The Climate Change Minister says it’s critical New Zealand has a comprehensive framework on how to deal with climate adaptation – and it involves all political parties being at the table.
“The future successes of New Zealand and the resilience of our economy will be determined by how we respond and prepare for the impacts of climate change and ensure that we transition to a low emissions economy,” he said in a speech at a Financial Services Council event on Wednesday.
Watts is the Minister of Revenue as well as Minister of Climate Change. He has served as the MP for North Shore since 2020 and worked as a chartered accountant and paramedic before entering Parliament.
In his keynote speech, he outlined five pillars making up the Government’s climate strategy, and described climate change as a “serious area of business” for the Coalition Government.
“The climate change strategy ensures that we not only meet the impacts and reduce the impacts of climate change, but also prepare for its future effects,” Watts said.
The five areas include; resilient infrastructure and well prepared communities, clean energy being abundant and affordable, nature based solutions to address climate change, world leading climate innovation to boost the economy, and credible markets to support the climate transition.
Clean energy is high up on the Government’s radar and Watts said New Zealand was “blessed with renewables”.
“We should have abundant clean energy that is affordable. And so boosting the energy sector to make clean energy that is abundant and affordable is one of our focus areas,” he said.
Watts added that if NZ could produce that energy here, the country wouldn’t need to import fossil fuels from offshore.
Watts said he was pleased Parliament had reached a bipartisan consensus to conduct an inquiry on climate adaptation under the Finance and Expenditure Committee.
The inquiry will provide recommendations and principles on the framework and report back to Watts on the 5th September.
Watts said this would ensure the Government would have the fundamental elements to be able to put in place an Adaptation fFramework Legislation Bill into the House in early 2025.
In 2023, Green Party co-leader and then Climate Change Minister James Shaw had asked the Environment Select Committee to begin an inquiry into climate adaptation but it wasn’t completed before Labour lost last year’s election.
“That is critical. That will be one of the first countries in the world to have a comprehensive framework on how to deal with climate adaptation. And importantly, we have a bipartisan agreement around that. In my job, that can't be underestimated. It's not always the case,” Watts said.
“From my perspective, Government does need to lead in this space to get all the parties around the table. And we need an enduring framework. We can't afford for such a big topic area that impacts inter-generationally [to] flip flop due to the politics in Wellington.”
Watts said who pays when it comes to climate adaptation and mitigation is a “very difficult and complex and challenging question” – but required at a New Zealand Inc level.
“The reality is we are having to deal with the impacts of climate change, and that is a significant fiscal cost at a broader economic level,” he said
When Budget 2024 was released in May, Watts announced that among other projects, the Coalition Government would make investments into climate resilience projects like stop banks and floodwalls and end “ring-fencing” of the ETS revenue made from the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
The CERF was set up from funding in Labour’s Budget 2022 where Waka Kotahi was tasked with setting up a climate fund that aimed to support the goals outlined in the then Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan.
Watts said at Budget 2024 that future climate investments will be considered through the regular Budget process and approximately $2.6 billion of high-value climate initiatives previously funded by the CERF would continue.
42 Comments
As bad as things are going to get we need to give up on the climate change thing here in New Zealand or it will kill our economy. What we do will make bugger all difference when other undeveloped countries carry on the same and the world population continues to increase. Until the root of the problem is addressed its a waste of time.
You have that arse about face. Climate change is going to kill our economy (and every other economy).
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/17/business/climate-change-disasters-ec…
Covid was never going to do it but if we keep on increasing the population and have more and more people densely packed together and living in squalor then increasingly severe pandemics are guaranteed. To be honest every time there is an Ebola outbreak I shit my pants. Covid was a non event, didn't take the vax and to date I have not even been sick with it. It hit people who are old with multiple underlying health conditions and had poor immune systems.
I'm pretty sure most western counties are already below(or heading) replacement rate, so it's already happening. Add the increase in the death rate across about 10 countries since 2020 and you may well get your wish.
