environmental issues are tentative, but nevertheless offer hope. Earlier this year, National Party leader Simon Bridges announced that his party would support the Government’s proposal to establish an independent climate commission (albeit with some caveats). If Bridges honours this promise, it will be a rare example of bipartisan support for environmental policy.

The Government has also announced that it intends to introduce tougher regulations on agricultural land use to curb water pollution. This triggered the usual objections that stricter regulation is not required because farmers are doing good things like planting trees along streams, though these were more muted and less emphatic than in the past. And from being an obscure, “greenie issue” a year or two ago, the concern about the proliferation of plastic waste (particularly its effect on our oceans) is becoming mainstream, with the Government’s plan to ban single-use plastic bags greeted with widespread acceptance.

To make inroads into our most pressing environmental challenges, the Government not only needs to capitalise on newly emerged public concern, but also take up the mantle of leadership and not be afraid to lead public opinion through awareness-raising initiatives encouraging us all to take more responsibility for the environmental impacts of our everyday activities and decisions.

My hope is that a future historian will be able to reflect back on this period, and identify it as a watershed era in terms of environmental awareness and action –  a “tipping point” in environmental history, much like the Save Manapouri Campaign was half a century ago.

By Catherine Knight. This article appeared first on Stuff on 18 September 2018.

Dr Catherine Knight is an environmental historian and author of Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics (Canterbury University Press, 2018), New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history (CUP) and Ravaged Beauty: An environmental history of the Manawatu (Dunmore Press). She works as a policy and communications consultant and lives on a farmlet in rural Manawatū.

On 6 February, 2018 average temperatures were released by most of the major providers. Harry Stevens at Axios has made a compelling spinnable globe comparing temperatures before and after 1970. A snapshot of the northern hemisphere:

And the southern hemisphere, particularly striking when you live in New Zealand, which has already seen 1°C of warming since 1910:

Go on, give it a spin!

Robert McLachlan

Until a few year ago it was widely believed that New Zealand would be spared the worst consequences of climate change. Temperature rises more over land than over sea, and the New Zealand climate is dominated by the oceans. Although the weather is changeable and often stormy, the climate is temperate, startlingly so to people used to continents: in Wellington typical maximum temperatures are 20°C in summer and 12°C in winter. In addition, we are not close to the north pole, where rapid changes have led to large regional climate changes in the northern hemisphere. And tropical cyclones are rare.

While all this is true, there are signs that climate change is affecting us.

NIWA’s main long-running temperature record is their ‘seven city’ series. It shows a warming trend of 1.1° since 1909, close to the global average.

January 2018 was the warmest month since reliable records began in 1867 – 3°C above the 1981-2010 average.

A 2001 study in Nature, “Signatures of the Antarctic ozone hole in Southern Hemisphere surface climate change“, found that the ozone hole has led to an increase in a atmospheric pattern called the Southern Annular Mode, with significant changes to the summer climate in New Zealand. For example, the record-breaking summer of 2017-2018 has been linked to the Southern Annular Mode. 

The East Australia Current, an energetic warm current linking the Pacific and Indian oceans that eventually turns east towards New Zealand, has become warmer (2.28°C/century), saltier, and extended southwards by 350km in the past 60 years. These changes have been linked both to ozone depletion, changes in the Southern Annual Mode, and to increasing atmospheric CO2. A study by Ridgeway and Hill concluded that “There is strong consensus in climate model simulations that trends observed over the past 50 years will continue and accelerate over the next 100 years.”

There is some evidence that New Zealand may be beginning to suffer from changes in rainfall patterns, similar to the “weather bombs” that have affected parts of the northern hemisphere in recent years. For example, the central Bay of Plenty experienced a “1 in 100 year” rainfall event in July 2004; “Phenomenal, unprecented high rainfall”, a “1 in 500 year event” in May 2005; and in April 2017, the remnants of Cyclone Debbie led to record flows on the Rangitaiki river, which breached the stopbanks and flooded Edgecumbe. This last event was just a month after widespread extreme rain events affected many parts of the North Island, in a pattern linked to climate change. The rainfall in the Hunua ranges (275mm in 1 day, 454mm in 5 days) affected Auckland’s water supply.

