At the recent Lima climate talks New Zealand did not do very well and the minister for climate change Tim Groser made a poor job of explaining why we had such a poor performance.
The perception within NZ is that the National government is only playing lip service to climate change by promoting ourselves as clean and green while continuing to promote fossil fuels with road transport and oil exploration.
The perception within NZ is that the National government is only playing lip service to climate change by promoting ourselves as clean and green while continuing to promote fossil fuels with road transport and oil exploration.
.The root of the problem is that NZ does not burn coal to make electricity and has 85% renewable energy, with gas as a quick top up to balance supply and demand. Our transport uses oil for fuel and here we are the same as most other nations.
The area we have problems with is our seven million dairy farming cows, three point five million beef cattle and thirty million sheep so that we have ten million cattle against a population of four million people and it is an expanding industry.
Unless we are going to stop dairy farming or can find a way to export their methane emissions with the dairy products and meat, we are stuck with it..
The area we have problems with is our seven million dairy farming cows, three point five million beef cattle and thirty million sheep so that we have ten million cattle against a population of four million people and it is an expanding industry.
Unless we are going to stop dairy farming or can find a way to export their methane emissions with the dairy products and meat, we are stuck with it..
The only area left to make savings is in our transport. The National government has bought some electric trains for Auckland but has no idea what to do with the rest of the extensive railway network. The network is not in very god condition so it needs serious money spending to modernise it as, currently, it moves a few logs to ports and that is about it.
The electrical generating companies and the government should have a big interest in transport as their business is on a plateau and they need new markets. NZ has an oil import bill of five billion a year and oil is a diminishing resource with a volatile price which makes it vulnerable to competition.
If the electrical generating companies joined forces and collectively bought the railways operations and, with the involvement of the government, converted the network to electricity we could achieve several objectives.
We could reduce our dependence on oil as our sole fuel for transport, reduce our CO2 emissions, reduce our oil import bill and the electricity companies would open up a whole new market.
We could reduce our dependence on oil as our sole fuel for transport, reduce our CO2 emissions, reduce our oil import bill and the electricity companies would open up a whole new market.
We do not need to worry about our oil companies as oil will be needed for many years and its price will increase as its scarcity and cost of extraction increases.
Electric cars have an increasingly important future and some countries are trialling hire cars at rail terminals so that the commuter can reach his destination quickly and independently.
There is a whole new transport system in its infancy, in Europe in particular, and we need to be making the first steps to embrace it.
Electric cars have an increasingly important future and some countries are trialling hire cars at rail terminals so that the commuter can reach his destination quickly and independently.
There is a whole new transport system in its infancy, in Europe in particular, and we need to be making the first steps to embrace it.
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