The Greens here in Aotearoa have debated the topic and written our population policy. It was no less difficult a debate for us either. To my knowledge, no other political party has the courage to front the issue.

There was a burst of media in February/March, as the Global Population Speak Out encouraged people like the BBC’s John Feeney and others to do just that – speak out.

The question for debate here is whether population growth is a direct driver of climate change. New research just published claims that the link is very weak indeed.

Dr David Satterthwaite, of the London-based policy research centre and think tank the International Institute for Environment and Development, analysed changes in population and in greenhouse gas emissions for all the world’s countries.

He found that between 1980 and 2005: Sub-Saharan Africa had 18.5 percent of the world’s population growth and just 2.4 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; the United States had 3.4 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.6 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; China had 15.3 percent of the world’s population growth and 44.5 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; Population growth rates in China have come down very rapidly – but greenhouse gas emissions have increased very rapidly; Low-income nations had 52.1 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.8 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; High-income nations had 7 percent of the world’s population growth and 29 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; Most of the nations with the highest population growth rates had low growth rates for carbon dioxide emissions while many of the nations with the lowest population growth rates had high growth rates for carbon dioxide emissions.

It makes your brain hurt to read it, but it does make it clear that the link is not as ‘obvious’ as one would assume.

While many of us take it as read that unfettered population growth is bad for the environment and that unfettered consumerism is bad for the environment, it seems that consumerism takes the rap for climate change.

What do you think?

Last Friday, the new edition of Nature contained an article on just that missing link. The carbon-climate ratio, or CCR, has formally entered the climate science lexicon.

The researchers used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to show that there is a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change.(frog’s emphasis)

Until now, it has been difficult to estimate how much climate will warm in response to a given carbon dioxide emissions scenario because of the complex interactions between human emissions, carbon sinks, atmospheric concentrations and temperature change. Professor Matthews and colleagues say that despite these uncertainties, each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs.

Professor Mathews says that the findings mean that we can now say: if you emit that tonne of carbon dioxide, it will lead to 0.0000000000015 degrees of global temperature change. The report concludes that if we want to restrict global warming to no more than two degrees, we must restrict total carbon emissions, from now until forever, to little more than half a trillion tonnes of carbon, or about as much again as we have emitted since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Our findings allow people to make a robust estimate of their contribution to global warming based simply on total carbon dioxide emissions.

To the part time trolls on this blog who always think that what they do makes no difference, I say here is your metric. Here you can calculate what your personal contribution to global warming is. There is no more excuse for free-riding or bludging, which are the favourite policies of those who say New Zealand should do nothing.

This is from the abstract of the June 11 edition of Nature:

The global temperature response to increasing atmospheric CO2 is often quantified by metrics such as equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response. These approaches, however, do not account for carbon cycle feedbacks and therefore do not fully represent the net response of the Earth system to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Climate–carbon modelling experiments have shown that:

1. the warming per unit CO2 emitted does not depend on the background CO2 concentration;
2. the total allowable emissions for climate stabilization do not depend on the timing of those emissions; and
3. the temperature response to a pulse of CO2 is approximately constant on timescales of decades to centuries.

Here we generalize these results and show that the carbon–climate response (CCR), defined as the ratio of temperature change to cumulative carbon emissions, is approximately independent of both the atmospheric CO2 concentration and its rate of change on these timescales. From observational constraints, we estimate CCR to be in the range 1.0–2.1 6C per trillion tonnes of carbon (Tt C) emitted (5th to 95th percentiles), consistent with twenty-first-century CCR values simulated by climate–carbon models.

CCR is also likely to be a useful concept for climate change mitigation and policy; by combining the uncertainties associated with climate sensitivity, carbon sinks and climate–carbon feedbacks into a single quantity, the CCR allows CO2-induced global mean temperature change to be inferred directly from cumulative carbon emissions.

This is very important news with huge implications for policy, both here and abroad. If I find time, I’ll calculate what New Zealand’s contribution is to global warming, based on our greenhouse gas inventory published last month.

