By Gareth Vaughan
Climate Change Commission Chairman Rod Carr says he's optimistic about New Zealand's transition towards a zero carbon future despite the massive challenges we face, including from inflation.
Carr spoke to interest.co.nz in the latest episode of the Of Interest Podcast.
In the podcast he discusses the impact on inflation from moves to combat climate change, and from climate change itself, and what can be done to mitigate it. This includes the challenges from so-called "fossilflation," "greenflation," and "climateflation."
In a world that now has high consumer price inflation I ask Carr whether he's concerned this may slowdown efforts to combat climate change. For example, by reducing petrol excise duty and road user charges to give consumers some relief from high petrol prices while we are trying to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, does the Government risk countering measures such as clean car rebates and cash for clunkers designed to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles?
"I would not underestimate the challenge that humanity faces in decarbonising our livelihoods and lifestyles. The fossil fuel technology that has been developed and deployed largely since the middle of the 19th century is incredibly powerful as a source of energy. And we have embedded that in our civilisation, in the way we earn our livings, and how we live our lives. And that transition is going to be costly. And that transition needs to be done with urgency. And the consequence is that relative prices will change. The price of high emission lifestyles will rise, and the vulnerability of high emission livelihoods will increase," Carr says.
We also discuss the big global electrification push and what this is doing to demand for key mined metals and minerals required in the green transition such as copper, lithium and cobalt.
Then there's the rising number of severe weather events, and the impact this has on food production, supply and prices.
"The major cause of the consumer price inflation we see today is not climate change or our response to it. The amount of pricing of carbon emissions in the global economy is modest and has only risen slightly over the last decade. The real challenge is that in our response first to the global financial crisis in 2008, and then more recently to the pandemic in 2020, the world's central banks, supported by the world's governments, have created an enormous amount of very low cost credit. And it is that abundance of low cost credit that has put pressure on the demand side of consumer pricing, while the pandemic itself has constrained supply. And that has been compounded in some product supplies, particularly in agriculture products, by the war in Ukraine. So don't over interpret climate as the driver of the current decades high levels of consumer price inflation," says Carr.
So what does all this mean for fiscal policy, or the Government using spending and tax policies to influence the economy, and the Reserve Bank's efforts to use monetary policy to maintain price stability and support maximum sustainable employment?
Carr says he remains optimistic about the transition to a zero carbon future because there are "very real opportunities" for NZ in this transition. NZ farmers, he says, must face the challenge of showing and leading the world how to create protein and carbohydrates with year-on-year reductions in environmental impact.
"And that if we can understand those opportunities that make for a better, cleaner, greener and healthier society for all New Zealanders by 2050, where we reduce gross emissions from how we earn our livings and how we live our lives, we will see that as an opportunity not a threat. We will see fiscal policy as an investment not a cost, we will see the new jobs that are created as being more sustainable and less vulnerable than the old tasks which we are no longer fulfilling," says Carr.
"And I think that's what the optimism comes from, is from the opportunity that is real. New Zealand is not soldiering alone on this campaign. The world recognises the challenge. Other countries are already seeing and seizing the opportunities. We see it in the way in which the UK has developed offshore wind which it now sells to the world, we see it in Norway that has developed some of the most advanced infrastructure for supporting electrification which it now sells to the world, we see it in China in its advances in the solar panel technology where it is now the world's largest global manufacturer of solar arrays. So there are opportunities here to be not as I said at the bleeding edge, but now that the die is cast, seeing and seizing the opportunities that must be developed to create the more sustainable, low emissions future within the next 30 years."
Carr is also a former Chairman, Deputy Governor and Acting Governor of the Reserve Bank. The Climate Change Commission provides advice to the Government on how NZ can meet its climate goals, and monitors the Government's progress.
88 Comments
Your first part is correct. Your second, isn't.
We are in overshoot; climate is merely one - and not even the most immediate one - of the multiple, exponentially-increasing problems we face. Don't confuse - or use to deny - Chicken Little with the Limits to Growth.
Despite a fondness for coal China's per capita emissions are still very low and with a low birthrate they're actually likely to do very well.
On the other hand New Zealand will have to pedal very hard as our GHG emissions per capita are twice that of China and our population is growing rapidly due to easy immigration.
