The Green Party has outlined a plan to reduce emissions more quickly and redistribute economic resources more evenly across society.
The full plan is estimated to cut net emissions 35% by 2030 and 47% by 2035, relative to 2020 levels. That would be almost four times as much as the Government's draft emissions reduction plan.
But He Ara Anamata, or the Alternative Emissions Reduction Plan, doesn’t just look for cleaner ways of working within the economic system. It suggests significantly reorganising it.
This would include more state-control of the economy, a much higher carbon tax, less farming and oil production, and a job creation programme similar to the 1930s and 1970s.
In a speech to launch the plan, Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said the current economic system was radically reshaping the world’s ecosystem without the consent of the public.
“Who so thoroughly and successfully embedded the idea that we’ll just have climate change instead of changing the economy which produces it?” She asked.
The economy was working against human nature, to care for each other, and the ecosystem which sustains human life in the first place. It needed to be reorganized to not “exhaust and exploit” them both.
A 58 page report, released in Auckland on Sunday morning, outlined her party’s plan to achieve this without relying solely on market forces.
‘Think Green’
A Green Jobs Guarantee would echo job creation programmes from the 1930s and 1970s, where governments launched infrastructure projects to employ people who might otherwise be unemployed.
During the Great Depression, Labour's public works schemes upgraded the Milford Track, planted much of Wellington’s town belt, and built the Palmerston North to Gisborne rail line—parts of which recently were destroyed by Cyclone Gabrielle.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Muldoon’s ‘Think Big’ initiative developed the Maui gas field and its associated infrastructure off the Taranaki coast, aiming to boost energy self-sufficiency and create jobs.
The Green Party’s version would attempt to create jobs for workers in climate-exposed industries, either restoring environments or building new infrastructure.
Rau Paenga would be scaled up into a “Ministry of Green Works” which would coordinate with a new Future Workforce Agency to plan projects and train a workforce to build them.
‘Super-charged ETS’
A hard cap would be imposed on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to drive gross emissions reductions, instead of mostly incentivising offsets. New forestry would not be allowed to register for the scheme beyond 2026.
Carbon credits or cash payments will be available to projects which sequester carbon or create biodiversity by planting native forests or restoring wetlands. Existing pine forests would have to transition to natives to be eligible; a difficult task.
The allocation of free units to trade-exposed industries would be replaced with an import tax on goods that do not face a carbon price in their home market. This is effectively a tariff which would protect domestic producers from unfair competition and prevent carbon leakage.
These two policy changes would increase the carbon price and could boost the revenue earned by the Government through auctions. Some of this extra money would be used to finance decarbonisation in the private sector, similar to Labour’s GIDI fund.
Re-nationalisation
However, these would not be structured as grants or loans but as equity investments. This would give the Crown an ownership stake in the companies equal to the cash injection.
The plan also proposes the Government could re-nationalise parts of the energy sector by constructing new assets and buying back those privatised under National governments.
Further direct involvement in the economy could involve investing in domestic production of wood pellets, to replace coal burning, even if it were not commercially profitable.
This revised Green economy would likely not involve as much agriculture production as the current one. Farmers would be added to the “super-charged ETS” and required to pay for emissions, like most other sectors.
And a sinking cap imposed on nitrogen fertilizer could also mean reduced output, although it can be offset by changes in farming practices and additional feedstock — likely at a higher cost.
Greenpeace welcomed these policy changes, saying there were “simply too many dairy cows in New Zealand” and it was only possible due to synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.
114 Comments
As usual, a high quality plan that is the product of a lot of very intelligent, forward-thinking and dedicated people.
Those involved will be praying that the public faces of the Greens can carry that vision with grace and solidarity for the next 3 to 6 years, and no more personal struggles and tussles. With Swarbrick at the helm they have a good chance.
I think you must have forgotten the //sarc sign.
The Greens have published what looks like a Maoist manifesto to wreck the economy and pass control of almost everything to the government.