The Government has axed two investigations aimed at improving the pay of women as it tries to save money by controlling public sector salaries.

State Services Minister Tony Ryall said the investigations would “generate an additional form of remuneration pressure that is unaffordable in the current economic and fiscal environment”.

It’s the now familiar Nat buzz-line, blaming the economic environment, but I suspect that there may be a more sinister reason at work here. It may be that the Nats simply don’t care about women. The Greens have a well developed policy on women’s affairs and pay equity issues, so I thought that before I started forming the conclusion that the nats simply don’t care, I had better check out what the official National party policy is on Women’s Affairs. What I found was probably the National Party’s most coherent and well articulated policy:

I think a blank white page with a picture of a bloke says all that needs to be said!

I hopped over to the Hand Mirror, expecting that I would get the usual coherent feminist perspective to counter balance my decidedly male perspective, but clearly they have been left almost speechless by this arrogant stupidity. However, Catherine Delahunty found her voice and let rip here.

It is clear that a crusty old boys network is firmly in charge of the Beehive once again. But I have to ask. Can they afford to alienate over half of their potential voters like this? Apparently, they think that kiwi women will forget all about this come 2011.

Also in the policy is an amendment to the Overseas Investment Act that would only allow residents or New Zealand citizens to purchase property here. There is already a tremendous amount of foreign owned property, which would be unaffected at least until it went to market.

Finally, the Greens would amend the baseline year for agricultural emissions in the Emissions Trading Scheme to be 1990, so that sheep and beef farmers get a fair deal. With the current set up, sheep and beef farmers end up paying for some of the dairy industry´s increase in emissions since 1990, when theirs has actually decreased.

Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says: “However our analysis showed us that on the whole National would take New Zealand in the wrong direction, in fact, many policies headed off down a dead end street. This means that we can not form a Government with National, or support them on confidence and supply, although we could work with them in areas where we have common ground.

“Labour also seems to be heading off in the wrong direction in some areas, while in others they are on the right track. Whether we could form a Government with them would depend on reaching a policy agreement that advanced green policies on a number of fronts.

“Depending on the outcome of the election, the Greens would prefer to work with Labour to form a Government, as their policies are more closely aligned with our own. But, no matter who forms the Government we will look for areas of common ground where we can work together.

Full report card on National and Labour here [pdf].

Green Party Fisheries spokesperson Metiria Turei put up an amendment to the Bill to ensure that in the face of stock uncertainty, the TAC should not be increased. If they were, it would breach the precautionary principle and would obviously be unsustainable.

Preventing increases would also incentivise the research to get quantitative estimates so we can be certain the catch is sustainable. We invest less today on stock assessment research than we did 15 years ago. In real terms, it is under half what was spent in the early 1990s.

Unfortunately, most parties in Parliament are quite happy to see our fisheries continue to be exploited, despite their rhetorical commitments to sustainability. The only party to support Metiria’s amendment was the Maori Party, and they deserve credit for that.

Very soon the Minister must set a TAC for bluenose, which has woefully inadequate information on fish stocks. At least he can now set the TAC, but the fact that the law allows him to increase the TAC in this situation is outrageous.
Fortunately, the Fisheries Act is up for a review next year, and the Greens will be in flippers and all. The EU has realised its QMS is flawed is also undertaking a full review at the moment.

Ingredients:

1 Labour policy (ripe)

1 cup of meaningless statistics

1 National Party spokesperson

1 cup of self-righteous bile

standard seasonings

Implements:

A dark, damp closet

1 re-usable RMA reduction casserole dish

Chef de Mission: Crosby-Textor

Take one Labour policy (preferably ripe) and dice into small size chunks. Mix in 1/2 cup of self-righteous bile, 1/2 cup of meaningless statistics and pepper liberally with empty criticisms. (If the Labour policy is especially ripe, use less bile here and save for the spokesperson) Spread evenly in your RMA reduction casserole dish and place in a dark, damp closet for several weeks. Check regularly for leaks.

