Winners and Losers in the ETS
Public affairs consultant Trevor Walton entered the climate change debate with a client media release in 2001. With the passage of National’s ETS reforms into law, he looks back over eight years of lobbying and politicking.
Wednesday, February 03 2010 || Comment || BY Trevor Walton
Given that our negotiators in Copenhagen needed the credentials that only ETS legislation could provide, maybe it’s time for some of these lobbyists to eat crow. No other government did as well in Copenhagen as New Zealand.
Barack Obama and other western leaders returned from Copenhagen empty handed. In contrast, Environment Minister Nick Smith, Trade Minister Tim Grose, and their officials, returned with two major trophies: support from 30 other countries for the NZ-initiated Global Research Alliance on agriculture greenhouse gases and tacit support for an agreement on forestry which addresses major NZ Kyoto Protocol concerns. And they did this without having to sign a massive cheque to anybody.
These initiatives are hugely important to New Zealand as the only developed country with an economy that’s heavily reliant on a primary export sector that is also the main source of its emissions. Reducing emissions from livestock, allowing land-use flexibility and maintaining a market for forestry offsets will save the country billions.
The Global Research Alliance was largely a Groser initiative. The minister has a very good understanding of how consumer perceptions impact on the ability of NZ products to gain access to upmarket retail shelves around the world.
He’s also aware that even if the governments of the world can’t agree on a legally binding protocol to replace Kyoto, the economic imperative to reduce emissions won’t go away. Affluent consumers want to buy ethical products and they already expect the Tescos, Waitroses and Home Depots of this world to include low-carbon footprints in their criteria for sourcing food, textiles and forest products.
Without its own legislated ETS, without credible targets, the chances of New Zealand having a say in the shape of the world’s climate change response post-2012 were zilch. Yet it was critical that we did. Not only are we uniquely reliant on our primary industries, no other country relies almost totally on plantation forests for its wood supply or on renewable energy for its electricity supplies.
Australia doesn’t have the same worries. Unlike us, its main challenge – reducing its overwhelming reliance on fossil fuels for energy – is shared by most of the industrialised world.
The failure of many of our major lobby groups to recognise these fundamentals was reflected in their submissions to government, in some cases right through until the final ETS legislation took shape. Some of these stances may have been based, like those of Federated Farmers, on sheer bloody-mindedness. Others appear to have been more cynical, dressing up vested interests with cloaks of hollow reason.
With an economy that relies on the 100% Pure image, either to attract tourists or as a platform for selling our food and fibre to high-end consumer markets, New Zealand has never had the option of being a slow adopter. National recognised this and since well before the 2008 election was saying, “we are committed to having a moderated ETS with realistic targets in place in time for Copenhagen”.
Yet the Greenhouse Policy Coalition still felt it could credibly argue that “it is highly unlikely that any foreign consumer buys on the basis of a country’s domestic climate change policies rather than in respect of their views about a particular product.”
Farmers consistent during lobbying marathon
The first public consultation round – about whether New Zealand should ratify the Kyoto Protocol – was in late 2001. Ever since, lobby groups have been on a treadmill of submission, media release and letter writing, attempting to bend public policy their way.
Farmers as a group have been consistent. They’ve been intransigently opposed since day one. In his regular column in The Dominion Post, former environment minister Simon Upton described Federated Farmers “demagogic, destructive and illiterate source of commentary” as such that “no self-respecting political party could take them seriously”.
At the heart of the federation’s opposition are two strands of logic. The first is that it’s unfair to get farmers to pay a tax on animal emissions before their competitors do. The second is essentially that farmers have a right to pollute until measures are developed to mitigate or prevent it at no cost to farmers.
The first argument is superficially attractive and was common to all primary sector lobby groups when the country was contemplating ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. However it ignores the importance that major retail chains in developed countries accord to environmental footprints when stocking their shelves.
It is one thing for our marketing people to rebut the inaccurate and superficial logic surrounding food miles. But as consumers around the world battle with carbon charges, it will be much harder for our marketers to explain why New Zealand food exports – this country’s largest source of emissions – were largely exempt.