We would all end up like Monty Python's anarcho-syndicalist peasants. Except it wouldn't be funny.
They need to read the room.
people just want an improved economy. The days of everyone feeling flush and house prices rising 20% are gone - when we had that people could afford to focus on climate change and culture.. now its just about survival and keeping jobs. Greens are a bit out of fashion i reckon.
Ooph, this hits. Probably for most commentators here, who certainly seem to have discretionary time.
For my part, I have discretionary time today because I'm waiting on an upstream supplier, so here I am bolstering a bloody solid plan for our future from the Greens to the interest.co.nz commentariat - something akin to self-immolation.
Then it's back to kicking, kicking, kicking to stay afloat. Because my success doesn't come lightly, and nor should it - but I recognise that every spare moment I have should be put into ensuring opportunity is still present for the next generation.
Hard work is not as incompatible with Green values as people here seem to think.
The Greens have backed evidence-driven investment in worthy roading projects (without it you'd be shit-out-of-luck for easy cycleway punchlines), have consistently published documents which back farming and support its transition to healthier and more sustainable models, plan to get ahead of the inevitable end of mining by - yes - shuttering coal mining but aiding the transition for affected communities (I'll admit I'm skeptical of this one but any effort here is better than seeing communities cut off at the knees as has happened, massively, in other countries), and have fought like hell to get the Govt to intervene in the electricity market so that pulp mill closures (e.g. in Ruapehu) wouldn't devastate the regions.
Whether each of those policies floats your boat is up to you. But each one celebrates good and honest work with strong economic outputs.
putting Chloe in charge of the economy would be like letting your 10 yr old choose the household groceries, fill the family up with sugar and junk food while you what for the sugar crash and diabetes.
I wouldn't be surprised if part of the plan was to bring money printing robertson back to fund it.
Farming is the backbone of New Zealand GDP, reducing farming would putting the brakes on the economy, no need to worry about tariffs anymore.
Sorry, i meant exports. we are heavily reliant on farming as an export. given we don't have much else to offer we should recognize the impact on reducing it.
nevertheless when you don't actual produce anything as a country, you should hold on to what you do produce well unless you have a plan to replace the lost income, and i don't think replacing it government funded operations counts.
Fact is we probably need to reduce our rate of consumption by 400%. We think we can just greenify our consumption and lifestyles, but to do it at it's actual cost would mean our lives would look more like that of today's average Indian.
This is going to happen eventually, just likely without our choice.
Assuming you mean reducing our consumption by three quarters or four fifths. Why do you think anyone is going to turn up to work tomorrow if their real incomes were to collapse by that much? Or study for years and years to become a dentist or doctor without proper resources to do their work with and to simply end up living a largely subsistence lifestyle?
If we dropped our consumption by that much.
Our lives would still be amazing, in the context of lived human experience.
But yes, you're quite right most of society isn't prepared to willingly adjust their lifestyles to that degree. I'm just highlighting that's what'd be necessary.
Oh dear. The Android will also be $17 - $19k :( unless you want to manufacture them here. And have all the resources mined here to remove those carbon miles. In which case you have autarky + naughty non-green activity. Guess we just have to not have cellphones then?
😁
I meant every word I wrote; but thought to make an observation rather than an endorsement.
I did know that commenting first on this post with anything other than a rabid, fist-shaking rebuttal of He Ara Anamata would be asking for a pile-on.
The very entertaining rage-out responses have actually prompted me to read the document in full and it is, in fact, better balanced and considered than I'd anticipated.
While I agree that the current economic system cannot fix the planet, seriously reduce farming? If anything we should be doing since our farming is quite green by world standards, unless your plan to let millions of people die, which might work, we need food.
What I think we firstly need is to stop this constant advertising that tells use we need to buy more stuff to make us happy. Its not true and while that attitude exists no matter how much green energy we produce, we will just consume it all.