A couple of days before serving, take the remaining bile, meaningless statistics and the spokesperson and baste gently over a medium heat until boiling, then reduce to a simmer. Season to taste. If no leaks have occurred in your casserole dish, you can glaze the diced labour policy with the simmering bile. Allow to stand briefly and seek sign off from the Chef de Mission, Crosby-Textor. This is a critical period, as pouring the simmering glaze over the ripened policy can often cause fractures which can lead to leaks, particularly when the overheated spokeperson is rapidly exposed to fresh air.

Serve the  spokesperson and the policy at the same time, seasoning liberally.

That’s about it.  Other than the suggestion of switching from methyl bromide to Phosphine, a fumigant that is already under investigation because pests have developed resistance, there isn’t a shred of anything new in this policy that isn’t already Labour’s. As usual, we are none the wiser about what National really plans to do should they occupy the benches after November. Mores the pity.

For a more palatable recipe for sustainable forests, see the Green’s forestry Policy.

At least the Greens made sure that Pike has to pay for its local methane emissions under the ETS from 2010 (the coal is exported so won’t be liable), and got $4m for DoC research into the impacts of climate change on our conservation land.

If the Greens were Government, we would stop permitting new coal mines and allow the existing ones, such as Pike, to run their course. More importantly, we would re-energise DoC from being the Department of Gold Stars and turn it into an agency that can truly protect what little is left of our natural inheritance. Details of what we would do can be found here.

At a time when the Department of Conservation is coping with higher costs, more land to manage and increased pressure from development, they were forced to axe 56 jobs. So the Department of Conservation needs a significant funding boost, and strong Government backing.

The package draws a line in the sand on wetland protection, mining and hydro dams on conservation land, the threat of native forest being cleared for pines.

It reiterates the Green Party’s stance on renewable energy proposals, including wind farms: that they need to be appropriate, and use sites with least footprint.

And not to forget marine conservation: the Greens will deal to the weak laws that allow our marine environment to be over-exploited.

As expected the policy signals the Greens will work to retain the amendments to s 59 of the Crimes Act.  It also has important health provisions (such as free dental care), environmental provisions (such as creating a “mainland island” in or near each of the 5 main centres by 2010 so that urban children can enjoy their natural heritage), investment in education (as a percentage of GDP across all education sectors), the rights of children who are adopted, 13 months paid parental leave and more.

But one of the areas I find most innovative and powerful is the stuff around changes to the benefit system. Sue Bradford is setting a goal by which Government commits to end child poverty in New Zealand by 2014. That will mean things such as:

• Introduce a Consumer Price Index-adjusted Universal Child Benefit. The base rate as of September 2007 would be$16.25 per week for the first child and $11.50 per week for every subsequent child. This non-income tested payment to the primary caregiver would be similar to the Family Benefit that was scrapped in 1991 and can be capitalised towards the child’s first home.
• Remove discriminatory policies to ensure families in and out of work are treated equitably (e.g. the In Work Tax Credit currently discriminates against beneficiaries and those not in the workforce) and incorporate such tax credits into the Universal Child Benefit regime proposed above.
• Support the provision, without the imposition of a work test, of benefits to single parents and partners of beneficiaries whose primary responsibility is caring for dependent children.
• Oppose the introduction of any provision that financially penalises single parents who give birth while in receipt of benefit.
• Repeal section 70A of the Social Security Act, which penalises single parents who refuse, or fail, to identify in law the non-custodial parent of their child or who refuse, or fail, to make a child support formula assessment application. While we believe that that non-custodial parents should be required to take financial responsibility for their children, we believe this would be more effectively achieved through a review of the Child Support Act, together with more effective education of children and young people about the responsibilities of parenting, rather than by financially penalising some of the most vulnerable families in our society.

It will be interesting to see the feedback from the Every Child Counts conference tomorrow.