Whose going to pay our children's pensions?
The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 births per female for most developed countries, but can be as high as 3.5 in undeveloped countries because of higher mortality rates, especially child mortality.
As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
This shows the fertility rate is dropping in almost every country, even between 2022 - 2024.
Except western countries already have significantly lower populations then most. In countries with high population numbers the birth rates are still exceptionally high and the inequality is often off the charts in regards to access to sanitation, food, medical care. To provide a basic standard of living to everyone in the globe we would at the moment need to ramp up production and logistics massively. Even migration rates to western countries outstrip normal birth rates. However that is more a factor of a rise in more accessible medical care, more education opportunities & women having more choice for birth control. Families that often migrate to countries with more accessible medical systems often gradually shift their family planning methods over time and especially since the rates of child death reduce and the cost of living & costs to support a child rises. This also plays out in countries that are not "western" that have accessible education and medical systems to a high level. Likewise there are also outliers of poor medical access & choice in perceived "western" countries that mean birth rates are higher then others.
However we knowingly have a lower population growth then migration in NZ which has been a get out of jail card for our politicians & business interests, e.g. workers want higher wages more local training, just import people to fill the gaps, increase the tax base and ignore that they also need adequate housing, education and medical care as well.
Here is another tip, we cannot afford the pension benefit system and additional benefits for those over 65 now. Future generations are being prepped for these beneficiary support systems, based on age and not need, to not exist in future.
Seems half the world is already below population replacement rate of 2.1 - so you might get your wish sooner than later.
But whose going to buy my over priced house and pay for my pension. Tax is gonna get high for those 10,000 youths of NZ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Edit: double posted as browser crashed with a drubal(or something) error
But whose going to buy my over priced house and pay for my pension.
I don't know, but given your concern for the young in your above post, why don't you vote for a land value tax and help pay for your pension yourself?
Tax is gonna get high for those 10,000 youths of NZ.
Not necessarily, if we bring in a land value tax like we used to have in NZ (Taxation in New Zealand - Wikipedia) then it could do the heavy lifting:
The land tax initially provided a major proportion of government revenue. In 1895 it made up 76% of the total land and income tax revenue received by the government.
We already pay a land tax we happen to call it 'rates'. The call for land tax is just a misdirection, the real issue is we have based our economic system on on 'number go up' forever, in a finite resourse world, this is not reality. add to that the government(all of them) squanders money and is far from efficient. The pension would be far more affordable if the government had not stopped putting money in, housing would be less of an issue if they had built more state housing and not sold out their responsability to private landlords. Also the constant debasement of the NZ dollar means we have to speculate with our saving or it loses value over the long term, in NZ we chose housing to invest and the US they chose their stock market to invest in, but the floored system is the driver, anything else is a distraction.
This is an interesting read - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-s…
Also the rest of your artical paints the rest of the picture -
"In 1960 land tax contributed 6% of direct tax revenues, and by 1967, in a report recommending the abolition of land taxes, a committee chaired by Auckland accountant Lewis Ross noted that a mere 0.5% of total government revenue now came from land taxes. The government did not act on the Ross recommendation to abolish land taxes.
By 1982 only 5% of total land value was taxed, and land taxes were also thought[by whom?] to be duplicative due to their similarity to local-authority property-rate levies, with property taxes (rates) making up 57% of local-government income by 2001."
Agree with most of what you said there Escander.
Disagree with the rates being the equivalent of land taxes (rates are sometimes/part based on land value but are for local government and services - they aren't paying the pension).
Obviously, the amount of taxes raised by land taxes depends entirely on the rates and exclusions (I advocate for pretty much none). I reference it for a couple of reasons, one is that many here say it will never/can't happen in NZ (clearly wrong) and it is a perfectly plausible alternative to the young paying for super given the 'wealth' held in land which is currently untaxed for central government purposes.