"There is never a need to get worked up about things you can't control." - Aurelius
At the end of the day, we need to focus on the things we can control. Reducing our own emissions is one of those things that we can control. It's a small step when compared to the steps others could take, but it's a step that we can take ourselves. We don't have to wait for anyone. So let's take it.
We can, but you have to justify it on the basis that a huge number of people are already struggling and there is not a lot of detail around about what the actual consumer level costs of all this stuff is going to be. That problem won't go away any time soon, someone is going to have to front up with the detail at some point, and appeals to pathos about the world we leave or grandkids or some such won't make it any easier to make ends meet.
Or when the wealthy stop buying beach front property (there's a clue).... Maybe we should focus on managing the effects of climate change rather than preventing it? I mean, we won't have to do anything for a long time with that approach and it accepts the reality that most of the world aren't going to stop burning coal.
One can only wonder why old folk who won't live to see the worst effects of climate change would buy beachfront property. Just can't imagine why that might be.
But whichever ones do live long enough to be troubled by sea level rises will surely have their hands out, that we can be sure of.
When looking at the issue from your self centered view point maybe.
When you zoom out and look at the issue from a geological perspective we are racing at light speed to wards another mass extinction event.
This issue is bigger than your human tendacy towards self importance. And the changes needed are going to take decades to resolve.
The challenge of course is resolving the scale and pace of change needed, with your view that when you look out of your window everything is fine.. Others have more than me, look at those dirty Chinese! so why bother.
It doesn't matter, this change is happening whether you want it or not. Either we embrace it, and navigate the worst effects, or a combination Finite resources, debt systems, weather events force us to decrease our populations to the point were we are living with more balance.
I was in London 2 weeks ago. The ULEZ zone is a good initiative and I estimate 75% of cars/taxi's/trucks are electric (it's $50 a day for an ICE vehicle otherwise). I get it, it works. It's just not scalable to the extent the CC fanatics desire, not even close. The cab driver was saying his EV cab cost him 70k quid and has a 90 minute battery. By the time he gets to central london he has an hour of charge, then needs to stop and put 90 minutes of charge in. So pretty much he operates 50/50 driving to charging. Fares have had to go up a lot, this is where inflation is coming from. It's largely self-inflicted.
Sounds like complete nonsense, unless he's trying to run a cab business with a worn out nissan leaf that cost 70k because there was a bag of white powder included with the deal.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/electric-london-black-cab-l….
Well it is a nissan leaf based platform, but the price is about half that, and 187 mile range is 6+ hours driving at an average 30mph, which is probably optimistic for central London. Chances are you'd get a full 8 hour day without needing to visit a charger. At least while its newish, after 5+ years not so much. Pity they went with a nissan leaf based platform, they still suck.
And if they ditched their weird taxi licencing rules they could buy any number of not-a-london-black-cab EVs for GBP 60k that don't have the limitations of the leaf based platform or the high costs of whatever other nonsense platform (bmw i3?) the other electric black cabs are built on.
No Pragmatist, that's not the cab. I didn't see any of those, It was this https://levc.com/tx-taxi/overview/ which if you bother to read it has a pure electric range of 65 miles which ties back exactly to what he told me. I'm pretty sure his wasn't hybrid either, or that it wasn't enabled.
I can see no reason he would make any of it up. Also real world range of EV's is no where near the manufacturers claims.
The real world range of an EV, like an ICE, depends on where and how it it driven. But yes, on the open road which is where range matters for most they almost never get published range. In the city, they will often exceed the range figure published, if you don't mash the go pedal to the floorboards.
I don't think its really fair to tar all EV with the crap that one company puts out due to what is effectivey a legislated monopoly. A Tesla Model Y in the UK is about the same price as that horrid black cab, and it will do 420km of city driving easily, and if you hit a supercharger will charge 20% to 80% in 35mins. You're effectively trying to say all ICEs suck, because a hillman hunter was a POS.
Reminds me of this. Tragic and avoidable.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7aGSOl8lB5txGM2mbXm7qo?si=sHSaTjUQTWCc…
I guess it depends whether you believe in capitalism or socialism. If you want to socialise the environment then you will probably need to take a big cut as NZ has far above the average per capita emissions.