No, it’s not 2005 again, where National Leader Don Brash has is email archives leaked all across the political spectrum, humiliating him and revealing the not so friendly underbelly of the National Party.

It’s 2008, and this time it’s policy.  It would be far more interesting if the policies being leaked had some substance. It is clear that they have been scrubbed squeaky clean by National’s Australian handlers, Crosby Textor.

Trevor Mallard revealed just now that he is in possession of National’s Research, Science and Technology policy.  Too bad it’s a wet bus ticket. But that hasn’t stopped Mallard from trying to capitalise:

“There is clearly a simmering resentment with John Key who is muzzling the caucus, keeping them out of all decision making and keeping his agenda secret from his own MPs as well as the New Zealand public,” Trevor Mallard said.

The four leaked policies to date come on top of a number of examples of leaking and premature announcements of policy and secret plans which have plagued National since the last election.

Following on from the Hollow Men, there have been leaks and “accidental” disclosures of the party’s plans

* to sell off Kiwibank,
* to impose $50 a week tolls,
* to ditch employer contributions to KiwiSaver, and
* to privatise ACC, not to mention
* the leak of John Key’s suspicious meeting with British Conservative Party   Deputy Chair and wealthy political donor Lord Michael Ashcroft.

While Trevor is keen to put the boot in as hard as possible, I am simply afraid of what such an ill disciplined caucus could mean in government. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

There is either a lot of National MPs or staff with memory problems dining at Copperfields café, or, far more likely, there is deep dissatisfaction with John Key’s leadership which keeps many in the party muzzled and out of the decision making process.

Today’s leak of National’s conservation policy follows the premature disclosure yesterday of the party’s environment policy,” Trevor Mallard said

These come on top of a number of examples of leaking and premature announcements of policy and secret plans which have bedevilled the party since the last election.

Following on from the Hollow Men, there have been leaks and “accidental” disclosures of the plans to sell off Kiwibank, to impose $50 a week tolls, to ditch employer contributions to KiwiSaver, and to privatise ACC, not to mention the leak of John Key’s suspicious meeting with British Conservative Party Deputy Chair and wealthy political donor Lord Michael Ashcroft.

It is clear that John Key is facing a serious challenge to his authority and that his party is in disarray. If you can’t manage the show in opposition, you’re not fit to lead a government,” Trevor Mallard said.

I’m not one to post a great deal of the Labour Party’s press releases, but as I alluded to in my last post and Mallard has said so well, there is clearly a split in the National Party caucus. Mallard is obviously trying to hammer away a that wedge. I’ll stick to commenting on their empty policies. I just have to wait until National’s leaky boat washes up on my shores again…

The leaked draft of National’s Environment Policy, which Mallard is already beating up on, contains all the empty calories of a bottle of Pepsi Max. I guess it just mystifies me how having a policy point in an environment policy that talks about setting noise levels from car exhaust systems can be relevant to our future?

Russel has just hit out, now that the leaky boat that is the National Party caucus has finally washed up on our shores:

The Green Party agrees that New Zealand’s environment is being badly managed by the current Government. The question is: what does National plan to do to manage it better?

As yet, the National Party hasn’t seen fit to share with New Zealand their plans for solving the key issues of climate change, water quality, conservation and protecting our ocean,� Green Party Co-Leader Russel Norman says.

When the Green Party wrote to John Key for detail on what a National Party Emissions Trading Scheme would look like, we got a meaningless response.

The Greens challenge the assumption in National’s principle that ‘economic growth and environmental responsibility can and must go hand in hand’. What matters, is which parts of the economy grow.

How can continued growth in coal exports, dairy intensification, or motorways, for example, be environmentally responsible?

The Green Party are concerned that National’s focus on ‘empowering stakeholders’ is a smokescreen for abdicating responsibility for the environment and conservation.

Perish the thought that such a useless compilation ever becomes the policy of the New Zealand government.

