Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA), the national organisation campaigning for an end to coal mining and coal use, says Resources Minister Shane Jones needs to understand the world has moved on from the industrial revolution, and coal – and siding with the dinosaurs won’t do his grandchildren any favours.

“While Fonterra’s getting out of coal as fast as possible because its international customers are demanding it, Caveman Shane wants to take us back to the dark ages,” said CANA spokesperson Jenny Campbell.

Te Kuha mine, turned down by the Environment Court but said to be a top pick for the government’s fast-track process. Photo: Neil Silverwood

“Relaxing rules for new coal mines in the face of increasing climate impacts is unlikely  to be something New Zealanders will throw their weight behind. People across the country are still recovering from flood disasters: some from more than a year ago, and some just last week; farmers are suffering from a crippling drought and crying out for rain.

“This Minister, who doesn’t care about killing kiwi and never met a mine he didn’t like, clearly got his riding instructions in his four-hour meeting with mining lobbyists in January. The world has moved on from the 1800’s, here’s a climate crisis to tackle, and he needs to catch up.

“Between this and the fast-track Bill, this Government is showing it’s fast becoming an environmental vandal and climate criminal.”

“The International Energy Agency has been very clear: we don’t need any new coal mines.  And there is no such thing as good coal – whether it comes from Rotowaro or Indonesia, this stuff is a climate killer – and it also kills kids and vulnerable older people through its pollutants.”

CANA questioned who the Minister thought were the customers for all these new coal mines he wants to open.

“Is the Government planning to reverse the planned phaseout of low and medium heat coal boilers by 2037? That would further ruin the environmental reputation of New Zealand businesses in our key overseas markets,” she asked?

“Shane Jones may only care about doing the bidding of the lobbyists and donors whose interests he serves,” concluded Jenny Campbell

“But our children and our country deserve better. They deserve better than a Minister who specialises in aggressive ignorance. They deserve better than a Government that is selling our country off to the miners, the drillers and the despoilers. They deserve better than Shane Jones, and they deserve better than a climate change-fuelled future tied to fossil fuels and failure.”

The post Shane Jones throws a lump of coal to the mining lobbyists appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

This week the government gave the thumbs up for Fonterra to keep burning coal for another 15 years, and for NZ Steel to continue burning it past 2050.

Our biggest polluters are still calling the shots on coal.

Wait. Isn’t it the government’s job to set policy for industry to follow, not the other way around?
Yes. Yet this week, as it released the Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP), there was an opportunity for the government to take meaningful steps toward reducing our reliance on coal.  But it didn’t.

We want to give big ups to those ministry folk who put the 343 page document together. All those words sound encouraging, but they don’t distract us from the reality that our civilisation and all that we hold dear on this planet are at enormous risk from global heating and this document is the government’s first response.

Urgent transformative change is needed. We can’t find that in the ERP.

We can’t even find the word “cow”, not even once. Where is the plan to deal with Fonterra, our biggest polluter? Where is the plan to radically transform agriculture, the cause of half of our entire emissions? Too many cows in inappropriate places like the stony Canterbury Plains have decimated Canterbury’s braided rivers, poisoned the native freshwater creatures, polluted aquifers and put human health at risk.

All of that is absent.

Cut the number of cows and you’ve gone a long way to solving the coal problem too, since 95% of the milk produced in NZ is dried, largely with coal, and exported, mainly by Fonterra. Then Bathurst can get on with moving their workers to meaningful jobs to build, not destroy, a low carbon economy.

But no, Bathurst is planning a new coal mine down south and their biggest customer Fonterra is ready-and-waiting. So much for letting the industry voluntarily phase out of coal. Strong government direction is needed – and that’s missing in the ERP.

Bathurst Resources Ltd (BRL) doesn’t have much of a track record. John Key was present to open its office in Wellington in 2012 – along with hundreds of protestors against its plans to mine the Denniston Plateau. But it’s not even a New Zealand company, after delisting from the NZ stock exchange three years after opening here, supposedly due to the dismally low share price.

Bathurst had to apply to the Overseas Investment Office to expand its Canterbury Coal Mine. The OIO gave it that green light, despite the fact it had breached a raft of consents by already expanding into unconsented territory. That closed last year after a dispute with ECAN over the consents that would have seen protracted legal processes Bathurst clearly couldn’t afford.