I'd prefer the capitalist approach where people pay to destroy the environment (although maybe with some redistribution of that payment).
Not to the 'cost'.
To the actual 'doing'.
We need to be well beyond that cost thing now - given that debt is keystroked into existence by folk who have no idea if it can be underwritten, why would we continue to 'value' real activities in what is an increasing fairy-tale?
Given that a reasonable proportion of their so called initiatives are half witted, I can see that many of the governments efforts are only going to make our CO2 emissions a lot worse.
- Electric cars when all our renewable power generation is totally committed and extra demand can only be provided by fossil fuels.
- Using renewable power generation to produce hydrogen that will be exported to Japan and ? instead of using it to displace our non renewable power generation
- Doing nothing to encourage house hold solar power generation
- encouraging power hungry data storage centers that in effect sell our power cheaply to overseas organizations for endeavors that add little else to our economy.
- continuing to flood the country with low grade immigrants that will just increase our emissions proportionately
-doing nothing to use our plentiful un tapped hydro resources to replace fossil fuels.
- Replacing gas and other fossil fueled process heat installations, that produce process heat with a conversion efficiency of 75-80%; with electric boilers that, while close to 100% efficient must be ultimately fueled with power generated from fossil fuels at a conversion efficiency of 35%. That is, until we have 100 % renewable power generation the net effect of these will double our Co2 emissions. The rate at which we are squandering our new renewable power sources as above, it will be a long time before we can get any where near 100% renewable power generation.
- I thought we had plenty of spare electricity at night to charge your car? The spot prices certainly suggest that.
- That renewable power being used to generate hydrogen is from a power station not connected to the National grid isn't it?
- They are using our "un tapped hydro resources" to replace fossil fuels with electric cars and hydrogen aren't they?
-Do you think that the water in the lakes will be spilled into the rivers at night, unless we use it for charging cars. I don't think so. It will be saved like electricity in a battery until it can be used. (not withstanding satisfying minimum river flow rates. Water going over a spillway is relatively rare and considered a bit of a failure in managing our energy resources)
-Whether it is connected to the grid or not is irrelevant. It very easily can and should be connected and that power being used to generate hydrogen or charge EV's is best devoted to replacing fossil fuel generated power and should only be considered after we have achieved 100% renewable generation.
Hybrids are a far better option at this stage, as they make no demand on the comparatively inefficiently generated fossil fuel generated marginal power sources. Besides which we have very limited supplies of lithium at this stage (as per just about daily reports now) and it is better used in hybrids. (this shortfall is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it improves)
Aren’t they talking about pumped hydro storage? Doesn’t that imply that we have excess electricity?
My understanding is that it isn’t easily connected to the grid. And I imagine rolling out high voltage transmission lines over peoples very expensive land is not an easy thing to do these days.
I would say the best use of lithium are plug in hybrids with maybe 50km battery range.
Most importantly: ignoring the ETS. Their whole report is pure crap.
They can do all the social engineering they want, but if you have a binding cap on emissions, it all amounts to nothing.
I don’t own a car, but the fact that the Commission wants to see “more walking” makes me want to buy one just to give Rod the middle finger.
"In 2018 the Nobel Prize committee for economics gave the award to Yale’s William Nordhaus for work on the economics of climate change that showed, among other things, both that aggressive emission reductions were costlier than doing nothing and that the optimal course of action would be to reduce emissions to only slightly below the business-as-usual case. As Robert Murphy and I explained in a study published by the Fraser Institute last year, Nordhaus’ analysis does not support the 1.5°C policy or anything close to it.
In addition, we now have the results of a survey of climate economists conducted by three economists from Germany and Denmark. They identified 2100 experts who work in climate economics and sent us all questionnaires. They received 445 responses from economists in 40 countries. We were asked to give our judgment on a group of questions, most importantly our opinion on the “social cost of carbon” or SCC. The SCC represents the estimated economic and social costs associated with a tonne of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from use of fossil fuels.
