Al Gore had this to say about the milestone: “.… every single day we pour an additional 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the sky as if it were an open sewer. As the distinguished climate scientist Jim Hansen has calculated, the accumulated manmade global warming pollution in the atmosphere now traps enough extra heat energy each day to equal the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-scale atomic bombs exploding every single day.”

Inaction is not feasible when you consider how many populations will have to move from their homelands, the devastation that will increasing be wrought by floods and the loss inflicted by more frequent, more intense droughts. Food, water and land are all at risk. It doesn’t get a lot more fundamental than this.

Global awareness is growing. Most countries are attempting to rein in their emissions and head towards more sustainable energy sources.

Meanwhile, downunder, the National Government has taken almost every retrograde step that could be done.

Labour implemented an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) which aimed at slowly including polluting industries so they paid for the damage they did and there would be an incentive to change. Under National the brakes went on. Subsidies to polluters have continued while sectors such as agriculture are still able to operate with no cost for the damage they cause.

Internationally New Zealand has recently become a climate change pariah. From being a ‘global leader’, we are now the country handed Fossil Fuel awards at UN meetings. National has decided New Zealand will take a different, easier, path from other developed countries by not signing up to future binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. New Zealand is the only developed country not to enter a formal pledge to reduce emissions by 2020. And our emissions are going up. New Zealand is not doing its fair share on climate change, it’s freeloading and hoping the rest of the world will do the heavy-lifting.

This laggard attitude actually means we are missing opportunities. Opportunities to take the lead on green tech, and do our ‘fair share’ to protect the vulnerable from climate change, especially in the Pacific.

This black milestone could have a silver lining for a Government willing to face up to the challenges.

Ralf Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has continued the Keeling Curve his father pioneered, monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from Mauna Loa. He says 400 ppm was a done deal but there’s still hope: “What happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy.”

And Al Gore, much maligned yet still committed, says everyone needs to work to stop climate change: “Make no mistake, this crisis will demand no less than our very best. I am optimistic because we have risen to meet the greatest challenges of our past.”

He urges us all to mark this milestone with a commitment to change: “Rededicate yourself to the task of saving our future. Talk to your neighbours, call your legislator, let your voice be heard. We must take immediate action to solve this crisis. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Now.”

The Green Party will continue to pressure the National Government to act on climate change. New Zealanders want to do their fair share. It’s time we started doing it.

The report, which investigates the major climate & weather events of the past year, found 2012 to be the 27^th consecutive year with above average global temperatures.

Global average temperature in 2012 was 0.45⁰C warmer than the 1961-90 long-term average. The years between 2001 and ’12 were among the top 13 warmest on record.

The WMO is aware of the short-term rate of warming, much touted by climate sceptics: “Although the rate of warming varies from year to year due to natural variability caused by El Niño cycle, volcanic eruptions and other phenomena, the sustained warming of the lower atmosphere is a worrisome sign”.

Reflecting the conclusions of the consensus science around the world, the report concludes that the decline of Arctic sea ice in 2012 is a ‘clear and alarming sign of climate change’.  Let’s repeat that – ‘clear and alarming’.

The report highlights the consequences of rising temperatures for the Greenland ice sheet: in July 2012, 97% of the ice-sheet’s surface had melted – the most in the 34-year satellite record.

It notes the slight increase in Antarctic sea-ice, but shows that, along with Greenland, there is a loss in ice-mass overall.

The report addresses the causality issue – the issue of cause v correlation between climate change and extreme weather events: “Natural climate variability has always resulted in such extremes, but the physical characteristics of extreme weather and climate events are being increasingly shaped by climate change”.

Estimates of casualties and loss from 2012 events are:

-          Sandy: some 230 killed, 62 million affected, and US$70 b. damage;

-          Bopha: over 1,000 deaths, 6 m. affected, $49 m. damage;

-          Cold over Europe/Nth Africa: over 650 deaths, $660 m. damage;

-          Floods in Africa: 340 deaths, 3 m. affected, $6 m. damage;

-          Drought in USA: many $b. damage.

WMO Secretary-General, Michel Jarraud, highlights the sense of urgency in helping the most vulnerable countries to cope.

Meanwhile, down-under:

On 18 April, I asked a question of Prime Minister, John Key: “Will he commit his Government to accept citizens of Pacific Island countries displaced by sea-level rise as a result of climate change?”

The answer: “If rising sea levels caused by climate change were to threaten their long-term survival, which, it is important to understand, would likely be some way in the future, it would be my expectation that future New Zealand Governments would look very sympathetically on their position.”

Check the full exchange, here.  Now compare it with a similar question I asked John Key back on 22 July 2009, and his answer – virtually word-for-word the same response.  Four years on.

During those four years, the onset of climate change has become more obvious, more intense and more alarming.  Yet nothing has changed on Planet Key.  Other than the following:

-          The gutting of the Emissions Trading Scheme to render it totally ineffective;

-          The refusal to enter the 2^nd Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-20), and thus any binding reductions for the critical ‘transition decade’;

-          The procrastination in deciding on a formal reductions target for 2020 (the only state still not to have done so).

I spoke along these lines in the Pacific Debate a few hours later.

It is staggeringly difficult to comprehend why this Government is being so truculently dismissive of the increasing global alarm over climate change.  This is not the place to explore the psychological reasons, though I am tempted.

Suffice to say that we in the Green Party are working extremely hard on this issue.

See our plans for a one-day climate change conference, in the NZ Parliament, on Friday, 7 June.

To which you are invited.

It was with the deepest sadness that I was advised about the tragic killing of a Green party activist in Pakistan.

According to news reports from the Global Greens, a member of the Pakistan Green Party, Mr Shahnawaz Pahwer, was killed at Dadu in Pakistan last Sunday.

This followed threats by representatives of the outgoing government.  The regime had been pushing for the local Green candidate, Mr Imtiaz Pahnwer, to withdraw from the forthcoming national elections.