An Extinction Rebellion blockade highlighted that it had extracted five times more coal than its consent allowed.

Don’t expect this company to do the right thing for the planet.

As for the farmers, they’re on the front line, acutely affected by the changing climate. Farmers in the Waikato have been suffering from a severe drought – a longer drought than normal, they say. Normally the rain has come in by now, but not this year, one of the hottest and driest summers on record, caused at least in part by climate change.

Those farmers are now getting a handout from the government to support them through this difficult period. Support is needed – most importantly to transition away from the carbon-intensive system that is making the tough times more frequent.

The last thing farmers need is their industry’s refusal to change. But thanks to massive lobbying from the agriculture sector farmers are still excluded from the Emissions Trading Scheme and so have not paid a cent towards the ERP.  No Matter! On the very day the government lets them off the hook for paying the cost of their pollution, it was announced the taxpayer would be footing the bill to help them deal with the impact of climate change. You can’t make this stuff up.

NZ Steel

In another nod to industry the ERP allows NZ Steel to keep burning coal up to 2050 – this despite the push elsewhere towards low carbon steel manufacture and NZ Steel referring to steel-without-coal a “holy grail still at least a decade away”. One decade = 2032, not 2050.

Here are three points about steel:

1. You can make steel without coal, you just need the political will. Sweden’s Hybrit, with help from the EU Innovation Fund, will have commercially available coal-free steel by 2026. Sweden’s high percentage of hydroelectricity makes it a sitter for this kind of innovation – sound familiar? Even NZ Steel’s parent company Bluescope is working on low carbon steel manufacture in Port Kembla, Australia. It’s high time coal industry lobbyists stop denying the obvious (no, the world does not need your West Coast coking coal!) and get on with helping coal workers into much needed jobs to help secure all our futures.
2. The cool thing about steel is its 100% recyclability. We do OK in Aotearoa, recycling around 80% of our steel even though it has to be shipped overseas, but there is so much more that we can do in the recycling department. However, as with so many other manufacturing industries here, government must learn from the industry experts in order to make useful policy choices. For example, due to all sorts of technical reasons including the unique way NZ steel is made using thermal rather than coking coal, it currently makes sense to recycle But with low emissions inserted into company’s bottom line in place of profit we have a new, exciting story to tell. Yes please!
3. Stop using so much steel in construction. It’s been called “the concrete of the future” – Cross laminated Timber (CLT), developed at Canterbury University, is cost competitive to concrete and steel in low rise buildings (up to six stories) . One cubic meter of CLT can absorb one tonne of CO2. What’s stopping us?

Genesis Energy

Genesis is our other biggest coal user. It’s embarrassing that Genesis Energy still uses coal. CANA shamed them into stopping importing Indonesian coal 2014 when coal workers were being laid off down the road at Rotowaro.  Yet today Genesis, a 51% government owned company, is importing record amounts of coal.

We won’t go into the tangled mess behind what is now an electricity system that makes enormous profit off the backs of our forefathers’ publicly built electricity network. But Huntly coal has to go. My friend, currently working on huge wind and solar projects in Australia said our electricity system would be so easy to fix – he means make entirely renewable. In his view we don’t need Lake Onslow. Replace Huntly coal with planned, managed, distributed electricity. However, it looks as though the neoliberal capitalist model is sacrosanct. The market rules. But if we’re serious about the climate emergency a coherent public electricity utility has to be our priority.

Summing Up

A 2037 date to end coal in NZ is not fast enough. It ensures our biggest polluters get to continue dumping millions more tonnes of coal into a choking atmosphere than their fair share. CANA’s proposed date of 2027 to end coal use, instead of the government’s 2037, gives industry plenty of time to ensure that all workers involved in the mining and transport of coal get the training and support to transition into jobs needed for adapting to a climate changed economy – and there are plenty.

CANA’s 2014-15 report Jobs After Coal notes that Coal miners’ transferable skills are essential for helping build the economy we desperately need if we are to survive – like fixing our low lying railway network, building flood defences where possible in our low lying coastal cities, reorganising the way we grow food and so many other areas.

We would love to bring you good news folks! Well, climate change bumped Ukraine off top place in the news last week.

TBH, while the government gives the thumbs up to Fonterra in the ERP we have to give the ERP a great big thumbs down.