The survey found that the median estimate in US$ of the SCC was $40 in 2020, $70 in 2030 and $100 in 2050. That translates into roughly $52, $90 and $130 in C$, which is on or below our current Canadian carbon tax path. For comparison it also translates into about 11 cents per litre on the current price of gas, rising to 28 cents in 2030."
https://financialpost.com/opinion/junk-science-week-net-zero-edition-ro…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7V4U9gW4AITIsp?format=png&name=small
And you can reduce Nordhaus ad infinitum to the point where all humans are infinitely rich but ecologically dead.
But that's OK, because we only added up the income column.
That's not Nobel level intellect; it's at best skewed propaganda, at worst outright fabrication. (And it isn't really a Nobel Prize, is it? Started/sponsored by a bank, if I recall correctly...)
Economists - and Carr moved in this circle, remember, this is some epiphany, if somewhat incomplete (at least publicly) - fail to add up the red column. Or even acknowledge its existence. To ignore is to be ignorant. Choose your dogs, choose your fleas....
Choose life.
Choose a job.
Choose a career.
Choose a family,
Choose a fcuking big television
Choose washing machines, cars,
Compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol
And dental insurance.
Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments.
Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage.
Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase
In a range of fcuking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who you
Are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing
Sprit-crushing ga me shows
Stuffing fcuking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all,
Pishing you last in a miserable home
Nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish,
Fcuked-up brats
You have spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future. Choose life.
Exactly. Why would a Canadian economics lecturer be posting on a NZ financial advice site?
As of 2005, Atlas Network had received $440,000 from ExxonMobil,[57] and has received at least $825,000 USD from the tobacco company Philip Morris.[58] Of Atlas Network partners, 57% in the United States had received funding from the tobacco industry.[58] Atlas Network has received funding from Koch family foundations.[4] Corporate funding accounted for less than 2% of Atlas Network's total donations in 2020. Atlas Network partners have received tobacco-related funding in the past, although "fossil-fuel and tobacco interests" have provided less than 1% of Atlas’ funding over the last two decades.[8][59]
Pretty disappointing Keith. Just ignore William Nordhaus and his Nobel Prize winning work. Economic growth dwarfs any climate change projections. A point worth discussing on a financial website perhaps or should we just stick to chicken littlism? Why crash your economy when the IPCC's own economic impact projections are so small?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7V4U9gW4AITIsp?format=png&name=small
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0040162520304157-gr19.jpg
or the IPCC "Estimates agree on the size of the impact (small relative to economic growth), and 17 of the 20 impact estimates shown in Figure 10-1 are negative."
10 — Key Economic Sectors and Services (ipcc.ch)
"Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative, but common portrayals of devastation are unfounded. Scenarios set out under the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) show human welfare will likely increase to 450% of today's welfare over the 21st century. Climate damages will reduce this welfare increase to 434%.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157
Profile,
I am well aware of William Nordhaus's work.
Also Ross McKitrick's work.
But the way your post was structured, both I and possibly agnostium thought the 'I' in the quote was a self reference to yourself, leading to the conclusion that you were indeed Ross McKitrick, using 'profile' as a pen name.
I now realise that this was not your intention.
Actually, I have considerable admiration for Ross McKitrick's work in illuminating the hockey stick shenanigans.
KeithW
This you-tube video (in German) and an article is likely to be of interest to you. Article is very technical for someone like me. By Dr. l Wilhelm Windisch of the Technical University of Munich. Its old 1991 but you'll be able to analyse it as its heavy duty agricultural stuff. https://www.youtube.com/ Not sure how you get hold of the paper. I found an English translation but off AN Other website. There may be one on TUMs website but I couldn't locate it. Thought I might send the reference to your Uni email address but if intercepted you may get cancelled.
Change Management 101, you need to create a sense of crisis to effect lasting change - it's all so formulaic. Academia faithfully follows for the funding (also predictable). I have been around long enough to learn to recognise it but for our youth who are triggered by a pro-noun and require safe spaces, they are sitting ducks.
As I said earlier, the wealthy are paying record amounts for beachfront property and you know they have no concerns about rising sea levels.
https://news.yahoo.com/6-real-estate-sales-shattered-151625258.html#:~:….
It’s doesn’t have to be as painful as people make out. There are a lot of vested interests on both sides blowing up the difficulty. Right wingers want to make it politically unpopular, left wingers set stupid goals.
Like animals. There is no mitigation so put it on the back burner until there is. Electric cars - better than petrol in every way - supercharge that (literally). Industrial heat - that’s another easy win, it just requires more infrastructure.