The most plausible explanation for climate change cycles has to do with the influence of charged particle cosmic radiation on cloud formation. Charged particles entering our atmosphere create nucleation sites for water vapour, which lead to cloud formation, and a global cooling effect. It’s analogous to a cloud chamber used to visualise radiation a lab. This theory is backed by empirical data. CO2, by comparison, has a negligible effect on the climate. The above linked paper is quite readable, and this video snippet is brilliant.
What if "the climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"?
https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/index.php?idp=501
Yea we should get to emit while the undeveloped countries, using a fraction of our emissions per capita have to stop.
Honestly you should make the olympics with those mental gymnastics to make it someone else’s problem…
The overpopulation is being addressed with fertility rates declining pretty much everywhere in the world.
Yes, the dive in fertility rates is something to cheer. Hopefully they'll stay down in spite of the best efforts of pronatalists in economics, politics and religion? It wouldn't surprise me if baby production switches to in vitro growth of foetuses, to keep the growth cult happy.
The way sperm quality is deteriorating as we poison ourselves with cleverness, come mid century humans will be on the path to functional extinction, without technological help.
If climate really is a "serious area of business" for the govt, then why was there so little about it in the budget? And seeing as spending is going to be even less in the next two budgets, what is their plan? Or are they just going to have enquiries and committees about it for the next few years?
https://nzgbc.org.nz/news-and-media/budget-2024-lights-flicker-and-dim-…
Seeing as China seem to be ramping up production massively on Solar and Batteries, with the cost dropping fast, and Europe and the US adding huge tariffs, isnt there an opportunity for NZ to benefit from this over supply in the coming years and incentivise building out as much solar plus battery as we can?
China is also ramping up coal use and building more coal fired power plants at a greater rate. If you think that investing in producing more products for western nations & using more sources for power generation while increasing power use demands is out of their normal modus operandi, that it is instead a sign for massive shift in direction, then you are sadly mistaken. Even current power supplies for heating & power in urban environments are predominantly non renewable.
But hey nothing new, we also accept their use of slavery & genocidal practices in production chains so pretending they are greener then they actually are is actually the lesser evil of our willful ignorance.
One of the political parties deputy leader from Germany also concerned about the Greens/Labour equivalent. Shane Jones is in good company with unicorn kisses, lotus eaters and some other choice phrases.
https://notrickszone.com/2024/06/09/deputy-leader-of-germanys-centre-ri…
"...all political parties being at the table." Doesn't he mean trough?
"In its latest ILS market report, the Aon Securities team outline the potential for record-breaking catastrophe bond issuance, while investors are already benefiting from double-digit returns in 2023. ...Pennay went on to explain, “Investors have benefited from catastrophe bond returns greater than anything experienced in over 20 years."
https://www.artemis.bm/news/aon-higher-cat-bond-returns-fuel-investor-a…
ABSURD. What a farse. "Government would ... ... end “ring-fencing” of the ETS revenue"
i.e. revenue collected under the ETS will go into the general government coffers and will not (necessarily) be spent on climate measures. (as our rich political donors need another handout).
NZ is up for having to buy $30bn on offshore carbon credits from now to 2030 (as we cant reduce domestic emissions enough).
https://climatevcfund.com/what-would-30b-buy-new-zealand/
If we aren't going to use the ETS revenue to mitigate emissions then we will be up for >>$30bn and/or the ETS price will need to be much much higher.
And our farmers continue to get a massive subsidy at least another 6 years which the rest of NZ will have to pay for.
https://www.interest.co.nz/economy/128194/government-delivers-six-year-…
NZ has 2 very different options and needs to choose 1 very soon:
a) We renege on our stated climate change goals under the Paris Agreement and tell the world we are only going to progress as fast as everyone else is on emissions reduction. The earth will definitely be fried.
b) We actually commit to targets, commit to the ETS revenue being used on climate change mitigation (based on a cost/benefit approach), pay the $30bn, and along with a few other countries making good progress on emissions reductions, drag the rest of the world kicking and screaming with us. We will still cook but hopefully be underdone.