Our thumbs up goes to the climate activists who shut down Bathurst’s Takitimu coal mine recently, injecting colour and creativity into the heart of Mordor for an entire day.

Cheers!

Rosemary and the CANA team

The post Our biggest polluters are still calling the shots on coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

WELLINGTON PROTEST: Midland Park, outside Fonterra’s office at 157 Lambton Quay, at 1 pm on Friday 28 May.

New Zealand’s largest company, Fonterra, is the major culprit in New Zealand’s most critical environmental and climate problems.

Fonterra, and its farmers, profit from dumping their pollution and waste, for free, into our atmosphere, water and soil.

This is the cause of worsening climate change, unswimmable rivers and undrinkable waters, along with poor animal welfare, tropical deforestation, loss of amenity and biodiversity, and health risks to Kiwis, from premature and breastfeeding infants, to adults risking gastrointestinal illness, including colorectal cancer.

Put simply, Fonterra is at the centre of a web of destruction caused by too many cows, in the wrong places.

Between 1990 and 2019, dairy cattle numbers increased by 82% nationally, from 3.4 million to 6.3 million. Dairy cattle increased almost tenfold in Canterbury (from 113,000 to 1.2 million).

The thin, dry and stony soils of Canterbury, the Mackenzie Basin and Otago are totally unsuitable for intensive dairying, which exists  only through unsustainable inputs of irrigation water, synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and imported feed such as palm kernel.

Photo: Duncan Brown

Intensive dairying also produces copious quantities of two dangerous climate-changing gases, methane and nitrous oxide, in addition to the carbon dioxide produced by Fonterra’s powdered milk factories, which burn about 500,000 tonnes of coal every year.

The waste water from those factories is dumped onto neighbouring, cow-free, “ghost farms”, and is so polluting that farmers and their neighbours dare not drink from their wells, nor eat from their veggie gardens.

New Zealand’s animal overstocking is so bad, that New Zealand risks having trade barriers imposed on us by more environmentally-aware countries, especially since agriculture remains outside the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Fonterra’s toxic rip-off of New Zealand’s environment and people must stop!

We call on Fonterra and its farmer owners to reduce cow numbers by 50% nationwide, and reduce them to 1990 levels in the worst-affected regions of Canterbury, the Mackenzie Basin and Otago.

We also call on Fonterra to stop burning coal by 2027, not a decade later as it currently proposes.

AUCKLAND PROTEST: Victoria Park, cnr Halsey & Fanshawe St, opposite Fonterra HQ at 109 Fanshawe St, at 3 pm on Friday 28 May.

WELLINGTON PROTEST: Midland Park, outside Fonterra’s office at 157 Lambton Quay, at 1 pm on Friday 28 May.

To join the nationwide protest movement, contact your local elected officials, newspapers and trade unions; post on social media and support groups such as:

Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA):  www.coalaction.org.nz

Aotearoa Water Action (AWA): www.aotearoawateraction.org.nz

Extinction Rebellion (XR):  extinctionrebellion.nz/christchurch/water-campaign/

The post Protest Fonterra, New Zealand’s Worst Polluter, this Friday, 28th May 2021 appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

The Government’s latest efforts to tackle emissions from coal are not the kind of bold action required to get New Zealand onto a net zero emissions pathway, and disappointingly leaves the door open for gas, says Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

While the group welcomed today’s announcement of a ban on new coal boilers from the end of this year, allowing bigger users to carry on using coal as process heat for another 16 years (to 2037) is way too late.

“The second round of grants announced to reduce coal use, while welcome, would save around 150,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, but Fonterra pumps out half a million tonnes every year to make its coal-fired milk powder exports,” said Cindy Baxter a CANA spokesperson.

CANA is particularly concerned about language in the Government’s announcement that still leaves the door wide open to gas, where it says “An option proposed is to also prohibit other new fossil fuel boilers where suitable alternative technology exists and it is economically viable.”

“Fonterra has already stated in its submission to the Climate Change Commission that it wants to maintain its use of gas while it phases out coal, but gas is also a problem: from production to burning, gas leaks, and if you count those fugitive emissions, there’s little difference from coal.”

CANA calls on the government to impose an immediate ban on new coal-fired boilers, rather than waiting until the end of the year, and to bring forward the date of coal phase-out to 2027.

