“You don’t have to stop methane,” he said, referring to one of the main agricultural greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by animals, whereas stopping CO2 emissions was important.
“You can have a major impact on methane in the longer term.”
The inclusion of the agricultural sector in NZ’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been a continuous source of political controversy, with the Government leaving agricultural emissions out of the ETS until hoped-for scientific innovations find new ways to control methane emissions.
Frame acknowledged his view was not shared by many American and European scientists. The Green Party softened its approach to including agricultural emissions in the ETS, which is up for review over the next year.
Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser told the conference that terms of reference for the ETS review were likely to go to Cabinet for approval before the end of this year, but consultations and decisions would occur next year.
He gave no hint as to what changes might be considered, although policy observers expect concessions to heavy industry emitters are ripe for unwinding, given the very low carbon prices the NZ scheme has produced.
Commenting on progress towards the next global climate change summit in Paris in December, Groser said preparations were far more advanced than the disastrous 2009 summit in Copenhagen, the last such meeting where a global climate change deal was anticipated.
“Momentum is really developing,” Groser said.
“The European Union took most of the carbon lead politically before Copenhagen. Since then, the US and China have caught up.”
The deal he hoped would be done in Paris would move beyond the rules that governed the Kyoto Protocol, the first international pact aimed at starting a global response to climate change.
“It’s impossible to argue that this is enough to deal with the threat," Groser said.
Frame said industrial sector targets would be “very important” in the global agreement, because national targets would be difficult to meet without industrial sectors adopting targets for climate change action that operated across borders.
Frame also struck an optimistic note about the potential to limit global climate change within the next century because while climate change was occurring, the likelihood of an “abrupt” change in global climatic conditions was very low in that time frame.
"You don’t have to stop methane. You can have a major impact on methane in the longer term."
Professor Dave Frame
Victoria University
The models also suggested that sudden changes need not be irreversible, while irreversible changes were unlikely to occur abruptly.
“There’s nothing abrupt or irreversible in the next hundred years,” Frame said.
“There aren’t any models that show something radically different will happen across that time period. Further out, we’re not sure.”
Conference organiser and executive director of the Environmental Defence Society, Gary Taylor, used the event to push his desire for a collaborative approach to climate change policy-making, akin to the Environmental Defence Society-initiated Land and Water Forum (LAWF).
LAWF was successful in bringing traditional opponents to a consensus on freshwater management policies.
Groser endorsed any process that would lead to a less “caricatured” debate, and the collaborative approach was strongly endorsed by Local Government NZ, which issued a call for “urgent and more ambitious government action to address the effects of climate change”.
The declaration calls for a “holistic economic assessment of NZ’s vulnerability to impacts of climate change and the opportunities and benefits of responding to these”.
The chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment, Vicky Robertson, said the ETS review would examine the “transitional measures” that cover large emitters, and “what else needs to happen to make this a good price signal.”
Carbon prices in the NZ ETS are among the lowest in the world, at about $6.90 per tonne in recent days.
