Jeanette Fitzsimons trying (and failing) to get arrested at Fonterra’s Clandeboye dairy factory in Canterbury, 2017.

On Wednesday night 4 March we held our fortnightly Zoom call for an hour and a half, a standing CANA meeting for the last ten years. Jeanette was on the call, as usual, her sunburned farmer’s face beaming at us from Pakaraka farm.  24 hours later she was gone.

This blog has taken a while to post: her death took our collective breath away. It’s a long read, but we felt important to set out the important work Jeanette has done on coal.

We have been talking with each other in the days and hours since, and know that her death has motivated all of us with renewed conviction to continue her work, and her (and our) goal for the end of coal in Aotearoa, and no new coal mines.  Keeping the coal in the hole. We have huge shoulders to stand on, a legacy that we have to continue. Not just for Jeanette, of course, but for us and the future generations she cared so much about.

In this blog we attempt to summarise her extensive work with CANA. We will be posting again in the coming days with more personal takes from our team, because we all have our own memories, and stories to tell.  And because she was so dear not only to us but to the wider movement.

When she stepped down from her role as co-leader of the Green Party, the climate activist movement in Aotearoa was Jeanette’s lucky beneficiary: her stated “retirement” goal was to stop coal mines in New Zealand.  I put “retirement” in inverted commas because of course she was anything BUT retired.

When climate scientist Dr James Hansen visited in 2011, Jeanette toured the country with him, reaching out to all her contacts across Aotearoa, tapping into her extensive networks.  Hansen, the man who alerted the US Senate about climate change in 1978,  carried a strong message about the need to act on climate, and the need to stop burning coal as soon as possible.  At that point, with the support of the National government Solid Energy was planning to exploit the dirty lignite coal under fertile Southland farmland, and she was determined to stop it.

Jeanette with climate scientist Prof. James Hansen at the end of the 2011 NZ tour

By the end of the tour, hundreds had signed up to get involved with stopping coal. Being Jeanette, though, she didn’t want to set up a central group that coordinated all the others: she wanted each to have their own autonomy to act as they saw fit. SO typical of Jeanette’s philosophy of inspiring local activism.  [Extra:  Jeanette’s interview with Sustainable Lens during the tour]

It is also a testament to her that she refused to be the main spokesperson for CANA at the beginning: she didn’t want to take the limelight off CANA and onto herself: her image was still very much that of the Green Party and she didn’t want that to undermine CANA.  So she took a back seat, but was very much a driving force behind all our work, mentoring us all.

One of her aims in setting up our coal “action” group was to get arrested. Indeed she told me the only reason she had accepted her NZ Order of Merit was so that this would make an even bigger splash when she chained herself to a bulldozer.  We collectively failed her.

Jeanette was always a step ahead of all of us. Her research skills brought so much credibility to our work: her “can you make steel without coal” paper is still one of our most popular on the website (we are in the process of updating it).

Launching the Jobs Without Coal report.

She led our “Jobs without coal” report (and its update), and went to Blackball to launch it – the CANA call for a “just transition” was picked up far and wide, and her leadership in this area kick-started a national conversation.  She undertook some great research for that paper: going through the census figures and finding that indeed coal did not keep small communities alive: indeed, it was the opposite – she found the communities around coal mines are largely much poorer compared with the national average.

In 2013 Solid Energy was struggling, and as part of its divestment in order to keep itself afloat, it dumped its Southland lignite plans. It limped on, with major layoffs from its mines in the two years preceeding, and the following year Jeanette’s piece in the Dominion Post was prescient, calling for a Just Transition for Solid’s workers.

Our campaign against Bathurst Resources’ plans to mine on the Denniston plateau became our next big focus.  Forest and Bird’s fantastic legal challenges delayed Bathurst’s Denniston plans long enough for them to coincide with the coal price tanking, and while the company managed to clear the “overburden” at the mine, it couldn’t develop the resource, as we predicted, and was itself teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Forest and Bird’s campaign was a national one, and we joined with all the other coal groups in urging the government to step in and stop the mine.