According to the Herald article, National wants to:

* Introduce a forestry offset scheme that is likely to mitigate concerns from forest owners that they cannot change land-use without paying big sums of money.

The very offset scheme that National wants to introduce is already in the legislation, just waiting to be activated should the Kyoto rules change. Duh! Has Nick not read the Bill?

* Put the fishing industry on the same level as other trade-exposed industries, and “grandparent” it for 90 per cent of 2005 emissions.

Read the Bill, Nick. It says that trade exposed industries will be compensated to the extent that they are trade exposed. No one gets 90% free credits automatically just because one of their widgets faces competition. The 90% of 2005 just sets a limit to the total amount that any sector’s pool of credits can reach. Having a fishing sector pool of 50% of 2005 is more than enough to give the trade exposed fishing companies protection from competition, to the extent that they are exposed. Don’t you think Winston would have held out for more if he really believed it was necessary?

* Have a more flexible plan for phasing out the allocation of units in the future, so New Zealand moves in line with its major trading partners.

What a novel idea, adjusting the phasing out of credits in line with our competitors! Again, it’s already in the Bill. Five yearly reviews are forced upon the Minister, who must review and adjust exactly this, among other things. There is also provision for the Minister to call a snap review at any time, in case there is some significant change in our trading situation. We’ve got it covered, Nick.

* Allow small and medium-sized businesses to get involved in the scheme. Lower, or potentially remove, the 50,000 tonne threshold an emitter must meet in order to be eligible.

Duh! There is no such threshold in the legislation, Nick. It was mentioned in the discussion document a year ago, but never made it into the legislation. You cannot remove what’s not there. This level of detail will be sorted out in the allocation plans, which have yet to be developed. Weren’t you there at the Select Committee when this was discussed?

* Write a 50 per cent reduction of 1990 emissions by 2050 into the legislation as an objective.

Now this is a credible request. We asked for the targets to be put into legislation in the same way that they are spelled out in the UK ETS legislation, with the Minister being responsible for delivering. The government obviously was shy about that, and you can bet that a National government would be terrified of making such a commitment. Instead, we compromised and the targets have been formally gazetted. I’d be willing to bet that your caucus wouldn’t even agree to that, Nick.

What we have here is a failure, once again, to differentiate. National has been exposed once again as having no policy whatsoever on the most important issue facing humankind today. Climate Change. That is a sad indictment. The only other alternative is that they have an agenda so secret that they cannot share it. That would be even more tragic, but I don’t give them that much credit. They are far to internally divided and disorganised to have a secret agenda.

It didn’t make front page news because we didn’t make ridiculous promises. Our policy is focused around access, freedom and open government. Free municipally owned wireless networks would be a great start. And Government needs to be more open with its information, both in the information it makes available and the compatibility of its systems. And it needs to prioritise local software development rather than relying on international corporations for managing NZers private information.

Just as important as investment in infrastructure is investing in the education of our children. Giving schools the ability to easily make the transition to free and open source software would be a giant leap forward. Not only giving students greater access to learning opportunities but additionally more access to computers via recycling initiatives like that employed by Warrington School.

How can saving money, recycling hardware (not up to spec for the latest version of windows but that still runs GNU/Linux comfortably) not be a good thing?

Richard Stallman critiques our policy and he made some important suggestions that we will feed into the policy process. For him our policy doesn’t go far enough, but then, thats why we need people like him and groups like the Free Software Foundation, to keep pushing the envelope. BTW, Richard is speaking tonight In Auckland, University of Auckland 1:00 – 4:00pm venue: OGGB4. Go and enjoy and say Hi from me.

With the likely destruction of the Electricity Commission and the gutting of the RMA, anyone will be able to build pretty much anything they want, anywhere, as long as it uses natural gas which we haven’t found yet, but which National will subsidise searching for. Jeanette summed it up as a “drill and hope” policy. I have quoted much of her release in my last post.