Glaciers

New Zealand is proud of its glaciers. There are more than 3000, although only the Tasman, Fox, and Franz Josef glaciers are well known, the latter two being famous for their combination of low altitude and low latitude, and the drama of a glacier in a rainforest. They also became famous for growing for some decades. A recent study in Nature, “Regional cooling caused recent New Zealand glacier advances in a period of global warming“, examines this in depth. (In 2005, more than half of all known advancing glaciers were in New Zealand!)

Overall, however, New Zealand’s glaciers lost 25% of their volume in the past 20 years. Since 2012, the front face of Franz Josef glacier

has been too dangerous to visit, while east of the main divide, in 1990 Lake Tasman formed at the terminus of the Tasman Glacier and is now 7km long:

Some of the events of the past three years, such as the record loss of snow cover in the Southern Alps

and the Port Hills fires

are likely related to El Nino and the record Tasman sea temperatures of 2016-2017. If so, they may be a harbinger of what we can expect in most years after another decade of global warming.

Robert McLachlan

Robert McLachlan, Massey University and Steve Trewick, Massey University

The recently released 2018 Living Planet report is among the most comprehensive global analyses of biodiversity yet. It is based on published data on 4,000 out of the 70,000 known species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

Rather than listing species that have gone extinct, the report summarises more subtle information about the vulnerability of global biodiversity. The bottom line is that across the globe, the population sizes of the species considered have declined by an average of 60% in 40 years.

New Zealand is a relatively large and geographically isolated archipelago with a biota that includes many species found nowhere else in the world. One might think that it is buffered from some of the effects of biological erosion, especially since people only arrived less than 800 years ago. But as we show, the impact on wildlife has been catastrophic.

Describing biological diversity

The diversity of life may seem incomprehensible. Carolus Linnaeus began his systematic work to describe earth’s biological diversity in the 18th century with about 12,000 plants and animals. Since then, 1.3 million species of multi-cellular creatures have been described, but the size of the remaining taxonomic gap remains unclear.

Recently, sophisticated models estimated the scale of life, suggesting that multi-cellular life ranges between about five million and nine million species. Microbial life might include millions, billions or even trillions of species.

Species do not exist in isolation. They are part of communities of large and microscopic organisms that themselves drive diversification. Charles Darwin observed in his usual understated way:

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

Global decline of wild places

The main threat to biodiversity remains overexploitation of resources, leading to loss of habitat. Human overconsumption can only get worse in coming decades, and this will likely escalate the impact of invasive species, increase the rate of disease transmission, worsen water and air pollution and add to climate change.

This is the Anthropocene, the era of human domination of many global-scale processes. By the early 1990s, just 33 million of the earth’s 130 million square kilometres of ice-free land remained in wilderness. By 2016, it was down to 30 million. Most of this is either desert, taiga or tundra. In other words, humans and their cities, roads and farms occupy 77% of the available land on earth.

By 2050, wild lands are projected to contract to 13 million square kilometres, leaving ever less space for wild animals and plants. In terms of resources consumed, there is huge inequity. Preliminary estimates of the biomass of all life on earth reveal that humans, their pets and their farm animals outweigh wild land mammals by 50 to one. Poultry outweigh all wild birds 2.5 to one.

New Zealand: at the bottom of the cliff

In New Zealand, a lot of attention is paid to iconic, rare species, such as kiwi and kākāpo. However, in 2017, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment reported that the proportion of forest land occupied by birds found only in New Zealand had declined in the North Island from 16% to 5% between 1974 and 2002. In the South Island, it declined from 23% to 16%.

These figures are consistent with other studies on animal populations. For example, kiwi, which currently number 70,000, may have declined by two thirds in 20 years. Thus there is a risk that continued biodiversity decline overall will see more and more species requiring last-ditch efforts to save them, with healthy populations confined to heavily protected and often fenced sanctuaries.

New Zealand is unusual in that introduced, invasive predators are a major threat and are widely seen as the predominant threat to native animals. However, land use change in New Zealand has been rapid, extensive and catastrophic for biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. The New Zealand situation is at best the global story writ small.

