International commitment to the United Nations Paris Agreement is crumbling. Governments around the world are either rejecting or reducing their climate targets because the cost of compliance is so high they cannot be achieved without sacrificing living standards.
Before we examine the details of this momentous unravelling let’s remind ourselves of what we are dealing with.
Assertions that man-made global warming is responsible for catastrophic climate change do not stand up to scrutiny. It’s not that the world isn’t warming nor that global temperatures aren’t changing, its simply that the carbon emissions produced by humans are dwarfed by those produced by nature.
While around four percent of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is produced by human activity, it’s completely overshadowed by the ninety-six percent produced from natural sources such as the weathering of rocks, outgassing from oceans, volcanic eruptions, the decomposition of organic matter, and the respiration of all plant and animal life.
Contrary to what climate activists claim, carbon dioxide is not a dangerous pollutant – it is the gas responsible for life on earth. Through the magic of photosynthesis green plants use carbon dioxide to create the food that fuels all living things.
CO2 is described as a trace gas because it’s found in such minute quantities in the atmosphere: a mere 400 parts per million – levels that are amongst the lowest ever seen in the history of our planet.
While carbon dioxide does have a minor greenhouse effect – trapping some of the sun’s energy and preventing it from escaping back into space – that effect is logarithmic. That means that the higher the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere, the smaller the temperature increase.
In other words, it is mathematically impossible for CO2 to cause catastrophic warming – which is why concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere in the past have been many times higher than they are today.
During the Jurassic Period some 200 million years ago, CO2 levels were around 5 times higher causing plant growth to flourish to levels that could sustain larger species like the dinosaur. The highest recorded carbon dioxide concentrations at 7,000 parts per million – around 18 times higher than today – were found during the Cambrian Period, over 500 million years ago.
Buffeted by the vast forces of nature including the sun, wind, ocean currents, clouds and rain, our climate is constantly changing. At the present time, with permanent ice sheets at the North and South Poles, Planet Earth is in an interglacial period within an ice age.
It was only just over 700 years ago that the world entered the Little Ice Age, where temperatures fell between 1 and 2 degrees for almost 500 years. Before that, during the 400 years of the Medieval Warm Period, temperatures rose by 1 to 1.5 degrees.
At some stage in the future, the ice sheets will either expand to produce a cooler period, or they will shrink to introduce a warmer period – but whichever way it goes, as is evidenced by our 4-billion-year history, nature will call the shots.
While mankind’s impact on the climate is minute compared to the forces of nature, that hasn’t prevented socialists from using the threat of global warming to pursue their anti-business agenda. Capturing the narrative, they have convinced the media, academics, and politicians that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that needs to be curbed.
Arguing that humans are annihilating the planet by farming cows and sheep for food and using fossil fuels to improve living standards, they not only target children, but ostracise and discredit as “climate deniers” anyone who dares to challenge their propaganda.
Faced with the escalating cost of green energy and a litany of false predictions, the public, however, have had enough.
This can be seen only too clearly in Germany – as the UK Sunday Times reports, “It is clear that the German election is part of a worldwide backlash against green policies. Recent elections in Austria, Belgium, Ireland and of course the US have seen incumbents with progressive climate policies booted out of government.”
The defeated German Chancellor had led a coalition with one of the most ambitious climate targets in the world: ‘climate neutrality by 2045’. But as the German economy struggled, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the winner of the election claimed green policies went too far – that the economy must come first and that he would do politics “for the majority who can think straight… and not for any green and leftwing nutcases”.
In comparison, the Alternative for Germany party, which came second with its best ever election result, questioned the legitimacy of climate change and pledged to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. They claimed climate action in Germany had become too far-reaching and ‘ideological’ instead of ‘rational’, and they were highly critical of the expansion of wind power.
President Trump, of course, is leading the global charge against climate activism with his decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement: “It is the policy of my Administration to put the interests of the United States and the American people first in the development and negotiation of any international agreements with the potential to damage or stifle the American economy.”
An Executive Order was also issued to put an end to the creation of massive wind farms, including those offshore, on the basis that they not only degrade the natural environment, but through their intermittency, are unreliable and costly for consumers.
As Benny Peiser, the retiring director of the UK’s Global Warming Policy Foundation recently explained, “It’s clear now that people are much more concerned about the cost of Net Zero policies than about the potential of climate change. The climate alarm, although it hasn’t died down, is no longer trusted by huge chunks of the public. The climate scientists have overplayed their hands. They have basically caused so much partisanship, censorship and intimidation that they’ve lost the trust of the public.”
Smart politicians are acknowledging the change and refining their policies. In the UK, the Deputy Leader of the popular Reform Party, recently reminded a London audience of their plan to eliminate the massive climate millstone around the neck of the British economy: “We will scrap net stupid zero and do whatever it takes to bring down the cost of living.”
Echoing the US President’s “Drill, baby drill”, Reform is pledging to “unlock Britain’s vast oil and gas reserves”, “scrap energy levies”, and “recover the cost of subsidies from the renewables industry”.
With Britain’s attempts at “decarbonisation” leading to “de-industrialisation” with electricity prices soaring and manufacturers relocating offshore, Reform believes “Net zero is without question the greatest act of self-harm ever imposed on a nation by the people at Westminster.”
