Conference: The world must address climate change

Minister Responsible for Climate Change Issues David Parker has welcomed the agreement reached at the Climate Change Conference in Montreal.

Mr Parker said the conference showed the debate had shifted from whether climate change is occurring to how the world should deal with it.

“As former United States President Bill Clinton told the conference on Friday ‘There’s no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities’.”

Mr Parker attended the high-level segment of the conference and had more than a dozen bilateral and multilateral meetings with fellow ministers and representatives from non-government organisations.*

All countries, including the United States, have agreed to hold further talks on further steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement comes after weeks of arduous negotiations, culminating in an all night session that finished at 6am. New Zealand negotiators, led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministry for the Environment and MAF, were heavily involved in the talks.

“This agreement shows that every country is facing enormous risks and increasing costs. Canada, the European Union states, Canada, Japan and Scandinavia, as well as New Zealand, are already spending large amounts of money to deal with greenhouse gas emissions under Kyoto,” Mr Parker said.

In addition, states such as California and New Mexico, have hugely expensive emission-lowering projects underway.

“The United States, Japan, China and India are also addressing climate change through the Asia-Pacific Partnership, which is expected to invest in new technology to lower greenhouse gas emissions and the in the increased transfer of cleaner technologies to developing countries,” Mr Parker said.

The International Energy Agency projects that 2,800 new power plants will be needed over the next 30 years, costing US$17 trillion. Many of these will be in developing countries.

Mr Parker said this statistic shows that in addition to cutting emissions in developed countries, developing countries also need technology transferred to them to ensure that these new power plants have low emissions.

Mr Parker said the Montreal agreement, which also includes major developing countries such as China and India, sets the stage for global action to occur.

“This is what New Zealand wanted the conference to achieve. The only way of avoiding the devastating effects of climate change is global cooperation. I believe the outcome reached at Montreal gives us hope.”

* Mr Parker had bilateral meetings with the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Japan, India, Brazil, Greenpeace, Tuvalu and conference president Stephane Dion, of Canada.