We will be better off when we dump petrol because then we won’t have to pay for petrol as a country. Yes we will have to pay more for infrastructure but we will be paying ourselves not some petro state like Russia.
We may be able to dump petrol but can we truly dump oil? Clyde Dam is renewing is 6 transformers. Each transformer needs 36,000 litres of oil.
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/central-otago/transformer%E2%80%99s-epic-…
Thanks climate change CO2 homeopathy believers.
Wind running at 3% of capacity on a cool night. Intermittent times.
"Transpower has called for power companies to increase their generation to reduce the risk of power cuts this evening."
Lay the blame where it's due, eh?
Governments - all of them - have advocated growth, both of population and consumption. They did so within a Bounded System (New Zealand). And the consumption was from a Bounded System (the planet). And the growth attempted was exponential.
Only one way that was going to end. Limits to Growth, here we are. 50 years foretold, decades of ridicule/avoidance but here we are. Still with deniers and avoiders and not-I-said-the-little-red-hens upthread.
Why, Profile? Same question I'd have asked of Lord Haw Haw in a different era.
It would be nice to have an integrated population policy, akin to the Productivity Comissions recommendations. Whether we allow our population to swell, remain at current levels or decline will clearly have a profound impact on the quality of life our children enjoy if our goal is to manage emissions downwards. We are a very high emissions country per capita but if we can manage our population back may substantially offset our footprint. Whereas on our current trajectory Bessy will have to be turned into hamburgers even if we all buy EVs.
As long as you count the global greening phenomenon. :)
Greening of the Earth and its drivers
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
The Government has never wholeheartedly embraced effective CO2 reduction strategies because it is political suicide to tell people to do without some things. That is why we are doomed to fry. Some extra-governmental influences will help (the rising insurance costs of coastal/flood prone land, trade restrictions on importing products from energy subsidising countries) but the substantial policy responses from Government will remain elusive. Just look at the pathetic waffle that has been produced so far.
Comments like "doomed to fry" are pathetic waffle.Though they do highlight the ignorance out there.
"Brian O’Neill, the director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Maryland at College Park, has a clearer view of this question than most of us. He was one of the lead architects of the five different futures—called “shared socioeconomic pathways,” or SSPs—developed for the latest IPCC report.
...The path we seem to be on, at least for now, looks closer to SSP 2, which the authors call “Middle of the Road.” This is a world in which “social, economic, and technological trends do not shift markedly from historical patterns.” A world, in other words, in which we do not heroically rise to the occasion to fix things, but in which we also don’t get much worse than we already are.
...So what does this SSP 2 world feel like? It depends, O’Neill told me, on who you are. One thing he wants to make very clear is that all the paths, even the hottest ones, show improvements in human well-being on average.Climate change will ruin individual lives and kill individual people, and it may even drag down rates of improvement in human well-being, but on average, he said, “we’re generally in the climate-change field not talking about futures that are worse than today.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/11/how-bad-will-climat…
OK What does Brian O'Neill actually say? The recent IPCC's sixth report on the science of climate change included O'Neill as a co-author. It finds:
Drought has slowed the global growth in farming productivity, needed to feed growing populations. Ocean warming and acidification have damaged fisheries and shellfish aquaculture. Storm surge and flooding, worsened by rising seas, are damaging coastal cities. Although the influence of climate on migration and human conflict is murky, severe weather is already displacing populations.
“It’s a red flag for the future,” says Brian O’Neill, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute and a report co-author (https://www.science.org/content/article/un-panel-warns-of-global-warmin…).
"A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 375, Issue 6584." Don't mistake an opinion piece for peer review.
What does his most recent published research say in regard to SSP 2? - "The path we seem to be on, at least for now, looks closer to SSP 2, which the authors call “Middle of the Road.”
"Note, however, that the lower bound of the ensemble trajectories (determining the upper bound of the projected years by which the level is reached) under SSP1-2.6 does not warm to 1.5 ∘C for the whole century" - aka known as inter-glacial warming and a similar rate of warming that we have seen since the Little Ice Age and pre WW2. Where do you see "frying" here?
Climate model projections from the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) of CMIP6
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