Climate change targets and policies
Professor Dave Frame writes:
National climate targets could be assessed in a range of ways – there is no single perfect measure. Ultimately, Mother Nature cares about cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide, plus a little bit besides, but exactly what we use at the national level to evaluate relative national efforts is a fairly open question. Two obvious (but not perfect) ways of comparing international climate targets are 1) to compare among countries and 2) to look at what would happen if the whole world adopted the target. On both these measures, New Zealand’s targets are reasonable.
Firstly, our 2030 target – a -30% reduction on 2005 emissions – is similar to, or more stringent than, those of Australia (-26–28%), the United States (-26–28% by 2025), Canada (-30%) and Japan (-25.4%). Our target is roughly halfway between the European Union’s and Japan’s. So we have plenty of company in terms of our target, and these targets are generally at the strong end of the spectrum, as is expected from the world’s richer countries.
Secondly, if the rest of the world matched New Zealand’s climate change commitment out to 2050, then the world would be on course to meet its goal of warming by less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. In AR5, which remains its most recent Assessment Report, the IPCC said that by 2050 global emissions need to be somewhere between -35% and -55% compared with 1990 levels. New Zealand’s 2050 target is -50% compared with 1990, which is clearly within range, and is in fact toward the more stringent end. Our 2030 target is slightly less ambitious but still broadly consistent with the IPCC’s 2°C-compatible emissions range.
So the targets set by the (previous) Government are not letting the side down. They are quite reasonable compared to other countries.
So if the targets are reasonable, why the fuss about “inadequacy”? The answer is that climate activists – such as the cursory but influential Climate Action Tracker website – make these accusations about every developed country, including the EU. The result is a profusion of fairly puritanical assessments that are not useful for real governments. These assessments are a “view from nowhere” in the sense they are made by people who do not have to consider the trade-offs necessary for decarbonisation to take place. They do not need to worry about economic performance, social cohesion and the other things that actually form the main parts of what we expect from governments in liberal democracies.
This is a key point. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is about trade offs. It is not a painless thing to do. It means less income and fewer jobs for some people. It costs real money.
The real issue for New Zealand is not the targets, but achieving the targets. It is not ambition we lack, but action. Current policy will not get us to the targets we have set. This is also the case in other developed countries. The answer is to work on the policy, not to fiddle with the targets. We are like a boxer trying to drop a few kilos before a weigh-in who discovers his weight is increasing. Rational advice would suggest we focus on diet and exercise (policy), not on choosing a still more ambitious weight class (target). We need to eat less and get into the gym, not make new and more demanding promises.
I agree with this. Fiddling with targets is a distraction. You can even legislate targets, but to be blunt without policy to back them up, the targets are nonsense, even if law.
Policy is much harder. That is where trade offs bite. If you tax agricultural emissions you may just damage the export sector, help other countries to export more and end up increasing global emissions. If you ban petrol vehicles, you impose significant extra costs on households buying vehicles.
Labour is going to go on a lot about their targets. But that is really just sending a virtue signal that they care. What really matters is what policy they put in place.