The government published its first Biennial Transparency Report under the Paris Agreement yesterday, and the media has correctly noted that it is missing any plan to actually meet our target. While it hypes domestic emissions reductions so far - which have been good, but will likely get worse thanks to National - there's an 84 million ton gap between our expected emissions and our Paris NDC. The report doesn't say how we're going to fill this, merely noting that the government is "exploring options for international cooperation".
Why so vague? And why haven't these "explorations" (which they've been doing for years) resulted in any agreements? Other countries have been signing them, after all, and while the previous government was rightly picky about whether foreign "credits" were real, I don't expect any such pickiness from National. They'll happily accept cheap fraud, if it means they get to tick the "target achieved" box, and dealing with the consequences will be Somebody Else's Problem.
A possible answer may be buried near the bottom of that RNZ article:
Also in the background, Treasury had advised Ministers Watts and Nicola Willis that if the government made a statement to the effect that it had signed a deal or made a firm commitment to do so, the $3-23 billion estimated cost of purchasing offshore credits between now and 2030 could start appearing as liability on the government's books.So, if they take even baby steps towards meeting our obligations, then that's the "demonstration of intent" to meet the NDC that Treasury has been refusing to recognise, the entire obligation becomes real in accounting terms, and the government gets hit with a $23 billion future liability. Normal people might think that recognising an actual obligation is good, and that including the cost also reifies the cost of inaction and so incentivises fixing it. But all the government sees is "books look bad; bad headline". And so we have a perverse incentive: only by denying the problem and refusing to do anything about it can the illusion of fiscal probity be maintained.
It would be nice to have actual adults running climate policy. But that's not going to happen until we throw out this government and get a new one.