This means completely cutting all the Energy Efficiency programmes that the Electricity Commission (EC) manages and pays for, which are targeted at big business. Now, some may say that I am not a fan of big business. However, the assistance they get from the EC is paid for by themselves through a levy. That means businesses, which are inherently inefficient, will not get the help they need to find all the energy efficiency savings that are staring them in the face.

A typical audit for these businesses finds cost-effective savings of nearly 30%. After they capture that, follow up audits usually find a further 20% in cost-effective savings. Why would you kill a money spinning scheme like this, which raises productivity and profits? Just for ideological spite. The result is that we will need more generation to supply all that wasted energy. We will all pay for that and our security of supply will be worse off than now.

Next come the household consumers. The EC makes sure that we have enough generation and enough transmission to keep the economy going without breaking the budget. It was created because the National Party’s so called electricity reforms of the ’90s actually gave generators an incentive to build less and charge more. Thus, our higher prices are, as National claims, in part the result of capacity constraints. However, National’s policies are to blame, not the EC.

The EC was created to fix that problem and it is working. Now National wants to ditch the EC. Without the EC, we would have had blackouts this winter. They are the ones that made sure we had enough generation to cope. And it worked!

Then there is their false promise of a renewable future, all the while making firm financial commitments to a gas-fired future. Very disingenuous.

Oh, well. Same old failed policies of the past. No surprise there. The wolves will be circling around the carcasses after another round of National Party ‘reforms’. Do voters really have such short memories?

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded that supporting a 25% market share of light-duty (cars and SUVs) plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks in 2030 could require either up to 162 new power generation plants (if recharged during the day) or no new power plants at all, if recharged after 10 p.m.

In aggregate, the model predicts an increase in demand, generation, electricity prices, and emissions from the utilities created by the introduction of PHEVs. It also suggests that by 2030 almost all regions (10 out of 13) will need to add capacity to provide for charging PHEVs, mostly in the scenario where PHEVs are charged at 6 kW in the evenings. In all likelihood, to avoid these problems the utilities in the regions would expand their capacity, increase their imports, or establish demand response programs beyond the level that NEMS had calculated, but these factors were not modelled in the scenarios.

Some assessments of the impact of electric vehicles assume owners will charge them only at night, said Stan Hadley of ORNL’s Cooling, Heating and Power Technologies Program.
That assumption doesn’t necessarily take into account human nature. Consumers’ inclination will be to plug in when convenient, rather than when utilities would prefer. Utilities will need to create incentives to encourage people to wait. There are also technologies such as smart chargers that know the price of power, the demands on the system and the time when the car will be needed next to optimize charging for both the owner and the utility that can help too. (Peak Oil News, March 14 2008)

Will New Zealanders be any different than Americans when it comes to plugging in at convenient times? I doubt it. We are going to need some serious demand side incentives to keep people from plugging in at will. Does our government have the courage to dictate to the market or will simple price mechanisms be enough? I don’t have an answer or a strong view either way. I just think that we should be discussing this now rather than waiting for the cars to roll off the ship from Japan.

His statements in support of investigating a capital gains tax as one possible means of managing a runaway housing market, rather than just pushing up interest rates had a familiar ring. He questioned why we should tax hard work so strictly but not tax good luck at all. Hmmm.

His definitive call to switch taxes to pollution and environmental ‘bads’ while relieving the tax burden on good old fashioned hard work also sounded familiar.

His support of a carbon tax in preference to a cap and trade system also rang true, although we are past that debate here in New Zealand now. The business lobby killed the carbon tax in 2005 and now they will just have to live with the more volatile cap and trade option.

His suggestion to dump GDP as a measure of anything of value and replace it with something more relevant to the wellbeing of society would be a welcome change in the Green direction.

Just as Stiglitz was truly waxing Green in his policy announcements, Rod cut him off and stated that we were out of time. A coincidence, I’m sure.

If the former Chief Economist of the World Bank thinks Green economic policies are the way to go, who am I to argue? If only someone from Treasury was listening tonight. I doubt it. They were probably down at the Chicago Club.