It is important that the Pakistani police and justice system act to find those responsible for Mr Pahwer’s killing and to make certain that the upcoming elections in Pakistan are free from such intimidation.

The Green political movement is a truly global one. In some countries, politicians will face more than just the slings and arrows of their opponents in the debating chamber.

The Green cause will continue to strengthen around the world – of that there is not the slightest doubt.  The reason, apart from the intrinsic worth of the philosophy espoused, is the commitment and courage of the people who live it, breathe it, and, every now and then, die by it.

Historically, Afghanistan has proved to be an easy place to deploy for foreign armies and a difficult one to get out of, so the news that our soldiers are coming back, while expected, is nonetheless a relief.

Of course the operation(s) there have never been without controversy.  I have commented in the past about the questionable legal integrity of aspects of the deployment(s) – self-defence, morphing into counter-terrorism, then peace-building,  thence to counter-insurgency – all requiring intrinsically separate mission objectives yet all effectively lumped together under cover of chapter VII’s ‘threat to the peace’.  And all the while being led by NATO, as aspiring 21^st-century global military hand-maiden, with the UN operationally side-lined and reduced to debating decisions emerging from Brussels.

In fact, New Zealand’s military commitment has not entirely ended.  There will be a residual force of 27 that will include twelve New Zealand Defence Force personnel attached to the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul.  The Green Party considered that this is such a sizable force that the issue of these soldiers remaining should have been debated in Parliament.

New Zealand’s military commitment to Afghanistan has come at great cost.  Tens of millions of dollars have been spent and the greater cost has been in lives with 10 Kiwi soldiers who have died in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a troubled nation and New Zealand needs to move towards offering more civilian aid.  It is good news that we will continue to support aid projects in the form of including agriculture and the establishment of three solar powered generators that will provide power for 2500 users in business, government buildings and residents of Bamiyan.

It is also good to see that those Afghans who have risked their lives to assist our provincial reconstruction team and have been offered refugee status in New Zealand are starting to settle here.  We should be making certain that all those who have assisted the provincial reconstruction team and face reprisals are offered assistance.

There is no debating the fact that extreme weather events have always occurred, and will always occur. Neither is there any debating the fact that extreme weather events are already occurring more frequently, and will occur far more frequently in the future, unless we start to turn the global economic ship around, fast.

As the Commission writes, ‘there is a high risk that extreme weather events like heat-waves, heavy rainfall, bushfires and cyclones will become even more intense in Australia over the coming decades.’ Though Australia and New Zealand differ in climate, there can be no separating of realities with regard to extreme weather.

As a traditionally warmer climate, Australia has already suffered years of prolonged drought. Climate change is causing the high pressure belt that has traditionally run over Australia to move south towards the pole. This means that the Northern part of New Zealand’s North Island is going to become more like Australia’s hot, dry, drought-prone environment. King tides are going to become far more frequent. Even half a metre to a metre of sea-level rise means that a one-in-ten year high-tide could become weekly.

This is sobering stuff. Yet we must remember that if we accept the consensus of scientists (97% globally), that climate change is human-induced, then it must be able to be halted by humans too. The good news is that as a human-induced change, we have the power to be able to halt it, or at least avert the worst of it.

Australia’s Commission calls for ‘strong preventative action now’, and further, that ‘much more substantial action will be required if we are to stabilise the climate by the second half of the century. Globally emissions must be cut rapidly and deeply to nearly zero by 2050, with Australia playing its part.’

Last year Australia recommitted to the world’s only climate treaty that has binding obligations to cut emissions – that is, the 2^nd commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. For its inglorious part, New Zealand has refused to join Kyoto-2, much to the distaste of the international community, and earning us several embarrassing ‘fossil awards’.  We now tie with Canada for the worst climate policy in the world – no easy task.

Yet National Government Ministers still refuse to acknowledge that there is a link between human-induced climate change and the drought that is currently devastating New Zealand.  Bravo! That takes ostrich-like courage and prescience.

It is time for New Zealand to ‘close the gap’ with Australia. It is a waste of time to debate the link between human-induced climate change, and more frequent extreme weather events (as per my take on Newstalk ZB yesterday). As the Australian Climate Commission says, we need to act now to reduce emissions.

All of us, including New Zealand.

Coming on top of the air raid on Syria, Israel have now carried out a sweeping series of raids, resulting in the arrest of around a number of Palestinians including three members of the Parliament.

The arrests are targeting members of Hamas which Israel regards as a terrorist organisation. Despite Israel’s concerns Hamas is widely supported and is the elected government of Gaza. Hamas tends to perceive the IDF in similar fashion.

Arresting politicians is never going to be a way to bring peace and stability to the region.

I intend to raise my concerns about recent Israeli actions with Israel’s ambassador.

Just as I shall raise concerns about military-style action against Israel with the Palestinian representative whom I shall be meeting shortly.

Four criteria are relevant to assessing a country’s performance.

1. How has it done with emissions record from 1990 to 2012?
2. What targets has it announced for 2020 and 2050 and what is their status?
3. How is it approaching the ‘transition period’ (2013-20)?
4. What pathway has it devised to attain the targets?

Let’s measure.

1. 1.     The Record: 1990 – 2012

The year 1990 is the baseline for all countries’ records.  The 1992 Framework Convention required the developed countries (the North) to ‘take the lead’ with ‘immediate action’ in reducing emissions, and aim to return to 1990 levels by 2000.  New Zealand failed to do this.

The Kyoto Protocol (signed ‘97, in force ’05) imposes a legally-binding obligation on 37 countries to reduce their total net emissions (gross emissions + or – net emissions from land use and forestry) by a specified percentage, off their 1990 level, in the 5-year period 2008-12.

