Lowering the bar: a history of climate change targets in New Zealand

I've been reading Alexander Gillespie's Burning Issues: the Failure of the New Zealand Response to Climatic Change over the last few days. While it's a bit dated (1997), it does provide useful background information on the history of New Zealand climate change policy. One particularly interesting thing that emerged is our history of setting targets. For example:

• In 1990, the Labour government under Geoffrey Palmer set an interim objective of a 20% reduction in CO₂ by 2005, and a 60% reduction by 2020. Methane was to be reduced by 15% by 2020.
• During the 1990 election campaign, National adopted Labour's target, and toughed it to a 20% reduction by 2000.
• In 1994, with the release of Climate Change: the New Zealand Response [PDF] (our first communication under the UNFCCC), National endorsed this target, and expected to meet it. The preferred means was a massive planting program of 100,000 Hectares of forests per year until 2005, coupled with energy efficiency programmes.
• In 1996, the Working Group on Carbon Dioxide reported that our ambitious targets were unlikely to be met.
• In 1997, we signed the Kyoto Protocol, committing us to reduce total greenhouse gas output to 1990 levels on average over the period 2008 - 2012.
• In 2002, the Labour government adopted the goal of "[making] significant greenhouse gas reductions on business-as-usual and [being] set towards a permanent downward path for total gross emissions by 2012.”
• According to the recent Review of New Zealand’s Climate Change Policies, even this modest goal seems unlikely to be met and should be revised.

There's a common feature linking this repeated lowering of the bar, and that is the failure to back goals with concrete action. For example, the 1992 Carbon Dioxide Action Plan suggested reducing emissions through a combination of "least regret" policies, including taking greater account of CO₂ emissions in transport policy, tightening building standards, and planting forests on the East Coast. Very little (if any) of this was done. National's 1995 plan to soak up our emissions with massive forest plantings simply wasn't implemented - National left it to the market, which at the time was projected to reduce plantings (then-Environment Minister Simon Upton even went so far as to say at a climate change conference that government interference in the market to reduce emissions should be guarded against). And Labour both delayed implementation of their carbon reduction policies until it was far too late in the piece - and then systematically backed away from them when faced with the slightest political opposition. The underlying reason for this systematic failure is summed up by Gillespie in a prescient quote:

the government was (and remains) facing a paradox - how to reduce emissions yet deregulate the market. The government has no enthusiasm for interfering in the market in order to bring about increased energy efficiency, whether by penalising motorists, say, or subsidising public transport. Trying to reduce methane emissions by forcing increased costs on an already sensitive agricultural sector was not an attractive option at all.

Unfortunately, the market will not solve the problem. It is fundamentally incapable of it, as long as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions remain an unpriced externality. If the government wants to stand any chance of meeting its international obligations (and avoid subsidising carbon polluters from general taxation by buying credits on the international market), it has to bite the bullet and interfere in the market - if only to internalise the externality and ensure that emitters are paying the full cost of their activities.