CORRECTION: This press release has been amended. 

Fonterra got in touch with us to say that it will not be building any new gas boilers:  its submission to the Climate Change Commission stressed that it wanted to keep using the gas that it already burns while it makes the switch from coal.

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Bathurst Resource’s planned extension of its Canterbury coal mine, shut down by protesters this morning, is proof that dairy companies like Fonterra are not moving out of coal fast enough, says Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA).

“We stand in solidarity with the Extinction Rebellion protesters who have blocked the Canterbury Coal mine this morning: Fonterra should be ashamed that its failure to shift off coal is the reason Bathurst wants to expand this mine,” said Cindy Baxter, of CANA.

“The developed world must stop using coal by 2030 if we want to keep global warming to 1.5˚C under the Paris Agreement, and this should include Fonterra and the rest of the dairy industry. Fonterra’s our second-largest user of coal, used to dry milk: we wonder if our export markets are aware of the pollution behind this product.”

“Not only should the mine extension not go ahead, but Environment Canterbury should shut it down altogether due to Bathurst’s ongoing and extensive breaches of its consents, described by a Judge as a “systemic failure to comply” when he fined the company for yet another breach in January this year.

Over the three years from 2017-2020, Bathurst has been fined a total of around $38,000 for allowing runoff to flow into a local stream 28 times, a stream that is home to a nationally threatened species, the Canterbury mudfish.

ECAN was supposed to hear Bathurst’s application, but this has been delayed. The company had repeatedly failed to provide the Selwyn District Council with information it had requested in order to fully assess the impact of the expanded mine footprint.

In 2017, the Selwyn District Council discovered, in response to local complaints around an increase in traffic, dust and vehicle movements, that Bathurst was mining more coal than it had consent for, and requested that the company apply for that consent.  In her report, planning consultant Janette Dovey stated:

“I was engaged to process that on behalf of SDC in late February 2018. During that process, it became evident that the increase in heavy vehicle movements was directly related to the increase in the volume of coal being extracted, and that the increased Mine production was not consented, with additional non-compliances being applicable.”

“Bathurst appears to have recognised its inability to operate safely and legally to the extent that its new application to increase the mine is riddled with ‘retrospective’ applications to bring its previous breaches within the law. The company is making a nonsense of the regulatory process and ECAN should shut it down,” said Baxter.

 “It’s 2020 and it’s time Aotearoa got out of coal: this mine going ahead shows Fonterra is a laggard, despite all the nice words and membership of so-called sustainable industry groups.”

The post Fonterra should be ashamed of causing coal mine expansion: CANA supports activists appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Please accept this personal submission on the Covid-19 RMA fast-track consenting bill.

Since 2009 I have made 25 evidence-based submissions copied to all Members of Parliament on an existential threat to future human civilisation represented by human-induced climate disruption. These submissions contained 94,089 words that regrettably were almost completely disregarded by MPs – other than (occasional) polite acknowledgements of receipt.

I based these 25 submissions on my previous work experience that has included:
– a PhD in atmospheric physics (VUW, 1968);
– as a DSIR scientist;
– as a secretariat member of the former NZ Commission For the Future reporting on various future contingencies including climate disaster (1982);
– as a former health science senior tutor at the Central Institute of Technology.

Recent climate modelling suggests that planet Earth’s climate is substantially more sensitive to human-induced carbon emissions than previously believed.

According to this modelling, climate sensitivity – the amount of warming projected from a doubling of CO2 levels from preindustrial 280 parts per million – shows a potential upward shift from 30C to 50C. This revised projection has shocked many veteran climate scientists previously accustomed to a lesser climate sensitivity of around 30C since the 1980s.

The modelling results from more than 20 institutions are being compiled for the sixth assessment report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due to be released in 2021.

Previous IPCC reports have tended to assume that atmospheric clouds have a neutral effect on the Earth’s climate because warming and cooling feedbacks would tend to cancel each other out. However over the past year, evidence is growing that the net effect of clouds will be a warming effect, based on finer resolution computer modelling and more advanced cloud microphysics.

While acknowledging continued uncertainty, many climate scientists are increasingly acknowledging that modelling may be underestimating the threat of human-induced climate change by not fully taking into account various tipping points within the Earth’s biosphere.