New Zealand’s 5-year amount is 309.6 m. tonnes.  Our projected net amount for 2008-12 will be below this limit by some 23 m. tonnes.  But this is because of high forest plantings 10 to 20 to years ago having an effect on carbon absorption during this period, which is at its peak in that five-year period.  Both before 2008 and after 2012 the situation is different.

From 1990 to 2010, NZ’s gross emissions (all gases) grew by 20%, from 60 m.t. to 72 m.t., the 5^th worst Kyoto country with reduction obligations.  Net emissions grew by 59% (from 32 m.t. to 52 m.t.), the very worst performance of all.

Our methane emissions (mainly from agriculture) grew by 4%, 6^th worst.  Our nitrous oxide (mainly agriculture) grew by 26%, 2^nd worst.

Amazingly, our net carbon emissions (including land use and forestry) has deteriorated from being a net absorber of carbon in 1990 (2 m.t.) to a net emitter in 2020 (13 m.t.).

The conclusion is clear from the UN compilation ((FCCC/SBI/2012/31) that New Zealand has perhaps the worst track record of all (developed) Kyoto-obligated countries.

1. 2.     The Targets: 2020 – ‘50

The IPCC in 2007 identified a scenario of 450 ppmv of GHG atmospheric concentration, associated with a 2°C temperature rise (from pre-industrial level), as the limit for avoiding dangerous climate change (the stated objective of the 1992 Framework Convention).  Governments adopted that at its 16^th annual climate change conference at Cancun in 2010.

To stay below the ‘danger threshold’, the IPCC calculated that emission reductions by 2020 (off 1990 levels) by the developed countries would need to be within the range of 25% to 40%, and 80% to 95% by 2050.  That, too, was acknowledged by governments at Cancun.

The EU has pledged 20% unconditional for 2020, and 30% if others front up.  So has Norway and Switzerland.

The UK Parliament has bound itself by statute to 80% cut by 2050, with a consequent 34% by 2020.

New Zealand has unilaterally pledged 15% (range 10-20%) for 2020 and 50% by 2050.

The World Bank has just released a report concluding that, on the basis of such voluntary pledges of this kind, the world is heading for a 4°C temperature rise.  That takes us into a potentially catastrophic zone of climate change – within one generation.

1. 3.     The Transition Period

The good news is that the distinction between North (developed countries) and South (developing countries), laid down in the ’92 Framework Convention, is now being merged into one global community of states, in the negotiations for the 2020 global agreement.

The bad news is that, with respect to the ‘transition period’ (2013-20), the North is now fundamentally split between those favouring the ‘Kyoto route’ and those favouring the ‘Convention route’.  EU, Norway, Switzerland and Australia are opting for the former; New Zealand, along with US, Canada and Japan are opting for the latter.

The difference is that the Kyoto route is a legally-binding multilateral agreement for a 2^nd commitment period.  The Convention route is a potpourri of unilateral, non-binding pledges.  The NZ Minister (Groser) describes it as ‘politically-binding’, claiming there is no discernible difference with Kyoto, and deriding those with an ‘obsession’ with Kyoto.

1. The distinction is qualitative.  Which is why we have treaties.  A legally-binding obligation carries penalties, financial (as in Kyoto’s 1^st commitment period) or otherwise.  A political route does not.  Canada welched on its Kyoto-1 commitment (2008-12) when it became clear it would incur a financial penalty, and withdrew.  Is that the basis on which this NZ Government made the decision?

1. 4.     The Pathway

The EU has led the way with carbon budgets and national allocation plans for its members.  The UK has bound itself by statute to a series of five-yearly carbon budgets (starting with 2008-12; then 2013-17, and so on.

New Zealand has an emaciated emissions trading scheme that is now so weakened that it encourages emissions, with no discernible pathway for arriving at its weak 2020 and 2050 targets.

New Zealand goes to the 18^th UN climate change conference in Doha with perhaps the worst credentials of developed Kyoto states.

Meanwhile the Key Government, with breath-taking timing, has taken two decisions in the run-up to Doha, both resulting, intentionally or otherwise, in seriously weakening New Zealand’s climate change credentials internationally.

Two weeks ago it pushed through its amendment bill, deferring almost every provision that might produce some behavioural change in reducing emissions.  And days later, it rejected a second commitment for legally-binding cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

Increasingly on sensitive policy issues, this Government makes strategically-timed, short and terse announcements, truncates the parliamentary process, and hunkers down to weather the inevitable criticism.

A blithe form of arrogance, characteristic of a government under strain.

Among other negative consequences, the gutted ETS promises to wreak special havoc on the forest sector – check the recent NZ Farmers Weekly.  So I asked the Minister about this in the House.

Mr Groser acknowledged he had not received any formal advice on specific projections for the forestry sector, since it “is impossible to quantify at this moment”.  This is an odd remark for a cabinet minister, since both the ETS advisory panel (2011 report, p. 22) and the Ministry for Environment (annual report 2012, p. 10) have published New Zealand’s projected net emissions curve three to four decades out which necessarily factors in our forestry sink.

So this Government, in the knowledge that net emissions are projected to increase over the next four decades, has further weakened the ETS without calling for an analysis of the net effect on emissions, and particularly on forestry as the chief sink (and temporary ‘saviour’ of New Zealand’s carbon accounting).

A blithe form of arrogance, characteristic of a government under strain.

Is he concerned by reports that foresters are no longer planting trees? The Minister reports, dead-pan, that 3000 hectares were deforested in the past year.  No concern expressed. We do not deal in emotion here.  The bottom has fallen out of the international price, not the ETS, whose ‘structure remains fully in place’.

This is akin to the captain of the Titanic explaining to those around that the reason the ship is sinking is because its hull has fallen away.  Yes, Minister.

Does Mr Groser have any kind of plan on how to get to its own (conditional) target of 15% off our 1990 level?  Plan?  Plan? The plan is to stick with the ETS, which the Government has decided ‘not to accelerate at this point in time’.

