Essay

Kāpiti Coast District Council response to Government ’50-50’ Consultation. 28-02-2011 Thank you for this opportunity to give feedback on the Government’s proposed 2050 target from greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Kāpiti Coast District Council is responding as it recognises that climate change is a major issue with serious implications for the district. It is identified as such in its Long Term Council Community Plan and we are taking actions both to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and to prepare for a changing climate. The Council welcomes the Government’s commitment to an ‘environmentally effective’ and ‘economically sound’ climate change policy and a long term emissions target that is ‘internationally credible’. Likewise, the Council agrees the goal of avoiding dangerous climate change is an absolute necessity, and commends the Government’s commitment to this goal. The targets for reduction on 1990 levels of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 50% by 2050 (proposed), and 10-20% by 2020 (confirmed), fall far short of what developed countries (Kyoto Protocol Annex-1) need to do. More ambitious targets will be needed to give a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, expressed in the Copenhagen Accord as warming exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. Targets for years vs. emissions profile Focussing on targets for particular years gives an incomplete picture of the real influencer of climate change, which is the total cumulative emission of GHGs and their profile over time. The importance of an early peak in global GHG emissions cannot be overstated, because of this cumulative effect and the fact that some species of emissions, notably CO2, reside in the atmosphere for centuries. The longer the peak in emissions is delayed, the deeper and faster emissions must be cut to reach the ‘safe’levels and the more costly and difficult these abatement actions become. If the peak is delayed too long, avoiding dangerous climate change may become practically impossible to achieve. From an economic perspective, early action is to be favoured as the economic costs of dangerous climate change may be successfully avoided, and the costs of abatement action are minimised. Therefore, a target for 2050 needs to be set within the context of a cumulative emissions budget and a series of interim targets that express a complete profile of the upper limit of emissions for the years between now and 2050, similar to the approach of the UK Government. Such work must include reassessment of the Government’s 2020 emissions reduction target, which has not been included in this consultation. We recommend that the Government adopt this approach and undertake the work to establish a ‘target’ emissions total and pathway without delay. Levels of acceptable risk While the 2 degC warming limit itself is a clear goal, it raises a question regarding the level of risk governments, including the NZ Government, are willing to take. Various emissions profiles give varying levels of likelihood of 2 degC being exceeded and the faster emissions are cut, the less likely it becomes. Therefore the level of risk the Government defines as acceptable directly correlates with the emissions pathway it needs to take. Given the need to avoid dangerous climate change and the 2 degC warming limit are stated in absolute terms, and given that dangerous or runaway climate change would be unacceptable, it would be reasonable to assume the Government wishes to keep the risk as low as possible. In any case, we recommend that the Government make explicit the percentage risk it believes it is acceptable to take that the 2 degC target is exceeded.

An emissions path for Annex-1 countries may be inferred from the adopted and proposed NZ Government targets for 2020 and 2050 allowing the risk associated with such a path to be analysed. Note that this assumes that other Annex-1 countries match our effort and no-more, which is consistent with the principle of each country doing its ‘fair-share’ to mitigate climate change. In a recent paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society1, “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world”, the authors examine different GHG emissions pathways for developed and developing countries and the percentage likelihoods that the 2 degC warming limit is exceeded in each case. One scenario, where developed countries adopt a profile of an emissions cut of 25% on 1990 levels by 2020 and an 82% cut by 2050 (and developing countries increase their emissions by 135% in 2020 but the cut them to 46% by 2050) gives a 48% chance that the 2 degC limit is exceeded. Another scenario called ‘orthodox’ (5% reduction in 2020 and 62% in 2050) - which equates more closely with the NZ Government’s targets - gives a 92% chance that the 2 degC limit is exceeded. It is the Council’s view that adopting targets that represent an emissions pathway with a very high probability of failing to prevent dangerous climate change (if adopted by other developed countries) is not acceptable. As already outlined, delaying serious action is neither ‘economically sound’, nor is it ‘environmentally effective’ as the damage to the natural environment that results from inadequate action is likely to be greater. Finally, given other developed countries such as those in the EU, the US and Japan have adopted higher targets for 2050, the proposed target is not likely to meet the criterion for being ‘internationally credible’, especially to developing nations. We urge the Government to adopt an emissions profile that sees a much greater cut in GHG emissions by 2020 than the present 10-20% target and that the level of ambition for 2050 that is gazetted is at least 80%, not 50%. By setting higher targets, NZ can position itself as a global leader on climate change, shoring up its green reputation and injecting realism into the international policy debate on what qualifies as effective action by developed countries.

1 Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world, Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2011 369, 20-44. Click here for the full article.