As the last substantial land area to be settled by humans, the land experienced an alarming rate of habitat loss. Indeed, deforestation was considered a necessity and the “homestead system” in Auckland saw tenants turned off the land if they failed to clear sufficient native bush.

Native bush in New Zealand has been reduced by about three quarters from its former 82% extent across the landscape. What remains is heavily modified and not representative of former diversity. For example, in the Manawatū-Whanganui region, ancient lowland kahikatea forest has been reduced to less than 5% of its former extent, and between 1996 and 2012, 89,000 hectares of indigenous forest and scrub was converted to exotic forest and exotic pasture. When a habitat is removed, the organisms that live in it go, too.

The way forward

The Living Planet report charts a detailed, aspirational roadmap to reverse the decline in biodiversity. It takes heart from the 2015 Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. It looks ahead to a greatly strengthened Convention on Biological Diversity for 2020.

Unfortunately, biodiversity threats are, if anything, even more pervasive and difficult to address than fossil fuel emissions. In climate change, it is broadly agreed that rising seas, acidifying oceans and destabilised weather patterns are bad. There is no such universal understanding of the importance of biodiversity.

To address this, the report details the importance of biodiversity to human health, food production and economic activity – the “ecosystem services” that nature provides to humans. The intrinsic value of nature to itself is hardly mentioned. This is not a new debate. The 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity is founded on “the intrinsic value of biological diversity”, while the Rio Earth Summit of the same year stated that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.”

The issue should not be confined to ecologists, philosophers, and diplomats. It needs to be addressed or we may find that future generations value nature even less than present ones do. In 2002, Randy Olsen popularised the concept of the shifting baseline, which means that people progressively adjust to a new normal and don’t realise what has been lost:

People go diving today in California kelp beds that are devoid of the large black sea bass, broomtailed groupers and sheephead that used to fill them. And they surface with big smiles on their faces because it is still a visually stunning experience to dive in a kelp bed. But all the veterans can think is, “You should have seen it in the old days”.

Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University and Steve Trewick, Professor of Evolutionary Ecology, Massey University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. First published 4 December 2018.

New Zealand could become the first country in the world to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

Leading up to the 2017 election, the now Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern famously described climate change as “my generation’s nuclear-free moment”. The promised zero carbon bill is now underway, but in an unusual move, many provisions been thrown open to the public in a consultation exercise led by Minister for Climate Change James Shaw.

More than 4,000 submissions have already been made, with a week still to go, and the crunch point is whether or not agriculture should be part of the country’s transition to a low-emission economy.

Zero carbon options

Many of the 16 questions in the consultation document concern the proposed climate change commission and how far its powers should extend. But the most contentious question refers to the definition of what “zero carbon” actually means.

The government has set a net zero carbon target for 2050, but in the consultation it is asking people to pick one of three options:

1. net zero carbon dioxide – reducing net carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2050
2. net zero long-lived gases and stabilised short-lived gases – carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide to net zero by 2050, while stabilising methane
3. net zero emissions – net zero emissions across all greenhouse gases by 2050

The three main gases of concern are carbon dioxide (long-lived, and mostly produced by burning fossil fuels), nitrous oxide (also long-lived, and mostly produced by synthetic fertilisers and animal manures) and methane (short-lived, and mostly produced by burping cows and sheep). New Zealand’s emissions of these gases in 2016 were 34 million tonnes (Mt), 9Mt, and 34Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), respectively.

All three options refer to “net” emissions, which means that emissions can be offset by land use changes, primarily carbon stored in trees. In option 1, only carbon dioxide is offset. In option 2, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are offset and methane is stabilised. In option 3, all greenhouses gases are offset.

Gathering support

Opposition leader Simon Bridges has declared his support for the establishment of a climate change commission. DairyNZ, an industry body, has appointed 15 dairy farmers as “climate change ambassadors” and has been running a nationwide series of workshops on the role of agricultural emissions.

Earlier this month, Ardern and the Farming Leaders Group (representing most large farming bodies) published a joint statement that the farming sector and the government are committed to working together to achieve net zero emissions from agri-food production by 2050. Not long after, the Climate Leaders Coalition, representing 60 large corporations, announced their support for strong action to reduce emissions and for the zero carbon bill.

