Climate Change

Climate change is widely recognised as a serious global problem. As scientific understanding of climate change deepens, the trend is for the expected impacts to be both more serious, and to happen sooner.

The world now recognises the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. As a biologically based economy and trading nation, New Zealand's national interests are threatened by climate change, and it's therefore imperative that we respond.

The Ministry of Economic Development's recently released "Energy Outlook" projects that New Zealand's energy-related greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 30% in the next 25 years if not policy changes are made.

Given the imperative for the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the likelihood that, in future, emissions will carry an economic cost to the country, it is vital that New Zealand alter its growing emissions path.

We have already announced an extensive range of initiatives across many sectors, which have implications for climate change.

These include:

Proposals for a biofuels sales obligation, which would see a proportion of biofuels included in petrol and diesel sales by law.
The launch of the Permanent Forest Sinks Initiative, which creates an incentive for forests to be planted on erosion-prone land.
With Greens' co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, a commitment to increase the uptake of solar water heating in New Zealand homes.
Additional measures to improve the energy efficiency of buildings.
Partnerships with local government, the agricultural sector, insurers and engineers, to find ways to best adapt to the climate change which is unavoidable.

These actions contribute to the fight against climate change but they are also sensible actions that we might do anyway:

Using energy more efficiently means we pay less for electricity, gas and petrol.
Tuning our cars improves our air quality, and our health.
Insulating our homes means they are warmer and we get sick less often.
Planting trees stops erosion, and improves water quality.

We also need to address the overall economic issues like how we bring our productive sectors into a better balance with respect to emissions. We have international obligations arising from the Kyoto Protocol which we need to meet, but we need to ensure we do that in ways which don't unfairly penalise any particular export sector, or our exporters overall.

And in the long term, we need to prepare our economy for a world is going to be in the future. No matter what happens with the Kyoto Protocol, it's a fair bet that the world is moving to a position where there is an international price on carbon, and our economy will need to be in a position to deal with it in a way that is most advantageous to us.

Climate change is an issue that cannot be solved overnight, or with any one policy. It is an intergenerational issue, which we need to address by ensuring that all of our policies that impact on how we live on this planet take climate change impacts into account.

This government is committed to preserving the unique quality of life we enjoy as New Zealanders, and we are confident that New Zealanders will see the sense in that, and rise to the challenge.

David Parker
Minister Responsible for Climate Change Issues
6 October 2006

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