And by the way - what is the point of running an unsustainably high net inbound immigration rate (causing a massive housing and infrastructure deficit) when out climate targets are absolute numbers not per capita. It's the definition of insanity. (we want to maximise wellbeing per capita not absolute GDP)
Using absolutes and claiming scientific certainty on models is rightfully called out as deceptive, manipulative and actually demonstrates a poorer understanding of science then those you are attacking. There has never been a defined certainty because of a key factor the assumptions we make in most of our models and our limitations in assuming closed systems. Calls to physics certainty for atmospheric science research & oceanography is ignorant at best.
Most people with appropriate support would accept global climate change & yet you are forcing critically harmful changes on people's lives with no measurable beneficial factors to show. Hence the turn & churn away from initiatives. If you want changes you need to actually look at real world people and work with real world living needs. Fanciful idealogical models that fail to accommodate real world communities will fail to make meaningful change. As people are less likely to follow the poorer and less empowered they are.
Even those on your side, will not appreciate your misinformation practices. It throws more people off and only perpetuates a lowering standard of discourse. If you think people are too stupid to understand the shades of grey, & that there are many factors we cannot control for and you resort to scare tactics it is just harmful to the public discourse and education of people into the science as a whole. Your audience will not appreciate or thank you for it.
Next time here is an idea try consensus with accounting for living needs. Our real world weather system monitoring data is available and there are many much more scientific educational sources which actually are aimed for climate scientists that also train for appropriate methods for dealing with science communication to the public, & providing critical evaluations of the skeptics research as well proponents. Note: not skeptics or proponents of anthropogenic climate change but of location specific changes, models used for predictions and analysis derived from such models.
We cannot predict with certainty the weather for instance in 5 months, or the ocean temperatures & salinity in certain areas in future but we study the current & historical readings and try to predict from that even though we cannot account for all factors in our research e.g. we cannot measure how the gigatons of coal burnt in China or India for heating & cooking affect temperatures or weather systems across the globe, how much any single volcano or forest fire or even fires used for clearing forests in Asia and South America affect glaciers, or how we cannot say with certainty the exact damage to the ozone layer from the massive amounts of CFCs emitted in China that we cannot accurately measure from any point. We all make assumptions in our models but there is never certainty and if you are familiar with science understanding we develop our understanding given more evidence and the ability to set up tests of proof. You have demonstrated that you failed to grasp many of the developments in physics and key subjects in it and how we arrived at our current understanding. I would thoroughly recommend you do some formal physics training and work in the industry a bit, follow the developments.
If it was down to physics (and economics) we would be pushing on with nuclear energy.
"A comparison between the German energy policy the last 20 years and an alternative policy of investing in nuclear power
...there can be no doubt that if the political environment in Germany had been favourable to Nuclear Power Plants in 2002, the country would have fared far better than with the current Energiewende both concerning expenditures and climate gas emissions. In the grand scheme, the alternative policy of keeping existing NPPs in 2002 and building new NPPs would have cut expenditures in half and Germany would have secured its climate goals in the process."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642
I think it will be a). We are seeing a shift to the right politically and Net Zero is dead in the water if that eventuates. Dutton across the ditch just announced he will withdraw Australia from the Paris Accord and he is likely to win the next election.
I guess we can all move to Australia for work.
Correction EVs never went away but forcing a tax on disabled people, support worker staff and trades the highest amount when they have no other transport choice did, (there literally are NO EV mobility vehicles with hoists).
But I guess you are all for abuse and harm to other people, so long as they are the poorest and the most vulnerable in the nation and the rich & most able to take any form of transport can claim benefits for luxury options. Selfish greed and appalling abusive motives in your words shine through. The Clean Car tax was never about improving transport in NZ for most the population. It was always a ploy by wealthy politicians & consultants to get more benefits for themselves and rich mates paid for them by the poorest in the nation, who literally have to beg for every bit of access they can get to their communities to live.
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