According to Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “the more we learn, the more fragile the Earth’s climate system seems to be and the faster we need to move. It gives even stronger argument to step out of this Covid-19 crisis and move full speed towards decarbonising the economy.”

Suggested further reading:     Jonathan Watts in The Guardian, 13 June 2020

Conclusion

My conclusion, taking into account Johan Rockstrom’s conclusion above, is that the proposed Covid-19 RMA fast-track consenting bill is an inadequate response to the absolute imperative to rapidly decarbonise the New Zealand economy.

The Covid-19 pandemic is undoubtedly causing grief for many New Zealanders through its effects on public health and the New Zealand economy (unemployment etc). It does not, however, represent an existential threat to future human civilisation that human-induced climate disruption clearly does.

Accordingly I suggest that the Government through the proposed Covid-19 RMA fast-track consenting bill use the opportunity provided by the Covid-19 pandemic to expedite the decarbonisation of the New Zealand economy.

I recognise that the construction of bike and walking trails etc are consistent with this goal but are very small steps. The proposed expansion of SH1 to ‘increase capacity’ however is inconsistent with decarbonisation.

In summary, my view is that the proposed Covid-19 RMA fast-track consenting bill is a missed opportunity to rapidly decarbonise the New Zealand economy.

Yours sincerely

Dr George Preddey

george.preddey@xtra.co.nz

The post Guest Post from Dr. George Preddey, Physicist appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Here is a range of views that our organising committee recommend as interesting and informative:

Russel Norman, Greenpeace: “A sellout of monumental proportions… we have to go back to the streets because this government has now failed on climate change… what other choice do people have when the government rolls and adopts the polluter’s plan?”

Simon Wilson: “Not good enough, but still good… Jacinda Ardern is right to hail the new agreement. It’s a world-first and should, could, be the start of something big… right now the targets don’t matter as much as the process. This is an emergency and we’re just at the start of it.”

Rod Oram: “A turning point 20 years in the making, bringing us into line with more than 20 other jurisdictions around the world (that) have set similar long term climate goals, and established independent climate commissions to oversee the carbon budgets and policy … Above all, such systems give business the required long term certainty.”

Extinction Rebellion: “Either we make history, or we are history… we must draw the line on fossil fuels before it’s too late.”

The post The Zero-Carbon Act and the amended Emissions Trading Scheme appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

“Better profits, fewer cows – dairy farmers can do it now, Jeanette Fitzsimons tells MPs

Dairy farmers could increase their profits and reduce their methane emissions by 20 per cent at the same time, right now, according to Green Party activist and former leader Jeanette Fitzsimons. All it would take, she told the Parliamentary Select Committee hearing submissions in Auckland into the Zero Carbon Bill, is to reduce the dairy herd and improve existing feed practices.

In a hard-hitting submission, Fitzsimons also warned that urgent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are “much more important” than setting long-term targets. Significant progress is possible right now, she said. And recent research has suggested that two types of emissions are much more dangerous than previously thought.

One is the danger from methane, the main greenhouse gas emitted by farm animals. The other is from pine trees, which make up the bulk of the Government’s One Billion Trees programme.

“I want to start,” she said, “by stressing the urgency of action. This is now an emergency. Governments have known about it for a long time but have done nothing.”

She listed the key climate change conferences she had attended: Kyoto, in 1997, “when it really looked like progress would be made, but it wasn’t”; then the Hague, then Copenhagen, “where the outcome was so terrible things went backwards”.

She criticised the bill for focusing on targets. People pin their hopes on miracle solutions, she suggested, “a year saved now is worth many more later. Reductions are much more important than how fast we get to zero.”

Fitzsimons said it was now known that methane is “enormously more powerful” than previously thought. The standard thinking used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was that methane trapped 13 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO2, when its life is considered over 100 years.

But methane deteriorates rapidly, so a better timespan is 20 years. “When that’s applied, we can see methane is not 13 times more powerful, but 84 times.”

And, she said, “20 years is the right timeline. If we haven’t solved this in 20 years, it’ll be too late.”

But the good news for farmers was that they don’t need to hope for some amazing new technology no one has thought of yet. She quoted research done by agricultural economist Peter Fraser, formerly of Treasury, into the “marginal cow”.

“Fraser’s work shows that more cows don’t inevitably mean more profit,” she said.

“It’s the concept of diminished returns,” said (committee chair) Scott Simpson.