Wahine Toa: Jeanette, Catherine Delahunty and Debs Martin on the Denniston Plateau in 2014. Photo: Pete Lusk

We joined with 350.org and launched a campaign against their bankers: Westpac.  Jeanette was there at our launch outside Westpac’s main branch in Auckland.  (Not arrested). Jeanette also loved a good sticker, and we were very proud of our little Westpac logo-turned-coal-truck ones.

Jeanette at the Westpac campaign launch

Jeanette saw the writing on the wall and started to look at what was keeping the coal industry alive, and Fonterra was in her sights.  If we wanted to stop Bathurst, and the expansion of coal in Aotearoa, we would have to go after its clients, and by far the biggest was Fonterra.

Indeed it was Jeanette’s work that led us to the conclusion that Fonterra burned more coal than Huntly power station – it was our second-largest coal user in the country.  This is now an accepted fact and quoted by many.  (She was wearing her Fonterra Quit Coal T-shirt on the day she died.)

In 2015 Fonterra announced it was planning to develop its own coal mine at Mangatangi – or Mangatawhiri in the Waikato, and Jeanette was out at the weekends with Auckland Coal Action – and meeting with Fonterra to discuss the madness of this scheme.  The protests drove Fonterra to dump the idea as it managed to persuade Solid Energy to re-open the old Rotowaro mine.  We found out about this in March, and Jeanette’s blog announcing it drew ire from Fonterra and Solid Energy who denied such a thing. By September, the company confirmed what we’d announced for them in March.

She took part in a day of action with pamphlets and little bags of woodchips at the big Waikato Fieldays event just outside Hamilton. Again, she wasn’t arrested.

Jeanette at the Fieldays With Auckland coal action. Photo: Mark Taylor, Fairfax.

Of course Jeanette wasn’t just going to focus only on the coal use – she dove in deep, seeking out agricultural economists and other experts and looked at the bigger picture, advocating a reduction in cow numbers, with the solid argument that it would have little economic impact, but a big impact on reducing emissions.

In 2016 Fonterra applied for a consent to build two more coal-fired boilers at its dairy factory at Studholme, in North Otago just outside Waimate.  Jeanette led CANA’s very strong opposition, rallying experts on both the size of dairy herds, and on biomass, and giving our main submission.  We were partially successful” halfway through the hearing, Fonterra reduced its application from two to one boilers – quite a big victory for us.

Our leaflet on the Fonterra coal boiler plans at Waimate, written by Jeanette.

Jeanette was scathing of Fonterra’s statements to the Studholme hearing that it only had enough wood waste to co-fire only 20 percent biomass in each boiler. Her ire was only exacerbated when they reduced their application to one boiler – yet still maintained that number of 20 percent – one would think that would be increased to 40% with only one boiler, right?

At the end of the day: today, we forced Fonterra to first announce it would stop building coal-fired power plants by 2035, then to up that to state it would not build ANY new coal plants from now on.  It has a special page on its website about coal (see my rebuttal of that here), and is now tinkering around the edges of its climate policy to give the impression it is taking a lot of action.  It even managed to get EECA to pay for some of its coal conversion, which outraged Jeanette, EECA’s founder.  She died without having written her promised next letter to Fonterra, but it’s ok, we’ve got this Jeanette.

There is so much else to say about her work with CANA, and so much we have missed out,  such as the campaign against Christchurch Hospital’s planned coal-fired boiler (it’s now building a biomass boiler), the action at Clandeboye dairy factory in 2017, our CANA Summerfests, and the special times we as CANA spent on the farm with her and Harry at our regular hui.

But the Zero Carbon Act does deserve a mention, along with the policies she was advocating around climate change.  We submitted as CANA but Jeanette made her own carefully thought-out submission. She was totally right when she argued that the ZCA would not prevent a single emission: it is merely a framework into which policies must be inserted. She hated the ETS (instead favouring a coal price), and in her last days and weeks was absolutely furious at the government’s latest infrastructure spending announcement that had such a huge focus on roads.  None of us could understand how this had gotten past the new “climate lens” through which all big decisions made by the Government would be viewed, announced by James Shaw during the latest climate talks.

