Essay 5: Cuckoo Shaw lays 1.5°C egg in cosy Paris nest
The Paris treaty ratified by New Zealand says: “We’ll keep the temperature increase to 2°C, never mind about trying for 1.5°C.” But Shaw says: “Yeah, nah. Never mind about 2°C, we’ll shoot for 1.5°C, the lower the better, right? Lead the world. How hard can it be?”
The Hon Barry Brill’s fifth essay (pdf, 234 KB) of his series on the Zero Carbon Bill (ZCB) reveals:
Curiously, the Bill omits all of New Zealand’s international obligations under the 25-page Paris Agreement, except for one cherry-picked portion of one cherry-picked sentence.
It thus “creates irreconcilable conflicts” by implying we need only comply with part of the agreement ratified by Parliament. The Paris Agreement mandates a single target of 2°C, so why does the ZCB ignore it? The 1.5°C is not a target, but merely aspirational.
The ZCB contains wording conflicts that will cause drafting problems.
There are zero prospects of holding the warming to 1.5°C, for we can expect, if the warming rate over the most recent 40 years continues, to reach that amount of warming by about 2060.
Results would be undetectable
China’s emissions will double and India’s will treble by 2030, when they will jointly produce about 65% of worldwide emissions, and it will be arithmetically impossible to reduce emissions by 45%.
Commitments under the Paris Agreement add up to a 30% increase by 2030, which might mean 3°C warming—and few countries are even trying to meet their goals. To project warming of only 1.5°C, the climate models assume investment in windmills and solar panels of $48 trillion. Just the interest would exceed global spending on education and the environment, so the cost of preventing undetectable warming of half a degree Celsius would be massive.
The media hypes the dangers even of 1.5°C, but we experienced a rise in GMST of over 2°C from 1820–2000 and it coincided with unprecedented advances in human welfare.
This Parliament has no mandate to double or treble the sacrifices we make, as the Coalition gave no inkling of their intention not to honour their commitments under the Paris Agreement and impose a sterner burden on us.
Have you seen the Bill itself?
Read it online or download it (pdf, 312 KB).
Views: 68
Enforcement. Where and how? Brett Keane
The Zero Carbon bill is a stupid name for a stupid bill thought up by stupid people .
Firstly all living life forms would not exist if carbon was banned as carbon is one of the most needed elements in all animals and plants.
Secondly the government are going against what the UNIPCC states which is that countries should restrict GHG emissions in a way that does not affect food production .
Thirdly this government is the only government in the world that is attempting to levy or tax biogenic methane emissions from farmed livestock .
Why is this?
Livestock do not emit one additional atom of carbon into the atmosphere .
Every carbon atom in every molecule of methane emitted was absorbed by vegetation from the air as CO2 .
In fact there is ZERO carbon added to the atmosphere but that is not why they called this the Zero Carbon Bill.
New Zealand produces and exports food to feed over 40 million people around the world .
The worlds population is not going to stop growing and there could be another 2 billion people around the world to feed in the next 30 to 40 years .
For any country’s government planting trees ahead of food production has little understanding of what they are doing and were their misguided policies will lead this country.
I saw a sign on a road near Wairoa that said “You cant eat trees ”
Graham Anderson
Proud to be a farmer feeding the world .