Is the Government concerned that New Zealand received two ‘fossil awards’ on Day 1 of the UN conference in Doha?

Hah! “We receive these Fossil awards at every single ministerial conference.  It is about as predictable as the punch-line to a Tui billboard ad.”

A blithe form of arrogance, characteristic of a government under strain

Postscript:  On Monday at the UN conference, Pacific island countries described New Zealand’s decision against a 2^nd Kyoto commitment as one of the obstacles to the conclusion of a global agreement on climate change.  

The last few months of the civil war in Sri Lanka were every bit as bloody and violent as the current one war in Syria.

My former Green Party MP colleague, Keith Locke, organised screenings of a powerful documentary on this conflict late last year.  The Film ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ is a shocking film, made using cell-phone footage to show what it was like for the 300,000 civilians repeatedly bombed and shelled by the Sri Lankan military.

This is not to deny that atrocities were inflicted by both sides to the conflict.

The fact the United Nations was unable to protect civilians everywhere is disturbing.  However it is also disturbing that the international community appears to have taken no action against those that ordered such atrocities, in particular the brutal shelling of Tamil civilians.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights  Navi Pillay said “The way this conflict was conducted, under the guise of fighting terrorism, challenged the very foundations of the rules of war and cost the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.”

It is high time that there was some justice for the civilian victims of those who were in power in Sri Lanka during the time of the conflict.

*Update: Read Ban Ki-moon’s statement on the Petrie Report here.

I attended a Global Greens congress in Senegal earlier this year, where I chatted briefly with Frank Habineza, current leader of the Rwandan Green Party. His deputy leader, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, was found murdered in 2010 in what is purported to be a political assassination, though it remains an unsolved case.

The Green movement is a global one, but what was clear during the congress in Senegal, is that the challenge for the Green movement on the African continent, and Rwanda in particular, is enormous. Not only are they working for global action on big issues like climate change and ecological biodiversity, they are often doing so within very dangerous and fragile political climates (and economies).

Here, I can sit down to dinner with MPs from all sides of the House, including Government MPs, after lambasting them in the House on the ETS, whereas Habineza and the Rwandan Greens had their last Party conference broken up violently by intruders breaking bones with sticks. As Bob writes in his press release, “the journalist who reported on, and indicated that the government was involved in the break-up of that Greens conference was shot, so it’s very tough going.”

The NZ Parliament, I said, was enacting an iniquity.  With a bare majority, it was amending the ETS and guaranteeing dangerous climate change.

I levelled the charge of moral ecocide at two Government leaders – John Key and Tim Groser.  I made it clear, carefully, that this is not a legal crime in New Zealand but rather a political crime of the highest moral order.

The response form National MPs was predictable; in fact after enough time in the House one can write the script.

Dr Nick Smith gave the most earnest and rational response, as usual. Such a charge, from me, could only damage the environmental movement, it being a gross exaggeration to talk of hell on Earth in the next few decades when the global temperature would rise by only 0.3°C.

Maggie Barry offered the insightful contribution that such a charge came from La-la Land.  David Bennett contented himself with the repetitious statement of belief that I had never done a day’s work in my life.

Ecocide, any large-scale destruction of the natural environment, is a legal crime in some 20 countries, not yet in New Zealand or international law.

My contention is that, if our national leaders consciously craft legislation which they know will almost certainly result in increased emissions at a time when the scientific findings portend dangerous climate change, their action meets that definition.

While they may not, as individuals, be legally liable for actions that cause non-specific damage to humanity as a whole and those consequences are not individually-specific, they nonetheless are accountable in political morality.

If Messrs Key and Groser can produce a pathway for New Zealand’s emission reductions that credibly shows how its own national target of 10%-20% off 1990 can be achieved by 2020, I shall respectfully withdraw the charge.  But notwithstanding two specific requests to the Minister in the Committee to produce that, Mr Groser sat slumped next to the chairman, said nothing, chose not to speak at any stage, and left the chamber – the walking personification of democracy in New Zealand…

Dr Smith effectively counter-argued on the basis of the relative merits, rather than the absolute argument. If global temperature rise is ‘only’ 0.3 degrees over a decade or two, the fact remains that the long-term (half-a-century to a century – i.e. some more decades within the lifetime of today’s youth) is on track to 1.0 – 6.0°C.  So if it is a few more decades than the next two, the difference is marginal, not qualitative. So the charge remains.

The Bill went through, 61 to 58 votes.  The weakening of the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme will become law very soon – what Minister Groser lovingly describes as his ‘Rolls Royce’ model.

Meanwhile, here down-under, the bill amending the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme has landed back on the floor of the House, albeit with a dull thud.  The Select Committee, having been given a truncated period to hear submissions in the name of democracy, reported back, by (Government) majority as if the 803 submissions had not been lodged.

So back in the House, the Bill goes into Committee of the Whole in the chamber and it is open for MPs to propose amendments (SOPs) to the Amendment Bill. This is indeed done by two MPs – Labour’s Moana Mackey and Green’s Kennedy Graham.  The Minister, Hon. Tim Groser, sits next to the Chairman.

My Supplementary Order Paper 147 would strengthen the ETS, sending genuine price signals to the national economy:

-       Accept the UN targets for emission reductions for New Zealand (range: 25%-40% off 1990 in 2020 and 80%-90% in 2050), rather the Govt.’s 10-15% and 50% respectively;

-       Introduce five-yearly quantitative budgets from 2016-50 to meet those targets;

-       Introduce measures to strengthen the ETS to achieve those targets and budgets;

-       Establish an independent Climate Change Commission and an Appeals Tribunal for relief.

I speak (here and here) to my SOP.  Labour supports it.  When the vote comes, Minister Groser casts a financial veto on the grounds that it affects fiscal issues, and also was submitted too late.  Accordingly it is not voted on.  This is done through the Chairman.  The Minister speaks not at all.