Jeanette always had other projects on the go – all of us were very busy at CANA and with our lives, yet we were only one part of her busy life.  We’d get a little glimpse into it on our fortnightly calls as we did our “round” at the beginning of each call.

She was heavily involved in the Supreme Court case challenging the RMA’s ridiculous clause that ruled out anybody considering a project’s impact on the climate during the consenting process: unfortunately the West Coast Environment Network lost the case, but she never let up on that front.

The demand on her time from across the country was huge. She diligently responded to every single email she received: one thing she is now relieved of is her ongoing battle with her inbox.  She loved hosting the Young Greens at the farm every year and, before she died, had just finished a youtube series for the Greens on the history of the party.

The CANA team at our hui on Pakaraka farm, 2013.

And during all of this she was doing what she loved best – her day-to-day work on the farm with her beloved Harry:  milking the cow every morning, picking chestnuts, making chestnut flour, selling their wares at the Thames market every Saturday morning,  picking olives and making that delicious olive oil, swimming in the gorgeous Kauaeranga River, practising the violin and spending as much time with her grandchildren in Wellington as she could.

This blog barely touches on who she was: her nurturing of others, especially the young, her wisdom, her ideals and ability to think outside the box, her gentle but forceful self.  Suffice to say we at CANA are heartbroken that we have lost our taonga, our wahine toa, our friend.  We will carry on the fight for you, Jeanette.

Haere ki te po, e te wahine whakaaro nui.

Go into the night, wise woman.

The post Jeanette Fitzsimons, the coal campaigner appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Writing in Newsroom, Jeanette Fitzsimons and Cindy Baxter of CANA have exposed a major impediment to reducing NZ’s carbon emissions.

The post A major loophole threatens the Zero Carbon bill appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

I hope these comments will help you make your own submissions, the deadline for which is September 20

– Jeanette Fitzsimons

The Minerals and Petroleum Resource Strategy document is about our overall approach to mining of both fossil fuels and other minerals. It is crucial to get this right as it will govern coal mines and oil and gas, and therefore climate change, and whether or not, and how, we phase out fossil fuels, for the next ten years. It is absolutely what we are about and your critique is essential.

Our Declaration says

Reduce the extraction and burning of fossil fuels to 50% by 2025 and to zero by 2030:

(i) prevent all new and expanded coal mines and coal burning plants;

(ii) end deep sea oil exploration and fracking for oil and gas.

The draft Strategy instead proposes reducing them somewhat, but envisages continued mining and burning of fossil fuels for many decades, with no suggested end point. This is ecocide, and we must call it that.

The draft Strategy is at Responsibly Delivering Value: A Minerals and Petroleum Resource Strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand: 2019-2029.

You can contribute in two ways:

1. Read the Strategy and write your thoughts and send to the address given for submissions.

2. MBIE prefer that you go to their website and click on “Complete our submission form”.

The second seems very limiting – the questions are all multiple choice from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” – but you can choose to ignore some of them and there are lots of spaces for you to give reasons and disagree, etc.

I’ve decided to do it this way and make their form, which they will take notice of, work for my ideas.

The main points, as I see it, are:

1. There is no distinction made between fossil fuels, which must go to zero as fast as possible because they are driving climate change, and other minerals which should be assessed on their environmental impact. There is no distinction made between aggregates, rock used for roading and concrete which are abundant and can be mined with very low impact, and minerals like gold which cause major environmental disruption. Metals essential for the transition to a zero carbon economy (eg lithium, cobalt) should be given priority over those which are merely “nice to have” (eg gold – there is enough gold already above ground for essential industrial uses.)
2. The draft Strategy is not consistent with the Government’s policy on climate change, which is to achieve zero carbon by 2050 under the Paris Accord. Everything in the Strategy must fit within the framework of the climate emergency, and the need to change the ways we do things. BAU is not an option anymore. Reference this to recent science if you can.
3. It is not good enough to say (Principle 1) that ecosystems and biodiversity must be “respected”. So we say a little prayer and carry on as in the past? We should insist on the word “protected”.
4. Principle 10 (continuing production and exploration under current permits) puts the property rights of miners ahead of the transition to zero carbon. It means renewal and expansion of existing oil drilling licences even when there is a ban on new oil drilling. We should not accept any form of Principle 10 for fossil fuels, and for other resources it should be dependent on environmental impact.
5. Gas is NOT a sustainable bridge to a low carbon (let alone zero carbon) economy. It’s carbon dioxide emissions are more like 60% of coal rather than the 50% often quoted by industry, and we have to add to that significant methane releases from all parts of the production and use cycle. They know this! Particularly, any new gas wells or infrastructure will be used for decades and take us backwards from the zero carbon future. It should be phased out in the same way as coal and oil.
6. The Strategy should set a timeframe for the phase out of fossil fuels, starting with no new coal mines or oil and gas wells, and protecting essential uses of these fuels (eg steel making) for as long as possible, while closing down uses for which there are good substitutes, like electricity generation, promptly.
7. There is lip service paid to a circular economy, which is good, but no steps to take to start the difficult journey to get there. This needs a strategy on its own.
8. The diagrams beginning on page 17 are very useful for people who have not previously engaged with the process; but the section on mining techniques doesn’t even mention fracking! This is the most destructive of techniques and needs to stop as part of the phase out. It is only used for oil and gas.
9. The Strategy proposes “balancing impacts across all 4 capitals”. This is not OK! Climate and environmental protection must take precedence over revenue to the Crown, for example.

Thank you for reading this. I hope these comments will help you make your own submissions, the deadline for which is September 20

– Jeanette Fitzsimons

The post Model submission on the Minerals and Petroleum Resource Strategy appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

On Sunday the CANA organising group, along with many other wonderful people, had a great day protesting a coal mine near Huntly.

The protest across the two main gates of the Kopako1 mine at Maramarua

Firstly: What is this coal mine?

It is a recently reopened mine, with the purpose of getting coal for Fonterra to evaporate milk to send to China and pretend its better for Chinese babies than breast milk. While Fonterra recently has been applauded for not renewing their permit for the Mangatangi coal mine, they have instead just restarted this less visible one. Sneaky sneaky!

Secondly: Why Sunday?

The New Zealand and Australia Minerals conference was being held in Tauranga this week, and the weekend included some optional field trips to visit the surrounding gold and coal mines. Conferences, as we all know, are best spent eating lots of free food and trying to meet influential people in your field so you can name drop them on later occasions. These conference-goers spent their weekend looking at blights they’ve made on lovely landscapes and getting yelled at about it at every single one they tried to go to.

Thirdly: What happened?

The CANA team spent a pleasant morning eating scones at a lovely nearby cafe, waiting for the call to head out. Once it came we raced off to the mine, and, along with others from Auckland Coal Action, Peace Action and 350.org, set ourselves up with a multitude of banners.

The conference-goers arrived shortly after, drove up to the gate, stopped for a while to figure out what to do, then turned around. There was another entry!

CANA’s Mel (in the flowery hat) and other protestors at the second sneaky gate as a Bathurst employee tries to unlock it.

We followed them over and, while they were doing whatever they were doing in the coal mine, spent a pleasant afternoon chanting at them through megaphones. One couple with a camper van had ingeniously rigged it up as a giant speaker, which echoed all down the valley (the residents of the house they parked in the driveway of were reportedly quite excited at the goings-on in their quiet rural road). Interspersed with the eloquent heartfelt speeches of the protesters, there boomed out vivid pre-recordings of an angry mob and a siren followed by a brilliantly serious “evacuate…evacuate…this is a climate emergency.”

When eventually the coal viewers tried to leave, they came driving out in their mostly single occupancy cars like good little fossil fuel proponents.

They moved very slowly due to the enthusiastic blockades by protesters further up the road, so I got chatting to the last guy out who was quick to make clear that he was “just there to have a look” and didn’t disagree with what we were saying. He reportedly was very into tree planting and ocean cleanups. His eagerness to not be associated with being ‘one of them,’ (and the very miserable faces of the rest), pleased me enormously.

