Departing head of the Climate Change Commission says emissions reductions here should not be blocked because other countries are worse

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.