I submit a second SOP from the floor.  It would change the name of the Amendment Bill to the Climate Change Response (Emissions Encouragement) Amendment Bill.  I explain that this reflects an inescapable logic:

-       The Review Panel’s Report (Figure 2.1, p. 22) shows emissions increasing between 2010 and ’50 on the strength of the ETS as it currently operates.

-       If an Amendment Bill is then introduced that demonstrably weakens its provisions by deferring any increase in the price-cap, continuing free allocations, continuing the one-for-two surrender obligation, refusing to restrict importation of cheap foreign credits, and deferring agriculture indefinitely, then it cannot be otherwise than that emissions will increase.

The Chairman decides not to put this SOP to vote also, on the grounds that it is frivolous.  A Labour MP calls for the Speaker to be called to the House to review the decision.  This is done.  The Speaker confirms the decision.  A vote is not taken.

There are two elements to the argumentation of any legislation passing through the House.  There is the important underlying dimension to the content of the Bill, and there is the tactical dimension on the floor.  Our substantive points are made, despite the tactical setbacks.

But that is transitory.  What, in fact, was the most telling and significant feature of the entire proceeding was the Minister himself.  Slumped further down as time passed, he was called upon on two separate occasions to answer a question.  Which was this:

“The UN indicates that global emissions must reduce from 48 Gt. to 44 Gt. from 2010 to 2020.  Comparable emission reductions for New Zealand are from 51 Mt.(net) to about 40 Mt.  Can the Minister show to the House how he sees New Zealand achieving this, with the amendments to the ETS he is proposing?  What is the critical path he is developing for New Zealand on emission reductions that will achieve these targets – or even his own weaker target of 15% (= 49 Mt.)?

I asked this of Minister Groser twice – once before dinner, once after.  Then the Bill was finally voted on.  Not once did the Minister speak.  Through the entire debate, from 4.00 pm to 8.30 pm, not once did the Minister speak.  When the vote was taken, he slowly arose and left.

What type of character prompts a Minister to show such disrespect to the House?

Is one so Olympian, of such all-encompassing arrogance, that it is too unbecoming to respond to the minions in the NZ House of Representatives, those mere servants of democracy who seek to hold ministerial action to account?

Last week Australian Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, gave a speech about his country’s plans to tackle climate change which throw into sharp relief the National Government’s backward direction.

After years of obstructionist and self-serving action on climate change, Australia has vastly upgraded its act, joining the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 and introducing a carbon tax this year of A$23 per tonne, with a view to transforming that into a nation-wide emission trading scheme in 2015.

By contrast, New Zealand has gone the other way, making ambitious plans and announcements about climate change in the early ‘90s, then steadily backtracking since then, to the point where the Key Government has rendered our ETS completely supine and ineffective – a ‘farce’, to quote the Parliamentary  for the Environment.

The Australian approach demonstrates the economic sense of a carbon tax to begin with. The cost of emissions in Australia stands at NZ$29.  On this side of the Tasman, the cost of carbon stands at around NZ$2.85 for NZUs, and NZ$1.20 for ERUs.  Throw in the farcical one-for-two obligation, and that makes it less than a dollar to emit carbon.

This comes at a time when the latest scientific evidence of polar ice melt makes it clear that dangerous climate change is closer than we thought.

Next week, the Government will push further amendments to the ETS through Parliament, seeking to complete the process of nullifying its effectiveness.  Now is the time for New Zealanders to demand that the Government do its fair share in combatting climate change.

Not leading the world, not even a fast follower – just getting up to speed.

After 20 years since Rio and the Framework Convention, we are approaching the end of the first, and only, five-year commitment period (2008-12) in which New Zealand has a binding obligation to ensure net emissions plus trading of carbon units equates with our 1990 level.

Hanging in the air is the question – what, if anything, is to be the nature of our obligation, and the level of our emissions target, post-Kyoto – that is, from 1 January 2013?  This, of course, is only ten weeks away.  Not too much, it seems, to expect an announcement from the Government about the future.

So, are we going with the EU into a second Kyoto commitment? Or are we going with the Asian-Pacific states, outside of any Kyoto-style commitment – with voluntary pledges?

The Minister was outside New Zealand, so the Associate Minister, Simon Bridges, sought (once again) to advise the House about Government policy on the matter.

While Mr Bridges did not ‘claim to understand the details’, his understanding was that ‘decisions have yet to be made’.

Brilliant.  What (I did not ask) is the point of an associate minister?

What about a target over the imminent ‘transition period’ (2013-20) starting very soon?  “The fact of the matter is – we have not made a decision”.

Is the Minister embarrassed over our comparison with other states?  The European Union has a 20% cut unconditional for 2020; Norway has 30% unconditional, Switzerland has 20% unconditional.  New Zealand has (mid-point) 15% conditional.  Is he embarrassed?

No.  We are providing ‘global leadership’ with some research on agriculture.  ‘Real solutions’.

I seek leave to table the UN document that sets out the voluntary pledges to date by the Kyoto Annex I states.  They show New Zealand languishing near the bottom of the pledge rankings, in poor company with Australia, Canada and the US.

A government member (cabinet minister) objects.  The document cannot thus be tabled, for the information of the House.

What, in God’s name, is the justification for vetoing the tabling of a document that sets out the factual state of each country’s greenhouse gas emission pledge?  Pure information.  What else can it be than willful obstruction of the democratic process?

Why do the Standing Orders of our Parliament allow any member (out of 121) to veto the tabling of a document, without the need for an explanation?  The identity of the MP is not entered, so it is anonymous to the historical record.

Fine to explain why the NZ target is as it is.  Fine to rebut the argumentation of the Green Party for a higher NZ pledge.  But to shamelessly oppose the sharing of factual information?

Is this as low as this Government can get?

A quarter century, actually, since the US Senate and the Brundtland Report put the issue on the international agenda.  We’ve had, since then, Rio and Cairo, Kyoto and Marrakesh, Copenhagen and Cancun and Durban, and Rio again.