Perhaps, at last, fossil fuels are negatively received.

Perhaps at last the winds are changing, after the recent reports of just how long Mobil and Shell knew about climate change; with wider public realisation of the lies they paid for; of fossil fuel companies’ intensive lobbying to governments to perpetuate a reliance on them.

Perhaps, at last, fossil fuels are losing their social license.

Fourthly: And then what happened?

The coal people left and we regrouped to have a spontaneous picnic. The police arrived and wandered over, saying (with no hint of believing it for a moment) they’d received reports of protesters throwing rocks. We offered them some cake and a hard-boiled egg, which they politely declined and went away and loitered in the corner while we finished making new friends and swapping cakes, and then we all drove off home after a very enjoyable protest.

The post The Kopako1 Protest: A View from the Inside appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

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.”

The post Protesters greet mining conference field trip, demanding rapid phase-out of coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Well, actually CANA doesn’t care whether Fonterra uses wood or not. If it finds a way to dry milk with moonbeams, that’s fine by us. What it mustn’t do is keep using coal, let alone expanding it, or expand its gas use.

We’ve been promoting waste wood from forestry because that is abundant, it’s renewable as long as forests are replanted, the technology to burn it is mature, it is found around the country, and we have the local expertise. So, ever helpful, we are getting alongside Fonterra and trying to find a good alternative for them. But the bottom line is, coal must go, and so must gas soon after.

Outside its Edendale dairy factory in Southland, Fonterra gets a clear message.

Our campaign is having an effect – faster than we expected.

After hearing our evidence (well, our witness Peter Fraser’s evidence) at the Studholme consent hearing that prices are not going to rise enough to make new or expanded dairy farms profitable, and so there will be no milk for the proposed plant to dry, Fonterra has half accepted our argument and dropped one of their two proposed driers. That’s 270,000 new cows they were sure a few weeks ago they had to provide for, which they now agree are not going to materialise. So where is their evidence that the other 270,000 will?

On wood, after previously offering a range of excuses as to why it wasn’t feasible, they now say they agree with us – there has to be a transition away from coal and they are exploring the use of wood. (They have actually been doing this for several years with no obvious progress.)

They propose to start their transition away from coal by building a huge new mainly coal-fired milk dryer. (What? Yes, you read this right.) But it will be capable of burning up to 20% wood in the fuel mix. Their reason for not going to 100% wood? They say there is not enough wood available, but have produced no analysis or figures to back this up. However they believed at the hearing that there is enough to provide 20% of the fuel for the plant as initially conceived.

Right, that’s 20% of 60 tonnes per hour used by the two boilers. But now they plan only one 30 tonne per hour boiler, so the available wood could supply 40% of the heat, right? Well, they don’t seem to have thought of that. They are still saying 20% of just the one boiler. Half the wood that they thought was available has dematerialised, just like the cows.

Then there is the “up to”. They have admitted that “up to 20%” could mean zero, at least some of the time. Coal is still their preferred fuel but they are making an effort for PR reasons. They have been pretty clear that price is their guide. The mix of wood and coal will change from day to day depending on cost and availability.

So there is no commitment to wood at all, except when it might suit them. But to achieve this PR stunt they have to build a less than optimum boiler. Our expert on wood combustion told the hearing that you can design a boiler to work well on any fuel, including a mix of coal and wood, as long as that mix is consistent. If you change the mix the boiler is designed for, it will not work efficiently or cleanly. This seems to be what Fonterra intends.

Fonterra even argued that its planned boiler and “up to” 20 percent biomass was part of “transitioning out of coal.” Well, you don’t transition out of coal by building a brand new coal-fired plant.

Let us set out again what a transition strategy would really look like:

1. Accept that farmers are discovering that intensification has not been profitable, especially at low prices, and are culling cows; stop all plans to expand milk drying, focussing instead on adding more value to the milk they do have.
2. Start replacing smaller, old boilers (they have several that date from the 1970s and 80s in the 10MW range) with 100% high efficiency dedicated wood boilers.
3. As they gain experience and build their supply chain, gradually replace larger ones with 100% wood (or the new electric technologies which are looming) as they need major repairs or maintenance.
4. Forget the idea they may be considering that moving to gas will get us off their back. Gas is a fossil fuel with carbon emissions about 40% less than coal at the point of combustion, but methane releases from gas production have increased since fracking became common and can even undo this advantage. Forget it, and go clean.

