But our support was not unfettered.
We signalled serious concerns, particularly with the proposed methane target, which appears to us as not supported by the science and available innovation and brings potentially severe economic implications.
Now the Bill will proceed to public consultation and select committee, where changes will be made before the Bill returns to Parliament.
We’ll be working hard in the select committee to ensure the Bill is fit for purpose and is not going to have unforeseen negative impacts on our rural communities.
National has engaged with the Government to offer bipartisan support for this institution.
We have taken a principled approach to these negotiations, stating that the framework must be based on scientific rather than political aspirations, that our pace of change should be enabled by both the availability of new technologies and the pace of the global response and ensuring our communities still thrive as we make the change.
The proposed Climate Change Bill goes some way to achieving these principles.
However, the proposed methane reduction of up to 47% by 2050 is too onerous.
It’s a fact of life that cattle and sheep belch methane whenever they eat.
The more they eat, the more they belch.
Despite this we’ve been world leaders in managing to limit our emissions while still producing large quantities of exports.
Farmers have achieved this efficiency gain by producing more meat, milk and fibre from broadly similar amounts of feed.
This has resulted in a decreasing level of methane per unit of production.
However, these proposed targets assume actual reductions, not efficiency gains, so farmers would need to feed less grass and feed to our animals and reduce overall stock numbers.
Grasses derived through biotechnology and new methane vaccines might be able to shift this reality but the Coalition Government appears ideologically opposed to this technology and methane vaccines remain elusively over the horizon.
The modelling for the target assumes at least 20% of all sheep, beef and dairy land will be converted to forestry by 2050.
Is this the future we want to see?
Hill-country farmers are becoming increasingly concerned about the One Billion Trees Programme and the potential it has to gut rural communities by overriding best land use, resulting in trees being planted in the wrong place.
The number of new trees needed in New Zealand to deliver the right balance between our climate change goals and agricultural needs should be based on scientific assessment, not the desire to create an election headline.
Our communities expect us to be prudent, measured and to use evidence as we make the emissions reduction transition because, if we get it wrong, those who are so strongly underpinned by our agricultural exports and activity will be immeasurably damaged.
The economic analysis of the targets also raises questions.
The regulatory impact statement shows officials assumed NZ would increase electric cars to be 95% of the fleet, renewable electricity would be 98% of generation, we would double our historical rate of energy efficiency improvement and we will gain access to new technologies that reduce agricultural emissions.
With this gale of a tailwind the targets are still calculated to cost 9% of GDP or $300 billion between now and 2050.
If technology is not so favourable the costs escalate substantially.
As the negotiation of the targets has become more problematic and the cost estimates more eye-watering it has reinforced our view that the issue of the target is precisely the issue that the new climate commission should consider.
Elected representatives need to be the ultimate decision-makers but independent advice supplied to all of Parliament and the public is needed to make this decision.
The Environment Select Committee is taking submissions on this Bill until July 16 and I urge you all to put your views forward on this important Bill.
National will be proposing the committee revisits the targets but takes the bulk of the remainder of the Bill forward.
Who am I?
Todd Muller is the National Party climate change spokesman.
