To build support for effective action against climate change we need to have  greater public awareness and understanding of the facts.

The most authoritative statement of the current science on climate change is the Special Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Global Warming of 1.5°C”, published in October 2018.  This tells us that global warming reached approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2017.  The link between human emissions and climate change is demonstrated by the close match between observed patterns of climate change and the predicted patterns based on human rates of emissions. 

In the absence of effective action to reduce emissions, global warming is likely to reach between 3.7°C and 4.8°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.  This will have devastating consequences including extreme heatwaves, droughts, flooding, extinctions and loss of ecosystems, starvation and water insecurity, political destabilisation and conflict, mass migration, and an overall substantial decline in the health and wellbeing of people.

For a summary of the evidence for human-induced climate change and its effects see NASA’s website. 

“There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening, that it is caused by human activity, and that its impact will be catastrophic unless we take action now.”  

The Paris Agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015.  Its purpose is keeping the global average temperature well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C.

Under the Paris Agreement all countries have committed to take action on climate change based on nationally determined contributions.  New Zealand ratified the Paris Agreement on 4 October 2016. Its revised nationally determined contribution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Meeting this commitment will require a significant change from “business as usual”. See Ministry for the Environment, 2017, New Zealand’s Seventh National Communication – Fulfilling reporting requirements under the United Nationals Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol below.

The need to achieve net zero emissions to stop warming getting worse is due to the cumulative effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  CO2 that has already been released will stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, while methane lasts decades.  Therefore, even if we cut our rate of emissions, warming will continue to increase as long as more emissions are released and their concentration in the atmosphere increases.  

According to the OECD, New Zealand has the fifth highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the OECD, behind Australia, the United States, Canada and Luxembourg. Our emissions profile is different to many other countries because of our high agricultural methane emissions.  According to Statistics NZ, New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are about 44% CO2 - of which 39% comes from road vehicles, 20% from manufacturing and construction, and 9% from electricity generation, with the remaining 32% from other sources - and about 42.8% methane and 11.6% nitrous oxide, mainly from agriculture.  To stop contributing to global warming, New Zealand needs to make cuts to all these emissions.

We need to ensure that legislation, policy and decision-making across all sectors takes climate change into account and is consistent with New Zealand’s efforts to reduce emissions.  We also need to make sure that our environmental rules are adequately policed and enforced so that their effectiveness is not undermined by non-compliance.

Lawyers for Climate Action NZ Inc will advocate for law changes to ensure that New Zealand meets its emissions targets and that it does so in a way that is evidence-based, effective, and consistent with the rule of law, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, international law, and with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.