Re farming, I think you may be pleasantly surprised. Pop down to Chapter 10:
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/beachheroes/pages/34378/attachments/or…
I'm not sure where "less farming" in the article comes from, and the plan is not rabidly anti-farmer. It is all about transition to modern, sustainable and - I would argue - inevitable techniques. I would further venture that the country that manages that transition most smartly and efficiently will lead the future, and as you've noted, we have a "quite green by world standards" head start.
Mate you're being willfully thick.
"less farming" and "would likely not involve as much agriculture production as the current one" both appear in Dan's article. The article is internally consistent in that these two phrases complement one another.
My clear point was that I don't know how he sourced these conclusions because they do not appear (and I'd argue are not hinted at) in the source document, He Ara Anamata.
Fortunately we have mostly evaded salinity manefesto crap comrade. You are welcome ome to relocate to China and complain about their very significant emissions.
Christ mate. Proof-read your whataboutism.
But for fun: China has a pretty restrictive immigration policy. It's interesting to note that per capita the average American emits roughly twice the emissions of their Chinese counterpart. And despite being the world's mass-manufacturing hub, China is "developing renewable energy faster than anywhere else in the world".
China is far from perfect and has put plenty of feet wrong along the way. NZ should avoid its mistakes and ensure we're positioned to benefit from their successes, so that all the coal-driven havoc that they've wreaked en-route doesn't amount to nothing.
But for fun: China has a pretty restrictive immigration policy.
I don't think that's the barrier for it not having high immigration. It's because more people want to leave than move there.
China is "developing renewable energy faster than anywhere else in the world".
In raw numbers. At the same time, they're also constructing more coal plants than anywhere else in the world.
1980s Communist Party run Beijing, it seems to be the transport aspiration for some on here. Cycling to Work in 1980's China. Archive film 97141
Looks fine, but not sure why you chose 1980s China over somewhere like modern day Amsterdam? Incidentally, Amsterdam has virtually the same number of rainy days as Auckland (133 vs 130), and even snow!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbRL6Opifg&ab_channel=BloombergOrigina…
Either is better than a car-centric city like most in NZ. Massively wasteful in terms of energy use, valuable city space taken up by roads and parking, and hostile environments for anyone not in an armored box. Not to mention the health effects from sitting down on our arses all day long.
What NZ city do you see as the easiest to transform into a "modern day Amsterdam"? There are of course rational and valid reasons for why cars are more popular than bicycles in NZ (although I note roughly the same number of passenger cars are sold in the Netherlands as in NZ, per capita). That starts with NZ being six times bigger as a country than the Netherlands with mountain ranges everywhere and several cities built on and around steep hills.
It's just harder.
I used to cycle 30ks a day to work. I had to have a change of clothes on me, or left at work, where I also luckily had a shower, and the additional time every morning to sort myself out for the day.
Most people would find that masochistic, and expecting them to adopt it in any decent scale is misguided.
An issue in biking to work in NZ is rain, which is 50% of the time
I biked to and from work for years in Wellington, rain, wind or shine. It was faster than the bus, cheaper too, and on the days you didn't want to bike such as rain and wind, the commute via other methods was twice as long as i it weren't. It's easy to wrap a change of clothes in a plastic bag in a backpack. Too many people think that the rain will melt them XD
The Greens have been in parliament for twenty five years but never formally in government and ever since the departure of Fitzsimons, the chances of that happening have diminished in every election. Obviously the electorate is not convinced of either the criteria or credentials being put forward. Unfortunately that lack of recognition and resultant frustration has created an unseemly and rancorous profile for the party and they are still on the downward slope of all of that. They are quiet now because they are licking their self inflicted wounds. How to improve matters is going to be a difficult sell.
We're going to create big employment and therefore increase consumer demand by constructing massive new infrastructure projects and we will do so without increasing our use of fossil fuels and non-renewable resources. Also, less food production for everyone including those doing more work.
"High quality" green magical thinking at it again.