However, the devil is in the detail. While option 2 involves stabilising methane emissions, for example, it does not specify at what level or how this would be determined. Former Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons has argued that methane emissions need to be cut hard and fast, whereas farming groups would prefer to stabilise emissions at their present levels.

This would be a much less ambitious 2050 target than option 3, potentially leaving the full 34Mt of present methane emissions untouched. Under current international rules, this would amount to an overall reduction in emissions of about 50% on New Zealand’s 1990 levels and would likely be judged insufficient in terms of the Paris climate agreement. This may not be what people thought they were voting for in 2017.

Why we can’t ignore methane

To keep warming below 2℃ above pre-industrial global temperatures, CO₂ emissions will need to fall below zero (that is, into net removals) by the 2050s to 2070s, along with deep reductions of all other greenhouse gases. To stay close to 1.5℃, the more ambitious of the twin Paris goals, CO₂ emissions would need to reach net zero by the 2040s. If net removals cannot be achieved, global CO₂ emissions will need to reach zero sooner.

Therefore, global pressure to reduce agricultural emissions, especially from ruminants, is likely to increase. A recent study found that agriculture is responsible for 26% of human-caused greenhouse emissions, and that meat and dairy provide 18% of calories and 37% of protein, while producing 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gases.

A new report by Massey University’s Ralph Sims for the UN Global Environment Facility concludes that currently, the global food supply system is not sustainable, and that present policies will not cut agricultural emissions sufficiently to limit global warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.

Finding a way forward

Reducing agricultural emissions without reducing stock numbers significantly is difficult. Many options are being explored, from breeding low-emission animals and selecting low-emission feeds to housing animals off-pasture and methane inhibitors and vaccines.

But any of these will face a cost and it is unclear who should pay. Non-agricultural industries, including the fossil fuel sector, are already in New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and would like agriculture to pay for emissions created on the farm. Agricultural industries argue that they should not pay until cost-effective mitigation options are available and their international competitors face a similar cost.

The government has come up with a compromise. Its coalition agreement states that if agriculture were to be included in the ETS, only 5% would enter into the scheme, initially. The amount of money involved here is small – NZ$40 million a year – in an industry with annual export earnings of NZ$20 billion. It would add about 0.17% to the price of whole milk powder and 0.5% to the wholesale price of beef.

However, it would set an important precedent. New Zealand would become the first country in the world to put a price agricultural emissions. Many people hope that the zero carbon bill will represent a turning point. It may even inspire other countries to follow suit.

Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. First published 13 July 2018.

New Zealand has set itself a target of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.

A recent report issued by the New Zealand Productivity Commission has found that this is an achievable goal, even under modest forecasts of technological progress and increases in carbon price. 

Rising emissions

New Zealand already had a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below 1990 levels by 2050. That target had been in place since 2002, but emissions continued to rise through the 2000s.

An emissions trading scheme, which began operating in 2008, failed to stop the increase. A flood of imported cars increased New Zealand’s vehicle fleet and its emissions by 20% in just the past four years. A “wall of timber”, expected after 2020 as existing plantations are harvested, would further greatly increase net emissions under current carbon accounting rules.

Agriculture is responsible for an unusually large proportion — just under 50% — of New Zealand’s emissions. These emissions were rising too, especially long-lived nitrous oxides released by effluent and synthetic fertilisers.

A key part of New Zealand’s plan to meet global obligations had always been international carbon trading. However, in the Ukraine hot air scandal, low-integrity carbon credits were imported at rock-bottom prices. International trading was therefore suspended in 2015.

Aiming for zero

The Paris climate agreement made New Zealand’s “50 by 50” target — which the country wasn’t on track to meet — look distinctly weak. It has now become clear that only zero net emissions can stabilise temperatures, at any level, in the long run.

It was in this context that New Zealand’s previous government asked the Productivity Commission to examine the “opportunities and challenges of a transition to a lower net emissions economy”. A few months into their work, the government changed and the new climate change minister, the Greens’ James Shaw, reinforced the urgency of the inquiry by asking the commission to consider the possibility of a net zero target for 2050.

