We are being spared any news of Durban climate talks which is a blessing. A repeat of the sickening display we saw at Copenhagen would be too much.
However our very own Tim Groser is leading a sickening display in Durban all by himself.
Tim Groser in Durban
“Having accepted a responsibility target under the Kyoto Protocol CP1 we are on track to meet our commitments and no matter what the outcome here in Durban New Zealand’s mitigation efforts will continue post-2012.”
The only reason we accepted this target is because it was a cheat target. Our net and gross emissions are way up on 1990 and increasing each year, but because we set our target using gross emissions and we meet it with net emissions we are sweet. In other words we report NZ’s emissions status including emissions and forestry removals during the commitment period but we ignore all the forestry removals in 1990 to make it look like we are achieving something even though we are not.
“New Zealand faces a real challenge with half of our emissions coming from agriculture but we have implemented an all sectors and all gases emissions trading system which is a first for a developed country and we are already seeing the benefits of reduced domestic emission levels.”
Bullshit! Groser is effectively lying to the world here. The reduced emission levels he talks about are not real reductions as our emissions continue to track up each year. Our domestic emission levels have not reduced at all they are just lower than what was projected. If there is any industry where you can call increasing emissions reduced emissions it is the global warming industry. An industry with almost no integrity at all. Even these so called reduced emissions have everything to do with bad projections and nothing to do with the ETS as Groser claims. This from the MOE explaining why our emissions are below projected levels.
The largest change was to projected emissions from agriculture. This is because the methodology used to calculate agricultural emissions for the national greenhouse gas inventory has changed. An improved methodology based from the latest science research shows emissions from New Zealand livestock excreta is lower than previously estimated.
It has nothing to do with the ETS as Tim claims. Groser is one of our smarter Ministers and for him to spin this bullshit to the world is disappointing and embarrassing. Our livestock might be producing less effluent but our Government is making up for that by producing more.
“We need to be able to go back to our own people,, whether we live in France or New Zealand, and say we aren’t the only people doing something. You will not carry public opinion if the debate is ‘you are the only idiots doing anything.’”
Is Tim Groser admitting we are the only idiots doing something?
New Zealand is calling for a “Kyoto plus” deal in which the U.S., China, India and other big greenhouse-gas emitters give stronger assurances that they will live up to their voluntary pledges to curb emissions by 2020, Groser, said in an interview in Durban.
Countries that are considering whether to stay in Kyoto need such guarantees to politically justify a decision to remain in the pact, Groser said.
If Tim Groser is saying he is happy for NZ to sign up to a second round Kyoto which will have binding obligations as long as other countries promise to meet voluntary targets then he needs to get a new job. It was a National Government that signed up to Kyoto in the first place, are they going to repeat the folly?
Hard to take Groser seriously here, while what he is saying to please the world is untrue for the reasons I have said I also believe when he talks of wanting another Kyoto he is being disingenuous. This is because NZ has amended the ETS legislation to allow offsetting from 2013, which means when a forest is cut down it can be replanted somewhere else.
The credits earned by offset forest are not valid under Kyoto, the rest of the world do not see these as genuine carbon credits so they can not be used to offset any post Kyoto liability. NZ would not allow offsetting if it believed it was going to have to meet future international liabilities so I think Groser is being dishonest with the people of NZ and the world.
Update just through from Durban
Groser might have just got us in a whole lot of trouble because the latest is that the USA has surprisingly agreed to come into an agreement which is a road map towards binding targets. There is a suggestion that Kyoto might be extended because of this which means NZ is in trouble because we will have to pay. This is because our net emissions have already increased to 1990 gross emission level so from 2013 or 2014 as they continue to track upwards we will be facing a deficit which will be increased when offset foresty plantings start.We will have to start buying international units from other countries.
Tim Groser has said he is happy for NZ to meet binding targets as long as other countries try to meet voluntary targets. These binding targets will cost us money, the voluntary targets will cost other countries nothing. The day $1 is paid offshore to meet our Kyoto liability is the day this Government has gone a step too far in this idiocy. Let it be a day they are never forgiven for.
I suspect the negotiation of a 2015 target is mainly directed to ensuring the 4,700 bureaucrats and 5,100 registered NGO lobbyists at Durban will continue to be employed and jet off to sundry resort destinations for at least 4 more years.
The threat is that the EU might say this is good enough to roll over Kyoto, or part of it. I doubt this would involve any binding second commitment period but it could keep alive CDMs and the like.
I’m encouraged by the emphasis the BASIC countries are putting on the 2013-14 IPCC Report. Do they intend to make any issue of some of the crap science (especially if the world keeps cooling for another 3 years)?
It has suited them to go along with Western paranoia up ’til now, because it’s been all gain for developing countries. But now that further progress is sure to bite BASIC countries, perhaps they’ll start noticing the emperor has no clothes.
You can hear another report from Tim Groser in Durban on National Radio’s Morning Report at http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2504347/questions-over-whether-climate-change-talks-will-be-resolved.asx
He waxes quite eloquent over Austraila now having a carbon scheme (sorry, scam). With them in and now possibly the US, going by the above piece, our trading partners are falling like flies to the bait. National has repeatedly said that they won’t move on livestock emissions until our trdaing partners make a move. Thye will soon have no wriggle room left. I can see the Greens having a fielday when the new parliament first sits, and all the more so when the ETS amending legislation comes up. The government has foolishly painted itself into a corner.
NOTE: The government has never, to my knowledge, made bringing livestock in specifically conditional on our trading partners bringing livstock in to their schemes. By a careful choice of words, many are led to that assumption. But Nick Smith has specifically said to me that no country can afford to leave its major emitter out of its scheme.
With a major COP meeting in Brazil next year, back where it all started with the Rio Earth Summit, I believe the pressure is really going to come to bring an agreement to conclusion. What failed in Copenhagen could well come to pass. Cancun and Durban were merely low key sessions of regrouping and consolidating after the Copenhagen fiasco ready for an all out surprise assault in 2012. There is too big an industry out there to simply let this die.
Firstly when compared to other nations NZ has a low population count. Humans are “carbon emitters” too. Therefore NZ should be able to offset the emissions from our low population base against the emissions of our high farmed animal count.Centuries ago there were more animals roaming the world and less humans. Today that balance is reversed and yet in NZ farmed animals come with a penalty and large populations do not. If “carbon emission” is truly the point here, the density of population in a nation is not only an issue, it is the REAL issue.
Secondly, having established that animals are also emitters, then animals whether farmed or wild should be included. Again NZ has low levels of free roaming animal carbon emitters when compared to other nations. eg, kangaroo numbers are growing in Australia.
The further down this tortuous road we travel, the more complex, bureacratic and ridiculous it will become, and the more the average citizen will just shake their head and learn to live with these carbon emission (un)facts. But then I guess that is probably what the AGW pushers ultimately hope to achieve.
Catherine, The issue here is that “Pasture fed ruminents” (as they are in NZ) are “not” co2 emitters. People must stop pretending that ever growing, ever co2 sequestering pasture does not exist. Pasture does exist and pasture must be included in NZs proposed ETS calculations as there is no justification as to why it shouldn’t be . Once included NZs pasture fed livestock become co2 recyclers not co2 emitters. The current proposal to exclude a farmers pastures from ETS caculations makes our ETS nothing but an outright fraud.