Federated Farmers’ response to Fonterra’s plans, even with one boiler, was perfect, with Federated Farmers dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard telling the Timaru Herald that it was like “the Death Star of the milk power industry”.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

The post Would that Fonterra Would Use Wood! appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Climate and health conscious people around the country and particularly in Canterbury have been vocal about the insanity of this and now there is a glimmer of hope. The tender documents were withdrawn last year and have been reissued. The wording is such that it could be possible to avoid coal.

Jeanette Fitzsimons gives the background and explores the arguments in The Press last week: http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/77738911/why-a-hospital-should-not-be-burning-coal

The post A Tale Of Two Hospitals appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Auckland Coal Action handing out leaflets and bags of wood chips

Fonterra was badly embarrassed, and event organisers got the protest moved on – but not before it had made a big media impact. Below you can read posts about the action on Auckland Coal Action’s excellent blog, plus a selection of media coverage. Fonterra’s days of hiding its dirty secret are over. Auckland Coal Action coverage

• Exciting announcement from Fonterra at Field Days
• Fonterra’s coal use under the spotlight at Mystery Creek
• “Your days of burning coal are numbered few”

Selected media coverage

• Radio New Zealand: Climate change protestors kicked out of Fieldays
• Waikato Times/Stuff: ‘Fonterra’ flyers stir the pot at Fieldays
• Newstalk ZB: No letup in Fonterra coal campaign

The post Auckland Coal Action Exposes Fonterra’s Dirty Secret: Coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

The 2015 revised edition of CANA’s report Jobs After Coal: A Just Transition for New Zealand Communities was released on the 2^nd of May, in conjunction with a speech CANA organising group member Jeanette Fitzsimons gave at the May Day celebrations in Blackball.

You can download and read:

• The full Jobs After Coal Report, 2015 edition (PDF, 2.8 MB)
• A summary version of Jobs After Coal 2015 (PDF, 97 KB)

Since May 2014, when we released the original edition of this report, world coal prices have continued to drop, and in New Zealand, coal mining companies have continued to lay off workers without the slightest concern or provision for the communities they live in. This was underlined just five days after the 2015 version was released, when Solid Energy announced it was getting rid of 151 more positions at its Stockton mine.

While the mining companies and the Government offer nothing, CANA’s report addresses how communities and workers can prepare for the end of coal mining, and lays out pathways that communities and regions can follow to move away from coal and into low-carbon jobs.

When the original Jobs After Coal report was released in 2014, it got a good reception, but community leaders weren’t always ready to say positive things about it on the record. This time round, they’ve been much more ready to support the Just Transition approach we advocate.

Many local and national politicians have known for some time that we have to move away from coal, but they haven’t been willing to say so publicly for fear of being accused that they were anti-worker or anti-jobs. Now that the coal jobs are going anyway, well-researched alternative approaches are looking a lot more attractive.

Jobs After Coal has also had a lot of positive media coverage in the month since the 2015 edition was released. Here’s a selection:

Radio NZ: West Coast Considers Jobs After Mining  – which includes this quote: “Buller District Mayor Garry Howard has embraced the recommendations in the report ‘Jobs After Coal’, written by Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA), but said its success would depend on the efforts of all communities on the coast, and government buy-in.”

NZ Herald: Stockton mine job losses: ‘A painful situation’

Newstalk ZB: West Coast analysing jobs landscape

TV3: Solid Energy cuts 113 jobs at Stockton mine

The Press: Stockton Mine axes 151 jobs

The post The 2015 Revised Edition of Jobs After Coal: More Timely Than Ever appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Like hundreds of New Zealanders I went to one of the Government’s consultation meetings (Hamilton, where there were 70 people) on what our climate change target should be in Paris this year. Now I’m wresting with their Discussion Document as I write my submission to the process.