The resulting 500-page report, now available in draft form, is a huge and comprehensive piece of work. From the very beginning, the commission knew what they were up against, writing that:

…the shift from the old economy to a new, low-emissions, economy will be profound and widespread, transforming land use, the energy system, production methods and technology, regulatory frameworks and institutions, and business and political culture.

The impact of widespread consultation, evidence and research is clear throughout. Although it is only advice, the report is a valuable resource for all future work on emissions reduction. It joins a chorus of similar (but much less detailed) studies issued recently.

Cost of carbon

The report finds that the carbon price required to get to zero net emissions in 2050 is fairly modest. In one model, it rises from its present price of NZ$21/tonne to NZ$55 in 2030 and NZ$157 in 2050 — within the NZ$100-250 range of global estimates consistent with the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2℃. In other words, New Zealand does not have an unusually difficult decarbonisation challenge.

Although the report covers all main aspects of society and economy, there are three big changes that stand out:

• Transport must be electrified rapidly (in some models, nearly all light vehicles entering the fleet must be zero-emission by the early 2030s)
• Huge numbers of trees – up to an extra 2.8 million hectares, tripling the current plantation estate – must be planted to absorb carbon dioxide. These trees have to go somewhere, probably on sheep and beef farms
• A lot of new renewable electricity generation will be needed, nearly doubling the present capacity, which is already 85% renewable.

Emissions trading can work

The meat of the report is the policies and institutions required to support and drive the transition. Key among them is a revised emissions trading scheme. So far the scheme has failed to reduce domestic emissions because the price of carbon was too low. This was driven mainly by low international prices, sector exemptions (including agriculture), and policy uncertainty which left businesses and investors unclear about future rules and prices.

The commission’s key recommended fixes include the adoption of a falling cap on emissions (to drive up prices and guarantee emissions reductions); a rising price cap (to prevent shocks to the economy and political resistance from emitters); and a rising price floor (to provide confidence to investors in low-emission technologies). Indeed, California’s system includes all of these elements and is currently on track to reduce emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Besides the emissions trading scheme, the report argues that every sector needs its own strategy. For example, on transport, it recommends an emissions standard – something most other developed countries except Australia currently have. Without this, New Zealand risks becoming a dumping ground for high-emission vehicles that manufacturers cannot sell elsewhere. They also recommend a “feebate” scheme, in which vehicles entering the fleet either incur a fee (if they have above-average emissions) or receive a rebate.

Risks and opportunities

I see a few key risks. First, trade-exposed industries, such as agriculture and food and metal processing, need to get discounts on carbon prices to remain competitive. A future in which each global industry decarbonises in a coordinated way does not seem likely, but each industry in each country still needs an incentive to clean up. This aspect remains difficult to deal with. For example, the recommendation that agriculture should be fully phased into the ETS is far outside the political mainstream in New Zealand at the moment.

The falling cap on emissions is an absolutely vital component, but it remains a decision that could be subject to lobbying in the aftermath of some domestic or international crisis.

In none of the report’s scenarios do gross emissions fall by more than 43% by 2050. This is certainly achievable, and it is in line with what some countries are doing right now, but it means New Zealand is relying heavily on tree planting to get to net zero. This is not a long-term solution – eventually you run out of space to plant more trees.

In New Zealand, the idea for a Zero Carbon Act originated with a youth group, Generation Zero. Their campaign has led fairly directly to this detailed road map for a zero carbon future. The next step, a public consultation about the Zero Carbon Act itself, kicks off this month.

Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. First published on 4 June 2018.

Robert McLachlan, Massey University

The election of the sixth Labour-led government heralds a new direction for climate change policy in New Zealand.

As part of the new government’s 100-day priority plan, it pledged to set a target of carbon neutrality by 2050 and to establish the mechanisms to phase out fossil fuels. In doing so, New Zealand will join a small group of countries that have established this goal since last year: France, Germany, Sweden (by 2045) and Norway (by 2030).

From commitment to action

The government plans to set up an independent climate commission, likely based on the one established in the UK with nearly unanimous parliamentary support in 2008. UK emissions are down not just to 1990 levels, but to 1900 levels.