Unfortunately for New Zealand, our Coalition Government is continuing to support the UN’s de-industrialisation agenda even though our contribution to global emissions is not only infinitesimal but is based on lies.
The Net Zero objectives put in place by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Green Party’s Climate Minister James Shaw overstated the warming effect of the methane produced by livestock during digestion by a factor of four. At only 1.7 parts per million in the atmosphere, while methane has a slightly stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, it also operates logarithmically, which means it has a miniscule impact on the climate.
Furthermore, the methane produced breaks down quickly into oxygen and the carbon dioxide required to feed the grass that feeds the livestock as part of the ancient carbon cycle.
However, instead of correcting the overstated methane values that Labour retained to make our farmers look bad, the Coalition appears to be playing the same game.
In late January, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, announced that New Zealand had lodged its second Nationally Determined Commitment to the Paris Agreement for the period 2026 to 2035 – raising the Ardern promise of cutting emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 to a 51 to 55 percent reduction by 2035. Since the Paris Agreement is a voluntary accord, with no sanctions for non-compliance, New Zealand was one of only a handful of countries that complied with the February 10 deadline. No doubt many of those countries that failed to deliver are having to re-consider their position in light of growing public hostility towards net-zero.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator the convenor of the Methane Science Accord, Owen Jennings, a former Federated Farmers President and Member of Parliament, is highly critical of the Coalition’s approach:
“What was Climate Minister Watts thinking about ratcheting up New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas reduction targets? Why is the Coalition making it worse?
“Over a $1.0 billion of New Zealand’s precious tax money has gone into trying to find answers to the so-called methane emissions’ problem. Now we’re committing to throwing another billion at this fictitious problem. We have built a whole industry around the emissions’ charade.
“The Coalition Government appointed an expert panel to look at the science on ruminant methane and reduction targets. They were pointed in the direction of new science that clearly says ruminant methane is not an issue, but they chose to ignore it.”
At least two of the Coalition leaders are, however, feeling the backlash.
Winston Peters says we should reconsider our commitment to the Paris Agreement: “We’ve got to seriously reconsider the position we’ve taken on Paris. How much is it going to cost us in a system of international responsibility that far too many countries are not part of. And how can we keep arguing that it’s good for the New Zealand people?”
David Seymour agrees: “There is a wider question of whether the Government of New Zealand should be committed to the Paris Accord when half of the world appears to be pulling out of it anyway… In the long term, New Zealand’s going have to have a serious question: can we achieve economic growth with the handbrake jammed up so hard?”
While supporters of Net Zero have long pushed the line that New Zealand cannot withdraw from Paris because of retaliation from our trading partners, that argument no longer holds water.
New Zealand’s major trading partners are China at almost 28 percent of total trade, United States and Australia at around 12 percent, and the European Union at 10 percent.
With China ignoring climate restrictions altogether, and now the US, that only leaves Australia and the EU. But with the main opposition parties in Australia planning to water down their Paris pledges ahead of their upcoming election, and the European Union now questioning their own commitment, there’s nothing to stop our Government from pulling out of Paris.
While the Coalition claims to be repairing the damage caused by the over-zealous approach of Labour and the Greens, some of what they are planning will make the situation worse.
Using the methane lie as justification, not only will even more of our productive farmland get turned into pine tree wastelands for carbon farming, but our farmers will end up being forced into using a range of technological “solutions” to reduce methane, including inhibitors, genetically modified grasses, and vaccines – all of which risk turning consumers away from New Zealand-produced meat and milk.
On top of that, the Coalition is establishing two new climate related regulatory regimes: the first to enable the building of offshore wind farms – at a time when other countries are turning against them because of the negative impact they have on the marine environment; and the second to support dubious carbon capture schemes.
Right now, China, India and Russia are all ignoring the Paris Agreement. President Trump is pulling the US out, and Argentina, Indonesia and possibly Canada – if there’s a change of government – are poised to follow. With the consensus in the EU crumbling, isn’t it time our Coalition Government put the national interest and wellbeing of New Zealanders first, and opted out of Paris as well?
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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
*Do you support the Coalition’s continuing commitment to the Paris Agreement?
*Poll comments are posted below.
*All NZCPR poll results can be seen in the Archive.
THIS WEEK’S POLL COMMENTS
| We should never have signed up to the Paris accord – it’s been a total disaster for NZ. To have our country’s economy voluntarily derailed by politicians seeking the approval of climate activists is bizarre. Yet that’s what has happened. | David |
| I would have expected the Coalition to see sense and pull out of the Paris Agreement, but it seems they are more interested in encouraging economic activity in the climate area so they can claim to have revived the economy. What a waste of time and money that will be – not to mention the damage that will be done to the country. | Murray |
| The Paris climate agreement has been a disaster from the beginning. National should never have signed us up. | Pauline |
| No – absolutely NOT. NZ should be pulled out ASAP. | Bob |
| Donald Trump has had the courage to say climate change is a load of crap, and it is now great to see many world leaders are thinking along the same lines. Perhaps one day common sense will be restored. | Roger |