“Why not expand beyond the core agencies?
The government intends to encourage Crown entities, schools, DHBs, etc. to participate in emissions reduction measures, and the Govt3 programme will expand in the future to support those efforts. It is not planned at this stage to make it compulsory for schools or hospitals to become carbon neutral.”

“Health can cut emissions and save big $ by doing energy audits, changing lighting and heating regimes, installing solar hotwater, etc, cause it is hospitals and so on, not just an office block”

My understanding is that the government has made a comittment regarding the Ministry of Health, not the whole health sector. The Ministry of Health is a small component of the whole sector, as it doesn’t include, for instance, hospitals.

Only a small point, but it suggests that the goal is much more feasible than other posters suggest.

On the other matter, Health can cut emissions and save big $ by doing energy audits, changing lighting and heating regimes, installing solar hotwater, etc, cause it is hospitals and so on, not just an office block. We still require Health to pay GST and other taxes, and to tender contracts so contracters can make a profit, so there will always be a money-go-round to some extent. Otehr angle is what is the present and future health cost of run away Cliamte Change - this item says 150,000 people die annually from CC now, how many more in future, and when cliamte and weatehr changes start to affect NZ more. Carbon cost is minor compared to other wastage and money-leaks and profiteering by contractors in the health sector…IMHO

Also one of the ministries that has to be carbon neutral by 2012 is health. The health ministry is much bigger then enviroment, so their carbon bill will be much more then the enviroment ministry. Do you think it’s acceptable that the health ministry will have to spend all this money on carbon credits when our health system is short of cash already? Although it should get better now that David Cunliff is running the show :).

Well no, its a fact. The Govt has set a goal to make the Enviroment Ministry and 5 others carbon neutral by 2012. Of course they have to go to meetings in other countries, maybe Helen Clark should have thought about that before she made a commitment to carbon neutrallity in the public sector.

But now the commitment has been made and it will be a huge political liability if it isnt met (assuming Labour is in office that long). So how are we going to do this now that air travel is factored in? It looks like Hugh Logan better get planting! And it gets better. Another of the public sectors that has to be carbon neutral by 2012 is the Treasury, and apperently 45% of their staff get paid over $100,000 per year. Imagine all those highly paid officals out the back planting trees rather then doing their job!

1. It is relative to other countries who have had human exploitation for a lot longer than our mere 200 odd years of intense environmental transformation; we had a very fertile, rain-fed, resource-rich environment to start with (which we have done our best to wreck as fast as possible); and a low population to land area.
2. But look at the measurements at http://www.yale.edu/epi/2006EPI_AppendixC.pdf
We’re doing really well on some like obvious ones like child mortality, indoor air pollution, drinking water, sanitation, and so on. These swamp the result, so the baddies of overfishing, energy efficiency and agriculture are not obvious.
3. Actually some of these numbers are a bit wierd. Why we register so well on nitrogen loading I don’t know considering our biggest river, the Waikato, is effectively dead from Huntly downstream due to pollution loading. and 95% of lowland rivers are not safe for swimming…
4. Also note that it only counts Co2 emissions, not all GHGs.
So I don’t think 88 is a score to crow about, it is one to think about what makes up the 12% considering we have such a head start on many of the indicators.