“Yes that’s right. If you feed cows better, and reduc e the stock, you should be able to increase your profit and make a difference for the environment.”

She said veterinarian and ecologist Alison Dewes has studied Waikato dairy farms and found a 20 per cent reduction in stock numbers will lead to better profit. Another researcher, Barry Ridler, has found the same. His work suggests “seriously overstocked farms would be more profitable if they reduced the number of cows by 30 per cent”.

She said Dewes’ figure, 20 per cent, was twice the 10 per cent target proposed by the Zero Carbon Bill for 2030. “The bill undersells the good sense of farmers now,” she said, “and that means it limits its ability to promote transformation.”

She said the “big opponent” of this analysis is Fonterra. “They’re committed to their ‘velocity’ mantra. They think more is always better. But it isn’t true.”

Simpson also asked Jeanette Fitzsimons about the trend to replace livestock farming with exotic forestry, especially pine.

She explained there is a problem with pine plantations, which had been highlighted by climatologist Jim Salinger, who is also due to submit to the select committee.

Salinger’s concern is pinus radiata absorbs more heat from the sun than most types of vegetation. In doing so, the trees release compounds into the atmosphere that mop up methane-destroying chemicals.

Fitzsimons told the select committee she thought there was still a lot of marginal farmland currently devoted to sheep and beef that was “not particularly profitable” and would be better in forestry. But she said there should be a much greater focus on native species.

“Land on rolling country, however, should be used to produce food.” On flat land she said she’d like to see the focus on market gardens and other horticulture.

She agreed with Simpson that some big changes to land use were coming, just as had happened in the Coromandel when pasture was converted to kiwifruit and avocado, and in Marlborough, when vineyards had taken over.

“There was a time when anyone suggesting those things would have been carried out of the room,” he said. “But times change and we change with them.”

She also told the committee the bill was inconsistent with the Resource Management Act. “I won’t have been the first submitter to point this out,” she said, explaining that while the Zero Carbon Bill says councils “may” consider climate change in granting resource consents, section 104e of the RMA itself explicitly prohibits that.

“This will lead to massive litigation from both sides. Developers will invoke the RMA when a council tries to block a consent, and environmentalists will call on the newe law when it doesn’t.”

“There are many ways to fix this,” she added. “I think the best solution is to use this bill to repeal the relevant section of the RMA.”

Fitzsimons was also critical of the mild language of the bill. “Saying ‘may’ isn’t good enough. I think you can do better than that. Every decision of a public body should incorporate climate change. I’m not saying climate change should always trump everything, but it should be considered.”

And, she said, if councils make decisions that for some reason increase emisssions, “citizens should be able to take them to judicial review”.

Net zero targets – which allow a greenhouse gas emitter to continue emitting but buy carbon credits to offset the damage – came in for special attention. “Net zero seems to be the escape clause. It doesn’t really reduce emissions, it just allows for different ways to offset.”

Fitzsimons said no more than 30 per cent of emissions should be subject to offsetting, “and that’s generous: that ceiling should reduce over time”. She also wanted a ban on the purchase of carbon credits offshore.

The committee has now finished its sittings in Auckland. Over three days, most submitters urged the MPs to strengthen the bill.”

As previously mentioned, Jim Salinger’s submission focussed on new research that shows how pine plantations increase the global heating effect of methane.

Radio NZ reported:

Pine plantations extend lifetime of methane in North Island atmosphere

The following article from Carbon News goes into more detail:

Get tougher on methane, say Penn State profs

A TRIO of top international climate scientists wants the New Zealand Government to be tougher on methane than it plans to be. Three professors from Pennsylvania State University – including the man famed for the hockey-stick graph showing temperature changes – say an alarming rise in atmospheric methane means tougher action is going to be needed.

The bill, now before Parliament’s Environment Select Committee, proposes cuts in New Zealand’s emissions of biogenic methane (from livestock and waste) by 10 per cent by 2030 and between 24 per cent and 47 per cent by 2050. All other greenhouses gases would be a net-zero by 2050.

RAPID REVISION

But in a submission on the bill, the Penn State group, describing members as “climate scientists with extensive experience, including major contributions to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments”, says the proposed Climate Change Commission should be asked to recommend methane targets.