But the past week has been especially intensive, and this for two reasons.  The NZ Parliament is conducting hearings on the Government’s bill to amend the ETS, in response to the Advisory Panel’s report of 2011.  And, concurrently and with no strong causal link, the latest scientific findings of climate change are reported in.

So, in the past week, I have asked two questions of the Government on climate change.  Taken together, they traverse the range of the issue – the NZ Government’s domestic instrument for combating climate change, and its appreciation of the global reality out there.

The first questioned the Government on what the Green Party critiques as a weak emissions trading scheme, ‘subsidising polluters’ and incurring considerable net fiscal cost to the taxpayer.  The second queried whether, in drafting the latest amendments to the ETS, the Government had sufficiently taken into account the latest scientific findings.

In short, the Government’s response was as follows:

-          The amendments defer any strengthening of the ETS because we live in fragile economic circumstances and it is ‘not a stellar time’ to increase charges and taxes.  The changes did not amount to ‘subsidies’, and indeed New Zealand was on track to more than meet its five-year Kyoto obligations.

-          The Government had, indeed, adequately accounted for the latest scientific findings, but it has to take into account a whole range of factors such as the global developments and employment levels in New Zealand.

This is as close as it gets to a meaningful exchange in the NZ Parliament on the future of the planet.  I acknowledge that Ministers Groser and Bridges are well-meaning and competent.  I count them as friends.  Tim Groser, in particular, has huge international experience and reputation.

That does not make them necessarily right in what they are doing. It is possible for such people to be egregiously wrong, fatefully, fatally.

Effectively, the ministers are acknowledging that the amendments weaken the ETS in the sense of deferring sectoral obligations, and seek to explain why – protection of jobs, firms and investment at home against risk competitiveness during tough global economic times.

That is circular logic, and it rests on an erroneous premise.   We are entering the Global Ecological Crisis.  An ecological crisis means an economic crisis.  They are one and the same thing.  You do not defer measures to combat an ecological crisis because you are in an economic crisis.  You deal with them as one crisis, and seek to resolve ‘it’ immediately.

The latest scientific findings are alarming.  They possibly portend a new era for humanity – one where dangerous anthropogenic climate change may arrive within half a decade out, not half a century.

-          Arctic ice extent, as measured this month by the US Snow & Ice Data Center, is 49% below the past 30-year average.  Between 2007 and ’11 it has dropped from 4.17 m. sq. km to 3.41 m. sq. km., an 18% drop in four years.  The different trends in Antarctica, where there is some cooling and ice-accretion, is understood by scientists to be consistent with an increase in average global temperature.

-          Russian scientists on the Viktor Buinitsky research vessel have found methane fields in the Laptev Sea of 1 km. in diameter. Methane deposits in the seabed near Spitzbergen are effervescing to the surface.

-          This has been described by Cambridge University scientist, Prof. Wadhams, as ‘terrifying news’. It facilitates the release of potent methane gas from land-based tundra and seabed floor, reducing Earth’s albedo effect, risking a positive feedback loop on temperature increase that can breach unpredictable tipping-points.  While we must await the IPCC’s 5^th assessment report in 2013, the latest specific findings are of far-reaching concern.

I confess I experience my share of surreal moments in the NZ House of Representatives when I ask these questions and receive the answers I do.  It is as if we truly are, my National MP colleagues and I, on different planets.

For I am asking questions, in as measured tones as I can,  of what appears to me to be about the future of the planet and humanity, and they are answering as if (a) it is just another problem and (b) I am something of an irritant.

No-one will be more relieved than I shall, if the science proves to be wrong or excessively ominous.  I shall simply look stupid.  That will be my preference, since my grand-children will have a decent future.

But I do not see how that can be the case.

And through UN resolutions.
Once upon a time, like the past 5,000 years, the safety of the individual was taken to be dependent on a ruler’s benign protection.  Virtually to this day the notion of national security, even in the age of nuclear deterrence, has rested on protection of the individual from a 20-megaton punch by means of the massive apparatus of the state in the form of retaliatory or pre-emptive ICBMs, and ballistic missile shields.  How safe we all felt.

Now, slowly, and with painstaking deliberation, we are starting to civilise ourselves.

We are beginning to realise that human security is less atavistic, more existential.  It has to do with the individual and the children – the survival and dignity of the person – food security, clean water, adequate sanitation, educational opportunity, minimal crime, effective health services.

And, perhaps most startling of all, that the state is there to serve the security of the individual, not the other way around as it has been since The Beginning.

All this is quite revolutionary.  There are revolutionaries, intellectual ones, in and around the United Nations.  Mahbub ul-Huq and Inge Kaul conceived the idea of Human Development Index, back in 1990.  Amartya Sen conceived the idea of human security a decade later. The Millennium Summit launched an Independent Commission in 2000 to develop the idea.  The result was the report ‘Human Security Now’ in 2003.

In its World Summit Outcome Document of 2005, the UN stressed the right of people to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair.  Governments recognised that all individuals are entitled to freedom from fear and from want, and to develop their human potential.  The General Assembly undertook to discuss and define the notion of ‘human security’ (resolution 60/1, para. 143).  Thus a global idea is born.

Five years later in May ‘10, the General Assembly convened a formal debate, taking note of the ‘on-going efforts’ to define the notion of human security.  It asked the Secretary-General to seek the views of member states.

So the UNSG duly did this, submitting his report to the Assembly in April ’12, identifying the ‘core values’ of human security and a ‘common understanding’ of the concept.  First up is climate change.  Next are peace-building, poverty alleviation and health.  The Assembly is invited to endorse the common understanding, the ways the UN can strengthen human security, and for governments to bank-roll its realisation.

On 6^th of this month, the Assembly did just that, in resolution A/66/L.55Rev. 1. And so an idea grows into maturity.  Over a decade after conception.

