Climate Change: The first monitoring report

He Pou a Rangi has published its first annual monitoring report under the Zero Carbon Act. The report is part of the Act's accountability mechanisms, and focuses on whether we are on track to meet our current emissions budgets. The key finding is that emissions have been reducing from 2019, and we seem to be on track to meet the first budget, but there are significant uncertainties around deforestation and the weather. They also note that despite the previous government adopting a bullshit "target accounting" measure for forestry in its budgets and Paris NDC, there is in fact no official data on this, meaning they have to kludge it. Which I think tells us how much bullshit that approach (as opposed to UNFCCC accounting) is.

Unfortunately, its a very different story for the second and third budgets:

There are significant risks to meeting the second and third emissions budgets and the 2030 biogenic methane target.

The agriculture and transport sectors show the largest risks, and insufficient action to reduce emissions in these sectors will put the second and third emissions budgets at risk.

The commission points out that we need actual emissions reductions to meet the second budget - its too late to do it by planting more trees. Which means we need actual policy, which National has removed. It also points out that - contra National and its Atlas-backed pet ideologues - the ETS cannot be relied upon to meet the budgets, due to the stockpile and design flaws (which National is refusing to fix). And they highlight various policy changes which National has made or is making - fast-track legislation, repealing the offshore gas ban, ending any effort at agricultural emissions pricing, cutting science funding - which have increased the chance that the emissions budgets and targets will not be met.

Basically, having repealed the previous government's Emissions Reduction Plan, National needs to come up with a credible one of its own. Unfortunately their first draft, based on false accounting and wishful thinking, gives no confidence whatsoever that they will do that. If we want to beat this crisis, we need to get rid of them.