The document suggests we should do “our fair share” – hardly a goal anyone could disagree with – until you read the caveat “in light of our unique national circumstances”. There follows a pathetic list of excuses for why we should do much less than others – a list of special pleadings crying poor me and arguing we are disadvantaged. I am embarrassed that these arguments are being made in our name in international meetings so let’s look at whether they have any merit.

It is hard for us to reduce emissions because we have a lot of agriculture where there aren’t easy options and we supply food to the rest of the world which is important

We have chosen to make our living with dairy farming, and must take responsibility for the consequences. It’s not as though the rest of the world would starve without our dairy products. Most of it now is infant formula, replacing superior breast milk in China so that mothers can go straight back to work. Dairy products are luxury foods. Lower intensity farming with better management of wet soils and use of breeds that emit less methane could at least reduce those emissions.

While we are held accountable for our food exports, we have outsourced most of our manufacturing to China and other places, and considerable industrial emissions with it. We consume those products but are not accountable for their emissions.

Government also persists in supporting conversion of forests to dairy farms by its own LandCorp, showing they are not serious about stopping agricultural emissions growing.

It is hard because most of our electricity is already renewable

True we have less scope in electricity than most countries, but we still have some. The old, highly inefficient and polluting Huntly power station, which often runs on coal, could be closed without hardship because there are already enough wind and geothermal power plants consented, but not built because demand is not growing, to replace its output 3-5 times over.

More importantly, electricity is only a small part of our total energy. Our transport emissions are huge because our road transport is highly inefficient. We are virtually the only OECD country without fuel economy standards for vehicles, (new or used) entering the country. As a result our light vehicle fleet has an average efficiency of around 10 L/100km. Yet my 10 year old Honda Jazz, a 5 seater with capacious luggage space, uses less than half that, partly because of the vehicle, but also because I know how to drive. It cost less than most cars of its class.

Refusing to set standards condemns low and middle income people, who can never afford a new car so never have choice, to the gas guzzlers someone else has decided to buy 10 years previously. These people will never afford electric cars – at least not for 20 years or more. This is an obvious example of how climate action would save, rather than cost, households money.

It is hard because our population has increased faster than many other countries

Well, who made that decision? Immigration policy has deliberately targeted an increased population. It is not natural increase, but is entirely within our control and we have to take responsibility for it. We cannot accept the extra wealth of a larger population then expect to be excused from counting their greenhouse emissions.

It is hard because plantation forestry is entering the harvesting phase of the cycle and we will lose carbon stored in trees

NZ argued in 1997 for a “forest sinks” approach knowing that we would need to do nothing to meet our first Kyoto period target because of trees that were already in the ground or about to be planted. We therefore allowed our emissions to grow, knowing we would still be in credit from these “offsets” at the end of KP1. Now that we have entered the harvesting part of the cycle we have withdrawn from the second Kyoto period, where we would have been in deficit, and are still arguing to carry over the credits from trees planted in KP1, without accounting in any way for the loss of that carbon in harvesting! It is breathtaking hypocrisy, and shows what a scam “forest sinks” from production forests actually are. It’s time we faced up to it as a nation.

While our per capita greenhouse gas emissions are close to the highest in the world, our per capita carbon dioxide emissions are lower than some countries, which excuses us

It is true that carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas, but we don’t actually have any haloes there either. The countries with which we compare ourselves on carbon dioxide are the US and Australia, both extremely high emitters with industrial economies, from which we import some of the output. Our carbon dioxide emissions are not low on a world scale, even though we import most of our industrial goods – partly because our transport is so bad.

All these excuses for doing less than our share are hypocritical and self-serving, created by a government that wants to do nothing. These “circumstances” are of our own making and the result of policies which could be changed. The basis for our fair share should be total per capita emissions, compared both with other countries (where we need first to get down from our current 17 to the global average of 8) and with the eventual allowable emissions dictated by climate science, which is only 2 tonnes per person if we want to limit temperature rises to 2 degrees.

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