Can’t see the ’hood for the trees
THE windblasted cliffs of Baring Head overlooking the oftenraging Cook Strait seem an appropriate place from which to take a leap into mulling over New Zealand’s week in climatechange news.
This wildly beautiful, and godforsaken headland has a special place in our climate history. It was here, in December 1972, that DSIR scientist Dave Lowe made the first measurements of carbondioxide concentrations in air whistling northwards uninterrupted from the Antarctic.
That first calibrated figure of 323 parts per million was already 1ppm higher than estimates made at Mākara, west of Wellington city, a year earlier.
The rise in carbon dioxide CO2 has continued inexorably since those first warnings were sounded by Dr Lowe once the trend became clear. This week, Niwa, which now runs the Baring Head cleanair monitoring site, reported that last year there was an annual average of 416ppm of atmospheric CO2, a rise from an average 414ppm in 2022.
The first carbon dioxide readings were taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 1958. At that time, the concentration was 313ppm.
Against that backdrop, the Climate Change Commission released a review this week critiquing how well New Zealand is doing as it moves towards its climateresponse targets. Needless to say, the report card has a ‘‘could do better’’ air about it. The commission points out the obvious, that the government needs to do far more to reduce greenhousegas emissions so the country can meet its binding targets, which have been agreed to by both the National and Labour parties.
The objective is by 2050 to have cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero and to lower methane emissions by between 24% and 47%. During the first budget period, from 2022 until next year, incremental decreases may be insufficient and jeopardise our ability to meet that goal. Agriculture and transport are highlighted as sectors which could cause us to blow that budget, with the current uncertainty over progress due to insufficient and outofdate data on deforestation.
The commission, quite rightly, said this illustrated why New Zealand would be wise not to rely on forestry to capture carbon dioxide, and cut its emissions, rather than take overt actions at source to lower them.
We agree. Some sizeable chunks of good farmland in the South and elsewhere seem to be being sacrificed for pine trees as a short to mediumterm plan when the soil would be better used for agriculture.
The belief we can deal largely with our emissions by just planting more trees across the landscape is a rather lazy and unimaginative one. It goes beyond just forestry plantings in New Zealand, with companies growing forests overseas to offset their ongoing emissions here.
At the same time as the commission issued its report, Air New Zealand was regrettably, but realistically, walking backwards on its earlier commitments to a sciencebased carbon target of a 28.9% reduction from 2019 levels by 2030. It had also planned to have 10% of its fuels from sustainable sources by then.
The airline was quick to point out it remains committed to a netzero carbon emissions goal by 2050, but said the earlier deadline had becoming increasingly impossible to meet due to factors beyond its control, such as global supplychain issues with new aircraft and alternative fuels. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the move is that, as an aviation leader in New Zealand and by far the most dominant airline, the ability of the entire sector, including airports, to meet their own emissions targets will be affected by this.
Amidst the gloomy news, we need to remember that New Zealand is ahead of the curve when it comes to the improvements of many other countries, thanks to having almost 90% renewable electricity.
Making meaningful progress with emissions is an incredibly difficult balancing act, with our limited resources and a shrinking economy.
Unfortunately, our efforts to reduce emissions are just a tiny proportion of those needed around the world.
While we have a presidential candidate in the United States like Donald Trump, whose approach to climate change can be summed up in the phrase ‘‘drill, baby, drill’’, there is still a vast amount of work to be done.