Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has criticised the Paris Climate Agreement several times in the past few days. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has questioned the country's role in fighting climate change, after criticising the Paris Climate Agreement during a speech at the weekend.
The NZ First leader made a series of claims in a Morning Report interview following his state of the nation address on Sunday.
Peters was challenged about whether he had looked at the costs of pulling out of the Paris Accord after claiming staying in the agreement was costing New Zealanders dearly.
RNZ has put his main claims to the test.
1. Other countries are pulling out
Peter was asked whether he had looked at the costs to New Zealand exporters of pulling out of the Paris Agreement, given that meeting the country's commitments is written into free trade deals with Europe and the UK.
He was also asked if pulling out of Paris was at odds with recent comments he made as foreign minister - that as a small country New Zealand relied on the international rules-based order for stability and security.
Peters said: "I just tried to point out that four economies - China, US, India and Russia - are responsible for almost 60 percent of the problem we've got, and they are not being called to account.
"If they're not complying with the so-called Paris accord, how can we possibly make a difference?
"If the other countries in reality have already pulled out .... China is responsible for about 30 percent [of emissions], do you think they are part of the accord or not?
"You've got India."
He said New Zealand needed to look at "why on Earth we're doing this when other countries are not doing this".
The context:
No country has followed the US out of the Paris Agreement. China, Russia and India remain in the accord.
This is the second time the US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. The first time, no other country followed suit and US emissions continued to decline until the US rejoined.
This time around, Bloomberg Green has reported that: "Political leaders in Argentina, Russia and New Zealand have indicated they would like to follow suit."
Argentina's leader has said he is considering leaving, but has not done so.
A Kremlin envoy said in November that despite calls from Russian businesses to leave, Russia remained committed to Paris and Trump was wrong to exit the deal.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg's reference to "political leaders" in New Zealand was a reference to ACT Party leader and government coalition partner David Seymour who said ACT might campaign next election on pulling New Zealand out of the Paris deal.
Now Bloomberg will be able to add fellow coalition party leader Winston Peters to those in favour of exit.
But with the National Party under PM Christopher Luxon and the Labour Party committed to staying in, there is no immediate prospect that a major political party will agree to withdraw New Zealand.
As for how much effort fellow signatories are making, independent non-profit group Climate Action Tracker rated New Zealand's efforts similarly to China and India, and worse than the US under President Biden (country's targets and efforts to meet them were last rated in November).
Russia scores notably worse than other major countries.
The website assesses whether climate targets and efforts to meet them are consistent with keeping heating from fossil fuels well under 2C, with five categories from "1.5C compatible" to "critically insufficient."
Under the Paris deal, developing countries such as China and India have longer to peak their emissions and bring them back down than developed countries, which historically caused more of the problem and still have much higher per-capita emissions than the world average (including New Zealand).
China has promised to peak emissions by 2030 under Paris, but is expected to do so much sooner, possibly this year.
The country's rapid rollout of solar, wind and hydro power eclipses the pace of renewables growth in all other countries - but it is still adding coal-fired electricity generation to its grid to keep up with rising electricity demand.
Climate Action Tracker says China's target is "highly insufficient" (defined as putting the planet on track for heating of up to 4C) buts its actual efforts are better than that, albeit still insufficient (leading to heating of up to 3C, if every country made a similar effort).
India has the same rating as China, indicating is it taking action but not enough.
Russia's rating is "critically insufficient", putting the planet on track for 4C or higher if all countries did the same.
New Zealand is rated "highly insufficient" - the same overall rating as India and China but with a better rating for its 2030 target of of "almost sufficient" - albeit without enough policies and actions to back it up.
The USA - as of November - was rated better than New Zealand, with the same rating for its target but a better assessment of its polices and actions for an overall rating of insufficient. Its rating will change for the worse now that its has reneged on trying to meet its target, despite large states such as California and New York continuing with climate policies.
Collectively, global efforts to keep the planet's average temperature to within 1.5C-2C hotter are not on track, with 2024 breaching 1.5C above the long term average for the first time (though not permanently) and most countries not on course to meet their climate commitments.
However the UK and the EU - two big trading partners - are considered climate leaders and have written complying with Paris targets into free trade deals with New Zealand.
The EU has also created carbon border adjustment mechanism - a tariff on high-emitting goods such as steel coming from countries that aren't acting to to slow their own emissions quickly. The goal is to avoid penalizing EU businesses in competition against countries that are achieving less.
2. Nobody knows what the target is
Peters said Paris "is an international agreement National went and signed up to in 2016 and nobody knows why".
"They've never told you what the target is or whether it's capable of being met."
The context:
Both the target and the detailed emissions cuts required from each sector of the economy are publicly available and have been since the current Paris target was set.
In fact, emissions from each sector, progress reducing them, and the policies required to meet the overall target are set out by the government in Emissions Budgets and Emissions Reduction Plans every five years.
Progress is reviewed every year to see how the country is tracking.
Currently the only major question over New Zealand's ability to meet its 2030 target lies in whether there is political willingness to commit to buying 84 million tonnes of emissions savings from overseas, something it signed up to doing when it set its 2030 target.
Peters himself appears to be at least part of the reason why that commitment can not be made at this point, with NZ First refusing to say whether it would back the payments.
3. Transferring "maybe $32 billion" out of the country
Peters said: "Transferring 22 maybe 32 billion out of our economy in the next few years to try to satisfy our woke ambitions is just catastrophic."
The context:
Treasury has put the cost of buying climate action to meet the country's target at anywhere between $3 billion and $23b.
The money would be to buy climate actions overseas which can not be achieved for the same price in New Zealand, such as retiring a coal fired power station early. It is a cheaper method of meeting the agreement than meeting the whole target here.
However experts on the Paris Agreement's implementation says incurring costs at the higher end of that range would only be a worst-case scenario if New Zealand left its purchases until the last minute and ended up buying "gold plated" carbon credits from other wealthy countries, eg in Europe.
New Zealand's strategy has been buying from less wealthy countries that may need help to cut their emissions, such as in the Pacific or Asia. Those deals could come a lot cheaper.
Reports have suggested if the government got cracking it could secure genuine emissions savings at the low end of the price range.
The total cost covers 10 year's worth of Paris commitments - from 2021 to 2030.
It could have been spread across the decade had the government chosen to start buying help sooner, leading to a smaller cost each year.
However there are now just four years left to secure perhaps $3b or more of help, if the government wants to meet its target - or to find another way.
For context, as foreign minister Peters oversees a foreign aid budget of more than $1.2b a year, $12b a decade.
When it comes to money spent at home, modelling by the Climate Change Commission has found meeting climate goals would slow GDP growth a little - but could create new jobs and save businesses and households about $2b a year by 2040 by replacing fossil fuels with clean energy.
Global action on climate change also reduces the chances of fiscal shocks from another Cyclone Gabrielle-scale weather disaster, which Treasury projects would cost up to $14.5b.
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