New Zealand should cut emissions irrespective of what other countries are doing, according to the country’s leading climate change administrator.
That is because so-called carbon leakage is largely a myth.
The comments came in a spirited address to an environmental conference in Wellington by the departing chairman of the Climate Change Commission, Rod Carr. His attack on leakage contrasts with an article of faith held by both main political parties and practically the entire agricultural sector. Industry has also benefited from this view.
The theory of carbon leakage states that producers in this country are more careful than their counterparts overseas. So, reducing production here would actually increase emissions globally, because production would ‘leak’ to countries far less conscientious than we are. Therefore, NGOs calling for less agricultural production in New Zealand would harm the local economy while making the global environment worse.
But Carr told his audience that argument was highly flawed. His reasoning was that the environmental record of individual New Zealand farms varies far more than the average variation between this country and others.
“The leakage argument is that on average, compared to other countries, New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions per kilo of milk and meat protein are among the lowest in the world,” Carr says.
“And that is actually true inside the farm gate. It’s even moderately still true, counting the cost to get to market in terms of carbon emissions (for transport).
“But the average hides the truth. Take the greenhouse gas emissions per kilo of milk protein in the different dairy herds across New Zealand. The variability is between as little as 8 kilogrammes of greenhouse gases per kilo of milk protein in some herds, and as much as 18 kilogrammes of greenhouse gas emissions per kilo of milk protein in some other New Zealand herds.
“Now that difference is huge compared with the difference in averages between countries. We sit as a country at about 10 kilogrammes of average greenhouse gas emissions. Other countries are at or near that. So, if you got rid of the most inefficient producing herds in New Zealand, they might actually be replaced by at least the average of another country, and the planet will get the same amount of milk with much less emissions.
“So, the argument for leakage is highly uncertain at best and increasingly, as we measure things, highly unlikely.”
Carr explained that many things made up this difference in emissions per farm, such as the quality of land and fodder, the sort of livestock used, the use of new technology and even the financial viability of a farm. And making strict judgements on what sort of land should be used for farms would make a difference.
“There are places where an animal has to work really hard, chewing up dry matter, to create a kilo of milk protein compared with other places in New Zealand.”
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Minister Todd McClay is defending his Government’s policies. He was speaking before Carr’s speech, so was not specifically rebutting his remarks, but he defended the principle of maintaining agricultural production here and not sending it overseas.
“The reason we’ve taken agriculture out of the emissions trading scheme is because it makes no sense to have a punitive tax that says you have to change your emissions on farms and the only way to do that is to produce less and to farm less. You know, that’s just costly, so we’ve taken it away.
“The approach we’re taking is not to tax farmers, which produces less food, it is to work with them and to find technological innovation that means New Zealand gets to lead the world with lower emissions on food production, not lead the world in closing down farms.”
McClay says he is committed to setting up a pricing system for farm emissions by 2030.
“But we have informed it with the bottom line of no leakage. We’re not going to send jobs in production overseas. We’re not going to close farms down.”
McClay adds farmers will have to reduce emissions by 10% by 2030, and a progress report will merge next year. In addition a committee of experts’ report on assessing methane will be released soon.
14 Comments
Carr would not know a science report or a survey even if it hit him in the face. He lead absolute trash fire work at the CCC that is so bad even a junior high school student could point out the flaws and the work directly lead to harming kiwi families thousands of dollars, (in some cases hundreds of thousands) and losing the govt billions. The man is an ableist moron with a silver spoon up his arse. If anything watching him speak is like watching a nature documentary for a creature too stupid to survive because it only eats its own waste & body parts.
An old saw - you need to move on.
China's pollution is OUR pollution. Every time you go into a big-box store and buy something - that's YOUR pollution, over there.
Blame-shifting is somewhat immature. Just saying.
And 'our economy' cannot continue anyway - was based entirely on resource draw-down.
That's exactly the point... Our pollution is also China's pollution - Its global emissions. No point in New Zealand financially crippling itself and its citizens just so we can pat ourselves on the back while the rest of the world continues as per.
Ironically, it's many of the same people who complain about farmers emissions and skip work/school to go to climate strikes, all while massively overconsuming the latest technology, fast fashion, temu/aliexpress & horde collectibles without a care in the world (no self awareness).
Why further financially cripple NZ & it's citizens when we already have big problems in our near future (supporting our ageing population & trying to finance a very expensive superannuation)...
Resources are better spent elsewhere & and even if we were perfect, it would have a negligible global impact. Just my 2c
A carbon footprint consists of the emissions used to create a thing.
Two examples:
- Chinese made item has emissions to make it that occurred in China and then get it here. Simple enough, the inputs are known and derive a figure. Widely accepted by our government to blame consumers.
- A government extracts tax from an economy. We know the amount of carbon in the economy and what percentage of the economy is taken by the government. Not accepted by our government, because government considers themselves blameless.
Blame shifting occurs.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-plunging-coal-plant-appr….
They burnt less coal this year, and renewable energy is surging.
But more coal was dug up in 2024.
Nah, this is leakage.
"Now it’s how to get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump Administration] come in ... it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.”
“Over the last year we’ve given out $50 billion dollars for climate things…so to go work for one of these places would be really cool.”
Carr doesn't debunk the carbon leakage argument.
He acknowledges that, on average, our emissions per unit of production are less than elsewhere, but this implies that we do risk carbon leakage if we are not careful.
If it is true that there is variability around the average, we need to find ways of helping the higher-than-average emitters to do better.
And, of course, this would strengthen the carbon leakage argument.
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