Turn down the heat

This morning's Sunday Star-Times editorial hits the nail on the head in utterly panning the government's climate change policies:

The government's climate-change policies are a mess. The carbon tax that Labour championed for several years was coherent and sensible. It would have forced the local planet-polluters to pay. It would have rewarded a range of activities that lessened CO2 production. It would have built these incentives into economic activity, which is a necessary step if we are to stop the planet burning. The government promised it was fiscally neutral and not just a revenue-earner. And then, last December, Labour suddenly dropped it. Now the regime lacks coherence and conviction.

And this less than two years out from the start of CP1. But what's really worrying is that whatever policy emerges from the current review process will be so weak as to be effectively no policy at all. This simply isn't good enough for a country which prides itself on being "clean and green" and a "good international citizen".

The editorial goes on to talk about the Turn Down The Heat policy package [PDF] released last week by the Greens. Which is good, because it gives me a chance to talk about it as well. Turn Down The Heat is basically a collection of policies targeting forestry, agriculture, transport, and the energy sector aimed at meeting our CP1 target and setting our emissions on a downward trend by 2012. More generally, it is aimed at kickstarting the economic transformation we need if we are to shift our economy from a high- to a low-carbon emissions model. The key tools for doing this are:

• "Carbon storage payments" for owners of "Kyoto forests", coupled with consequent liabilities for their deforestation which can be avoided by replanting elsewhere. It's not carbon credit devolution, but it is something, and it should significantly help encourage the planting of the sinks we need. For non-Kyoto forests (those planted before 1990) they propose maintaining the 10% deforestation cap and penalising forest owners for net deforestation in excess of 10% if it is breached (meaning that only those who deforest will pay). The Kyoto Forestry Association seems to like the idea, which is a good sign.
• Capping ruminant numbers and requiring offsets and resource consents for any increase (the latter is really beginning to be required in some areas to preserve water quality anyway). Farmers could trade spare capacity, so what they're really proposing is a "cap and trade" mechanism for (a proxy for) ruminant methane. This is good policy, implementing the polluter pays principle in a flexible way, but I really can't see it being implemented. Our economy rests on cheap farm exports, and therefore on farmers externalising their environmental costs onto the rest of us - and farmers are quite willing to flex their political muscle to keep getting that free ride and what is in effect an enormous environmental subsidy.
• Increasing research into reducing ruminant methane and nitrous oxide from fertiliser and animal waste. This is frankly a no-brainer, and I'm surprised the government hasn't done it already.
• Fuel efficiency labelling, fuel economy standards, and a "feebate" system for vehicle registrations to push the market towards more fuel efficient vehicles. Again, this is a no-brainer, with significant co-benefits for the balance-of-payments deficit as well as the environment.
• Pushing public transport. This is a common Green solution, but it could make a big difference to Auckland traffic as well as to CO₂ emissions. Currently there's a vicious circle in this area - people don't use public transport because its crap, and local government doesn't support it because people don't use it. This needs to be changed, at least in our largest cities.
• Require 5% biofuels by 2010, and 10% by 2015. This again is a no-brainer; they're already cheaper than fossil fuels, but the investment isn't happening because there's no certainty. Creating a market solves that problem, and setting long-term targets allows the transport capital and infrastructure (cars and petrol stations) to be slowly upgraded to cope.
• Requiring offsets to domestic air travel. According to the EBEX21 calculator, this would add about $2.50 to the price of an Auckland-Wellington air ticket, with pretty much no equity concerns.
• Pass the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill to provide some controls in the absence of an economic instrument.
• Impose a "cap and trade" regime on existing fossil-fuel power plants, meaning that new stations could only be built by taking older, less efficient ones out of service (or presumably, purchasing offsets elsewhere).
• Setting a long-term target for a move to a fully renewable electricity system. I think this is technically impossible - we will still need at least some fossil fuel generation for dry-year security - but we can certainly move to a far more renewable system than we have at present. The long timeline will allow the change to be made through the normal upgrade and replacement process, and hence at least cost.

This is a good, credible, coherent package, which targets emissions all across the economy, and I'd very much like to see it (or as much of it as possible) adopted. The question is whether the government will come to the party, or whether they'll continue to back away from doing anything effective to meet our Kyoto obligations.