Such contradictory statements from the Greens, eh? It is wishful thinking that we could simply switch to non-carbon-intensive sources of energy (and materials) and keep increasing "consumer demand" for all eternity.
The Greens stand for more globalisation, low-skilled immigration, tourism exports and domestic consumption, and argue all of that can somehow be achieved with negative carbon emissions. Go figure!
What the greens could do is lead by example (cough, cough) and cut down on being the political party that uses the most airline miles of any political party in NZ to show us they are really committed to cutting down on carbon. Oh thats right they love telling everyone what to do but dont do it themselves. But like shop lifting
It reads like a political suicide note. For example; "The plan also proposes the Government could re-nationalise parts of the energy sector by constructing new assets and buying back those privatised under National governments".
And the cost of this would be? Presumably a wealth tax is there somewhere.
When you read their manifesto their justification, structure and enforcement of a wealth tax would be a complete and direct attack on the rights of citizens, enshrined in the Magna Carta, for good reason, centuries ago. That right prevents the Crown from intervening in the legitimately owned property of the people. The disregard of that and the complicity in defying parliamentary protocol to furtively enshrine the Three Waters legislation evidences an extremely concerning willingness to defeat the principles of law and democracy when it suits.
Their belief in their own personal moral righteousness is pretty worrying, especially if it extends to justifying abrogating the norms of government because "emergency." Anyone who has ever lived in South America, Asia, Africa for any amount of time understands that that word is usually justification for some pretty awful actions by those in charge.
It was the supermarkets abrupt decision to suddenly refuse to stock colony/barn eggs. Producers could still do colony, as was one of their options when phasing out caged eggs via legislation, and although many converted to barn eggs, the supermarkets then chose not to stock them which left producers up a smelly creek with a lot of suddenly-useless debt.
Nobody uses cycle lanes, greens are communists, caring for the planet is impossible without economic catastrophe, whatabout China, Chloe flies in actual aeroplanes, nationalised = bad...
I'm sure we are missing something friends... or maybe it's time to call 'house' on silly commentary bingo?
My stone cold, emotionless assessment is that our forward prosperity is absolutely dependent on (a) reducing our impact on the planet and (b) preparing to deal with the impact that the planet will have on us.
I would argue that the belief that people have in the ability of market forces to make (a) and (b) happen at the pace needed is emotional. The amount of work that we need to do over the next 20 - 30 years will require a warlike effort - and, sorry, that will mean direct state intervention.
My stone cold, emotionless assessment is that our forward prosperity is absolutely dependent on (a) reducing our impact on the planet
Whom exactly are you referring to here? Because 90% of population and consumption growth going forward is going to come from places like India and Africa. New Zealand's impact on the planet is utterly negligible compared to that, and also compared to the impact that China has on our planet (building at least 40 coal powered thermal plants in 2023 alone and intending to expand its dairy herds by tens of millions of cows). And finally, why on earth should any of us trust government at this point in time given their massive litany of economic and project failures in the last few years?
That is the silliest of arguments. Where does it end? With every country shrugging and saying 'no point' because there are countries that emit more? I mean China, USA, India, and Russia make up 55% of global carbon emissions... so everyone else may as well just crack on as normal, right?
Even if you don't buy the whole 'everyone should make a fair contribution' thing - it is worth noting that we are at real risk of breaking key trade agreements. Govt effectively announced last week that they are not going to hit their 2030 Paris agreement targets. That leaves us one grumpy EU country away from losing some serious export income.
We also trade on our clean, green image. It's pretty fake now, but it will be shot to bits next year if we carry on as we are.
I hear you on this. The Soviets had a perfect socialist utopia - true "Red Plenty" in their heads, until in practice it was corrupted as it always is by self-interest and greed. I'm ever-conscious that for all we talk up these causes here there are hundreds of cases in history where an idealised approach has been disastrous in practice - our most recent Labour government got swallowed up by its own pride, complacency and arrogance.