The same month leading scientists warn of a looming global disaster in the form of final collapse of the Arctic ice cap within four years, with ‘terrible implications’ for potential methane release that could accelerate global warming.

Ideas, human ideas, are conceived too late, born too painfully, struggle to develop too late.

And we race against time.

Twenty years later, Nazarbayev has emerged as a hero of the nuclear disarmament movement.  Less so, alas, in the human rights world.  Leadership is a complex challenge.

In fact, PNND (Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament) has been talking of nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.  Somewhat ironic, so soon after San Suu Kyi received her Prize, two decades after winning the award, but there you go.  Obama got it, perched atop the world’s most lethal nuclear arsenal.

Kazakhstan is perhaps the leading nation of the nuclear disarmament movement.  That is because it actually disarmed.  It dismantled the strategic nuclear weapons on its territory. It then transformed that into a national cause celèbre – for a nuclear-free world.

The comparison between Kazakhstan and New Zealand is instructive.

For 25 years, New Zealand has trumpeted, largely to itself, the purity and significance of its nuclear-free policy. Our twin stance was: no weapons on our territory and no nuclear deterrence in our defence. But after a brief clarion call the policy was suddenly ‘not for export’.  And both National and Labour have voted at the UN pretty much in lockstep with NATO states on relevant resolutions, confident that, so long as attack submarines are not in sight, no-one down here will give a damn.  Now the Key Government is edging towards US strategic policy, on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ handshake over policy.  Truth is, the world pays less attention to New Zealand’s fading nuclear disarmament credentials than it once did.

By contrast, Kazakhstan has turned a nuclear-free policy into an article of faith, and a major export item to boot.  Like New Zealand’s dairy exports, the mission has quasi-religious status.  Others also engaged, once, in nuclear weapon disarmament – Ukraine, Belarus, South Africa.  But none translated it into a post-partum national mission.  For Kazakhstan, it is a marriage of national identity and presidential sanctification.  And so it promotes a vigorous campaign for a nuclear-weapons-free world.

Thus Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, in ‘91.  More recently it moved the UN resolution designating 29 August as International Day against Nuclear Tests. It led the negotiations for a Central Asian NWFZ. It leads in post-nuclear-testing medical research. It is about to sign an agreement with the IAEA for an international fuel bank, to house spent fuel.  And it has just launched Project Atom, a global on-line petition calling for universal ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty.  As a result Kazakhstan, and Nazarbayev, are taken seriously around the world.

All this has climaxed with this week’s international conference: ‘From a Nuclear Test Ban to a Nuclear-Free World’.  About 70 countries attended – an interesting mix of MPs and experts – under the benign gaze of the President.  He handles it with the utmost graciousness.  He appeared especially pleased to be told he had created a turning-point in world history.

High priests, of the human variety, may nonetheless carefully clothe feet of clay. It has been ungraciously muted that Nursultan the younger rode a wave of expediency to such exalted status.  There was huge pressure, carrot and stick, from the US for Kazakhstan to divest.  Oil finance beckoned – enough charity to underwrite a gleaming 21^st-century city called Astana. The silos were still ringed by Soviet/Russian troops.  There was insufficient Kazakh expertise to carry the physical and political responsibilities of the black box with minimal aplomb. Who wanted nuclear weapons on your territory, anyway, attracting the target coordinates from sizeable and robust neighbours? And who would say no to major powers vaunting you as a global force for peace?  Even if you are the largest producer of uranium.  Every silver coin has its other side.

None of this surfaced in the conference, where we adopted a global appeal for nuclear disarmament.  Most took the view – call it the general will – that it is enough to accept national strategic policy for what it is, without relentlessly second-guessing individual motive and leadership calculus.  Nuclear disarmament, it seems, needs all the friends it can get, even at a premium.

Faith, hope and charity. But, in our Faustian nuclear age, the greatest of these is hope.

For 6 years in the ‘90s, we lived in downtown Manhattan, directly across the road from the Twin Towers, our apartment falling within their shadows across Battery Park.  We were there in ’93 when the bomb took out a basement, killed six, and brought the area to a standstill.  When we departed in ’95, we knew it would happen again.  We were living, safe, in the Middle East, when 9/11 happened.

This week, I had occasion to visit Ground Zero, again.  It is on the other side of the planet, in the steppe of Eastern Kazakhstan.  We fly in, by helicopter, from Semey to nowhere.  Except that, for the 1.5 million people exposed to the early Soviet nuclear tests, it was home.   So home is where the heart is.  Erewhon is everywhere.

Home is also where the other vital organs coexist.  In the beginning, the Soviets omitted to advise the citizens of Semipalatinsk of any impending atomic flash that might occur in the sky.  There is grainy 1940s footage of sheep and cattle twisting and running for their lives as the mushroom cloud billows behind them.  The humans are equally innocent – it shows a few villagers milling around as well, bewildered and not comprehending.

I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds – uncontrollable in time and space.

So about 200,000 fellow humans have suffered genetic mutation since.  You do not want to see the photos.  The Kazakhstan Government has set up an institute to help.

We met one man. He is 44 years old. He has no arms.  He is a civil society leader – and an accomplished painter.  He paints with his teeth.

We land at Ground Zero and step out of the ‘copter onto nowhere.  It is flat, with dry scrub, as far as the eye can see.  An ominous concrete bunker peers above ground like the periscope of an attack submarine, except it is maybe 2,000 km. from the sea.  Then the other three come into view.  They ring the site, abandoned and silent, still harbouring menace.

A cold wind whips across the steppe, making the flags that line the carpet walkway crack as you go by.  There is no-one, on the steppe, except for us.  Yet there is the presence, of a thousand souls around, blowing in the wind.

The Director of the Nuclear Sciences Institute wields a pointer at a map, held firm in the steppe wind by two soldiers in sunglasses.  We are standing in the dead zone.  One soldier has a meter, recording the radiation level.  Two cameramen wear masks.