The climate commission’s tasks will include providing advice on effective pricing mechanisms for climate pollution, on the transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2035, and on bringing agriculture into the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme.

All parties to the Paris Agreement have already agreed to become carbon-neutral in the second half of this century. The snag is turning that commitment into action.

A story of good intentions

It is now 20 years since New Zealand first signed the Kyoto Protocol – two decades of fine words and twists and turns in policy while emissions continued to rise. Surprisingly, while Australia has followed a twisty path of its own, perhaps with not so many fine words, the effect has been the same: gross greenhouse gas emissions have risen 24% in New Zealand since 1990, compared to a rise of 27% in Australia.

New Zealanders built a lot of gas-fuelled power stations in the 1990s and bought a lot of cars in the 2000s. Astoundingly, we now have more cars per capita than Australia.

The frustrating story is told in the documentary Hot Air. New Zealand spent ten years getting a strategy in place, ending up with an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Another decade of tinkering later, the scheme involves a complex system of discounts, free allocations, exemptions and, crucially, unlimited access to international emissions units.

After 2012, New Zealand companies used this access to buy large numbers of low-integrity units from the Ukraine, enough to officially cover a quarter of all our emissions. The price of carbon, currently NZ$19, adds about 4c per litre to the price of petrol, and about 1c per kilowatt-hour to gas-powered electricity. So far, New Zealand’s ETS – like others worldwide – has not delivered.

New Zealand’s state-owned mining company, Solid Energy, was pushed into some risky deals and ultimately into managed bankruptcy. The remaining assets have been sold to Bathurst Resources. Chief executive Richard Tacon said recently:

… there is no viable alternative to coal. I mean we realise it’s a transition fuel, but there’s a lot of business, dairy … that rely on coal to be a reliable, storable source of energy.

Has even an Australian coal baron ever called coal a “transition fuel”? But then again perhaps Tacon has a point: the dairy company Fonterra burns more than half of all New Zealand’s coal, and the dairy industry as a whole emits 2.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year burning coal to dry milk.

Civil society perseveres

Against this background, climate activists have had a hard row to hoe. Law student Sarah Thomson took the government to court in July 2017 over its inaction on climate change. In a victory for both sides, the judge ruled that the government should have reviewed its 2050 target, but declined to order a judicial review because the government had since changed.

The youth climate group Generation Zero campaigned for a Zero Carbon Act. The former parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Jan Wright, called for a UK-style Climate Change Act. Thirty-nine mayors pressed the government to take stronger action.

Data from a 20-year longitudinal study of social attitudes in New Zealand show increasing agreement with climate change.

A third review of the ETS removed a 50% discount, with further strengthening scheduled. The Environment Ministry was asked to advise specifically on domestic emissions reductions. The Productivity Commission, a government think tank, was asked to report on a low-emission economy.

However, during the election campaign, climate change was not a major issue, and official projections showed a continued rise in emissions. Under current policy settings, net emissions will rise a further 58% by 2030.

Aiming for carbon neutrality

That brings the story to New Zealand First’s decision to choose a Labour-led government, with the Green Party in a confidence and supply arrangement. The Greens now have five ministers, including co-leader James Shaw as minister for climate change. Labour, having first introduced the ETS in 2008, will now amend it to try to make it work.

Already, since the election, Fonterra has announced a commitment to cut processing emissions (mostly due to coal, but also natural gas and transport) by 30% by 2030, matching the national target, and 100% by 2050.

Carbon neutrality calls for, among other things, a complete stop to burning fossil fuels and to buying products that burn them, such as petrol cars. The year 2050 is not that far away.

In truth, by 2050 anything might happen: organic solar cells might become as cheap as newsprint, unleashing economic growth and making “sunlight-to-liquid fuels” economic – or not. Positive carbon feedbacks from the oceans, forests and Arctic methane might overwhelm our mitigation efforts. Climate sensitivity might surprise us on the high or low side.

We can’t say what parts of the natural world will survive climate change and the attempted sustainability transition. But New Zealand is taking a step in the right direction.

Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. It first appeared on 29 November 2017.