Checks and criticism are needed. Hard yank-backs in the other direction like we're enduring now under Luxon are needed. Even self-criticism can quickly turn too insular: Wellington's council is at war with itself in a battle of wills which does nothing for the people it should be backing.
I harbour no illusion that the Greens will get to implement their plan with no checks and balances, or with >50% of the vote. And if they did it would be disastrous. But as a statement of intent it is extremely well assembled, researched and prepared, and describes a future which we should all be pulling towards because it is the only one which our species will survive.
The reality is any nation who takes this properly serious is going to shed population like nobody's business.
At the moment, it's like a fattie thinking if they switch to diet coke that'll solve their obesity. They need to change the bulk of how they're going about their day.
lets say a new grocery store comes to town, with the aim of being more sustainable than the "big boys down the road" the foodstuffs and progressives of the world.
the prices for this new, smaller, less competitive grocery store are 15% higher because they must sustainably sources their product.
how long do you think something like this will last before they burn through all their investors cash. in New Zealand most of those investors will be the tax payer.
It's not a silly argument, it's the coward's argument from those who want the bigger boys down the road to do the hard work for them
Actually it's the absolute reverse: recognition that only the top ten emitting countries in the world make any difference at all and that no matter how hard the other one hundred and seventy countries try, even to the point of social and economic suicide, they cannot do that work for those big boys.
It's true people have an emotional attachment to the planet, and so decisions we make have emotional aspects to them.
What I'm referring to is as soon as Chloe stands with a big speech on the verge of crying because we are destroying the planet people jump in and go "oh no the planet, she so right, lets do whatever she wants", when has she actually put something in place that had a positive impact without just cut throating an entire industry.
Rather than being innovative, creative and showing ingenuity she's thinks policies like "stop all coal" are the solutions to our problems.
This is what I mean by she gets an emotional reaction from a lot of people, rather than a rational one.
In a speech to launch the plan, Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said the current economic system was radically reshaping the world’s ecosystem without the consent of the public.
“Who so thoroughly and successfully embedded the idea that we’ll just have climate change instead of changing the economy which produces it?” She asked.
Uh... she does realise we have a democracy right? And of those places that have achieved emissions reductions, they all tend to be democracies. Or is she taking aim at the increasing share of emissions produced by authoritarian regimes? Confusing... the document does not read like a foreign policy piece....
We don't have democracies. Our democracies have been captured by large amounts of capital. I.e Elon Musk spending a quarter of a billion on Trump?. "those places that have achieved emissions reductions, they all tend to be democracies". What places are you talking about?
One wonders how many actually read what the Greens have said before spouting off?
Read it here.
There's little there to suggest massive change will occur overnight. Further, I think Dan's emphasis in the article is somewhat off. Overall - there isn't much that's new in this. Rejigged is a better description.
Direct government investment & subsidizing of green tech will pay off for NZ. Big time!!!
Think of it this way - every kilowatt we produce onshore is one less kilowatt we import. That's gotta be good for NZ Inc. ... And our planet.
Assumes we will generate it and pay for the capital for less than we import it for. The plan you linked has no financials to determine whether this is so, it's just vagueries tied to ideals.
It's wise from a longer term resilience perspective, but not a sure fire financial slam dunk. We can already see from Germany that just investing in Green energy doesn't automatically mean a net return. You need a sound end to end plan that is location specific, capable of having some resilience to variable generation, with a fairly accurate financial model to define the economic realities.
As an actual commercial venture, potentially a net loser, requiring the balance to be funded from somewhere else.
You do know that governments - unlike businesses - can create money whenever they want, right? And doing so to invest in income producing assets that are actually both economically good for NZ and benefit our planet can be a good thing. Damn. It might even create that horrid 'growth' thing that PDK keeps telling us will kill us all.
Having been through the document: a tonne of aspiration and near to nothing on the details of execution.
Not reassuring, but also not uncommon: much of it reads as through cause, effect and consequences have just not been thought through.
In effect some good ideas, undone by magical thinking.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.