At 300,000 square km., the Dead Zone is larger than New Zealand.  It will be that way for a thousand years to come.

Some dignitaries make speeches. They are from Australia, Thailand, the UK.  The Aussie is Gareth Evans, former foreign minister, whom I know.  Their words are heavy with meaning, even as they blow away, wafting across the steppe.

We walk – there are maybe 100 of us, the living souls – down the carpet and into the yurt.  We are served tea, and food with vodka.  Inside, the yurt is like a palace.  Suddenly there is warmth, and life.

We lift off and speed back, the wind behind us, at treetop height across the tree-less steppe.

I do not think I have been to a more forlorn place.  Yet I had no desire to leave.

Maybe Ground Zero is all of God’s Earth, and it is my fate forever to wander its far-flung corners.  New York, Semipalatinsk, Aotearoa.  In a sense it is, the whole planet is Ground Zero.  We are all in this together – including the cattle and the sheep.

Were it otherwise, it would have given more than two weeks for people to make a submission – the way you’re expected to, with New Zealand draft legislation.

Last week, the Government introduced its Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.  It has major implications for New Zealand.

That happened on Monday evening.  On Tuesday it was tabled, Wednesday was a members’ day, and on Thursday it had its first reading.  That is fast!  In fact, it’s the earliest it could have been debated within the rules of Parliament.

With the Bill scraping through by six votes, the Government is now keeping a lid on dissent by truncating the period in which people can get their submissions ready.

Submissions opened last Friday and will close in two weeks (10 September). The select committee must then finish its consideration and report back by 17 October – an extraordinarily short time-period for a bill of this magnitude.  In short-circuiting the process, the Government knows no shame.

It’s not the first time this has happened.  Just since the last election, it has rammed through welfare ‘reforms’ in the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill, major and complex changes in the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill,  and another bill that needed proper consideration; Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill.

Rather than taking proper care and consideration on bills that are complex and on which views are divided the National Government wants to rush them through to avoid having a proper debate. It’s clear it has no intention of actually listening to views – and heaven forbid – actually making any changes.

The Minister, Tim Groser, defended the short time-period on the grounds that the Government had listened to stakeholders during an extensive pre-drafting period. He knows very well, yet it required me to point it out in the House, speaking to a point of order, that submissions pre-drafting  and submissions in select committee are entirely different functions. And with the former, the Government listens to whom it wants to listen to.  In the committee, anyone can submit.  And that is the point – of course.

The Bill will weaken an already weak ETS to the point of irrelevance – deferring agriculture indefinitely, deferring a rise in the price cap, deferring a one-for-one surrender obligation, making it easier for foresters to switch to dairying, and enabling importers to increasingly use dangerous synthetic gases.

Let’s not let the Government get away with this one. Make a submission, ask to appear before the committee, have your say – it’s your democratic right.

First up on the Order Paper was the Government’s latest foray into climate change legislation – the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading & Other Matters) Amendment Bill.  This is the Government’s (selective) implementation of the Review Panel’s recommendations.

The Government introduced the Bill on Monday evening, and forced the debate at the earliest opportunity allowed – Thursday afternoon – two working days later.  Having got it through first reading, it then requires report-back by the select committee by 17 October, an extraordinarily short time-period for a bill of this magnitude.  In short-circuiting the process, the Government knows no shame. But that is another story.  On to the substance.

The Green Party opposed the Bill.  Our principal argumentation was as follows:

1. The Government is hewing to an outmoded economic philosophy and not having due regard to the global context within which national policy on climate change needs to be formulated.
2. The global carbon budget for a 2°C threshold is some 1,600 billion tonnes of emissions from 1990 to 2100, almost half of which has been emitted already, leaving space for annual emissions henceforth of 9.5 b. tonnes – 20% of current levels.
3. The voluntary pledges for emission reductions will result in a rise in global emissions from 48 billion tonnes today to 50 b. tonnes in 2020, whereas the 2°C limit requires 44 b. tonnes.  Clearly the international community is failing the challenge of averting serious anthropogenic climate change.
4. New Zealand, in response to the UN appeal for 40% cuts (below 1990 levels) in 2020 and 80% in 2050, has pledged 15% (mid-point) and 50%, respectively. Clearly New Zealand is not doing its fair share.
5. The current Bill would weaken an already weak ETS to the point of irrelevance – deferring agriculture indefinitely, deferring a rise in the price cap, deferring a one-for-one surrender obligation, making it easier for foresters to switch to dairying, and enabling importers to increasingly use dangerous synthetic gases.
6. We should consider Sweden and Ireland, which have reduced agricultural emissions by 10% and 7%, while NZ has increased them by 16%.
7. Where National regards its policy as a necessary deferral of a financial burden to selected economic sectors, the Green Party sees it as a societal opportunity to switch to a high tech, low-carbon, green economy.

I was immediately followed by Hon John Banks (ACT) who supported the Bill.  His speech is here. His principal argumentation was as follows:

1. Parliament had never listened to so much claptrap as was contained in my speech since the 20^th century.
2. No Green Party candidate could ever get elected as a constituent MP; and I was challenged to stand in Epsom in 2014 and take my chances there.  Epsom voters will know that Green views are humbug.
3. Parliament had never listed to such a bogeyman tirade as my speech, for which Hon John Banks could be forgiven for wishing to hurl himself out of the window of his 11^th floor office in Bowen House.
4. New Zealand, emitting 0.2% of global emissions, has negligible influence.
5. Most of the climate change debate is humbug.
6. ACT is pleased to amend the Climate Change legislation since the ETS is a monstrosity, and it is important to minimise its worst effects for the business community.
7. The Bill should be retitled the Climate Change (Common Sense) Amendment Bill.

Seven points from each contributor.

There is only one point in Mr Bank’s argumentation that a person might be tempted to agree with.