Tackling Climate Change
How is NZ reducing its ecological footprint?
Storme Sen
Global warming
You hear about global warming everywhere nowadays; scientists and tree-huggers spout on about it and the millions of mind-boggling statistics to back up their claim at any opportunity. Yet, that phrase is never in the forefront of our minds in our everyday life, not when we take our hour long shower, not when we leave six appliances on at once, not until global warming affects our lives personally do those cold statistics mean a thing.
Since when has the weather gone so insane?
Mudslides, earthquakes and floods are occurring in places where they shouldn’t be at alarming rates; polar bears are actually drowning from lack of icebergs to rest on! Global warming is no longer something we can put off or disown as scare-propaganda. A recent example of out-of-control weather phenomenon are the tornadoes that hit Taranaki. New Zealand shouldn’t have global warming problems; we are renowned for our “clean and green” image, right? Wrong.
If we measure the average emissions produced per capita (individually), New Zealand comes in at a shocking 12th place in the world for the highest carbon producing countries in 2006. As a country that thrives on showcasing its natural resources for the tourism industry and production of biological products for export, New Zealand’s economy is particularly vulnerable to climate change
So what is global warming?
The suns rays have always penetrated our atmosphere, warming the earths surface, enabling life to inhabit our planet, then been reflected back off the earths surface out through our ozone layer. But now, the pollution we emit traps the harmful rays in our atmosphere so that they cannot be reflected back out of our ozone layer, causing global warming. This changes our weather patterns, causes droughts, melts our ice caps, provides warmer temperatures for disease carrying vectors and pests, such as mosquitoes, to breed, and changes the conditions for crops to be grown in, to name a few examples.
We know a lot of these facts and that global warming is a problem of epic proportions, but now the time has come to do something about it. It was not caused by my generation but it is up to us to carry the burden and we can no longer just say our great great grandchildren will have to deal with it. New Zealand has ratified the Kyoto Protocol named after the Japanese city the environmental summit was held in. The Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries to 5% below the level they were in 1990 from the period 2008-2012. New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently 25% higher than they were in 1990 and New Zealand is in danger of not achieving its target.
The Bill
At Youth Parliament 2007 a Legislative Bill was put forward for debate amongst the Youth Parliamentarians. This bill was mainly aimed at reducing household carbon gas emissions and lowering the energy usage of individuals. The bill enables a household to open a voluntary carbon account that will monitor their energy consumption via a Smart card system. There would be a fee to open an account and the amount of energy deemed reasonable for consumption would be individually analyzed in accordance with the needs of each different household. The account would also introduce carbon credits (in the form of tax credits), rewarding a household that makes energy savings of 10% (with $500) and penalizing those that overreach their amount of calculated energy use. In addition, the bill stated that the government will pay up to 50% of the costs of converting to more energy efficient means such as solar power.
This bill was greeted with a plethora of criticism. Youth MP Katherine Steel felt that the bill did not go anywhere near far enough and proclaimed “this bill is proof that the government is f!*king with our futures”. Many Youth MPs pointed out the several flaws in this bill. Namely, if it is voluntary with a sign-up fee no one will do it and making it compulsory is out of the question because it will be “perceived as a state intrusion”. It doesn’t offer enough of an incentive and why would you want to sign up for something that would actually add extra cost should you use too much energy. Additionally there is the cost of performing individual energy usage evaluations, which would be astronomical.
The ironically heated debate over this environmental bill also produced talk about whether New Zealand should revoke its strong Anti-Nuclear policy. Youth MP James Barnett stated that “70% of the world already use nuclear power, I say we follow.” Some Youth MPs thought that this was worth the hypocritical label because nuclear power would more than meet our energy requirements and produces no greenhouse gas emissions, stating that we are “famous for ‘Do as we say and not as we do’ anyway” (for example, it is illegal for us to cut down native trees and yet we import the native trees of other countries).
The more idealistic and positive of the Youth MPs were for the passing of this bill, arguing that while this bill was definitely not perfect, it was still a step in the right direction. Others weren’t so sure it was the government’s job. How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?” asked Youth MP James Walkinshaw. The answer? None, the people need to do it themselves.
Learn More
- Check out Global Issues 24 that asks the important question ‘how big is your ecological footprint?’
- And the Global Bits Issue 10 is full of info surrounding the climate change issue.
- See what businesses are up to in New Zealand….
- Have a look at the New Scientist’s 26 most common climate myths.
Take Action
- See Greenpeace’s list of things that you can do!
- Check out the ‘Wasted’ website to calculate your footprint… and how you can change this.
- The Ministry for the Environment’s site has interesting info on action and strategies the policy level- keep yourself informed!
- Make sure you see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’… this is in the GEC library.