“This allows more rapid revision of methane reduction targets as knowledge improves, rather than the target being enshrined in legislation,” the submission says.

The group is led by Dr Jim Salinger, a New Zealand climate scientist who is a visiting scholar at the university. The others are Distinguished Professor Michael Mann, whose “hockey-stick” graph illustrated the stark change in global temperatures as a result of human activities, and Professor Jose D. Fuentes.

LEVELS INCREASING

The scientists are particularly alarmed about an unexpected rise in the amount of methane in the atmosphere, from 1800 parts per million in 2014 to 1850 ppm by 2018.

“Methane levels have been climbing more steeply than climate scientists anticipated, to a degree so unexpected that it could derail the Paris Agreement,” the submissions says.

“Given the recent rise in atmospheric methane and the incomplete understanding of its biogeochemistry, we recommend that the new Climate Change Commission role, drawing on the appropriate technical expertise, recommends the methane targets.

“This allows more rapid revision of methane reduction targets as knowledge improves, rather than the target being enshrined in legislation.”

LIKELY SOURCES

While the exact cause of the rise in atmospheric methane is unclear, the scientists fear that large plantations of radiata pine are damaging the process by which methane is broken down in the atmosphere.

“Likely sources of the increase are from biological emissions mainly from wetlands and ruminant livestock, and/or removal of methane molecules by hydroxyl radical is likely to limited by the presence of volatile organic carbon from conifers,” the submission says.

“The radiata pine plantations are significant emitters of volatile organic compounds. Monoterpenes are abundantly emitted into the atmosphere, and can, via chemical reactions, consume hydroxyl radicals, which prolong(s) the life of methane in the atmosphere.”

References:

Jeanette.ZCB.sub 2019

Changes in methane lifetime in response to pine_27_Aug_2019_ZCB Salinger et al

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Protesters today greeted mining conference delegates on their field trip to the North Island’s largest coal mine near Huntly calling for New Zealand to rapidly phase out the use of coal to help stop climate change.

The 15 protesters – from Auckland Coal Action, Coal Action Network Aotearoa and other groups, held anti-coal banners and signs, as around 30 mining industry executives arrived at the mine at 10 am this morning.

coal activists at Rotowaro mine 2

The delegates from the AusIMM mining conference, which begins tomorrow in Tauranga, have spent the weekend on field trips to mine sites, being dogged by protesters at every stop. Yesterday, six activists were arrested in the Karangahake Gorge.

The Rotowaro coa mine, near Huntly, is jointly owned by BT Mining (Bathurst Resources Ltd and Talley’s Energy), and supplies the Huntly Power Station, New Zealand Steel and other customers. Other mines in the area supply Fonterra.

“The need to rapidly phase out coal use to protect the environment has now become extremely clear, and is an essential step to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels,” said Auckland Coal Action spokesperson, Peter Whitmore.

“New Zealand has an abundance of wind and sun energy that can be captured. With today’s technologies and the advent of wall batteries, more insulation and energy efficiency, coupled with our hydropower, we should be turning away from coal, not digging more of it up – and we should be shutting down Huntly this year, as originally planned.”

Just down the road from the Rotowaro mine is the Kopako1 mine, also owned by BT mining, which supplies coal to Fonterra’s three big coal-fired boilers in the Waikato. The mining delegates will head to the Kopako 1 mine after Rotowaro where they will be greeted by more protestors. 

Fonterra is New Zealand’s second-largest user of coal after NZ Steel.  Kopako1 was re-opened in 2015, after local protests stopped Fonterra from starting its own coal mine at Mangatawhiri.

“Coal mines right around the country are being re-opened or extended because of dairy expansion,” saidCoal Action Network Aotearoa’s Jeanette Fitzsimons. “It feels like we are going backwards on coal, which simply has no role if we want to address climate change.  Our model of industrial farming is unsustainable.”

Both groups called on the Government to put a hefty enough price on coal so as to create a disincentive to use coal, which was still too cheap as the costs of its impacts – from health effects to climate change – are not factored into its price.

A few days ago, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said in a key speech, “If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us… We need to put the brake on deadly greenhouse gas emissions and drive climate action. We need to rapidly shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels. We need to replace them with clean energy from water, wind and sun.”

“We need to listen to Guterres, and the many others who have given this message,” says Whitmore, and start taking immediate and effective action.”

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