Fran O'Sullivan: Missing Mac? Key must be serious

Key has had to choose between Copenhagen and Fleetwood Mac's NZ tour. Photo / Supplied

Prime Minister John Key has re-affirmed to business that New Zealand's target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10-20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 is highly conditional.

Key - who will fly out next week for the UN Climate Change conference has made it clear: "If New Zealand doesn't get the rule changes it wants, we (NZ) should be under no illusions about changing our target."

Key reaffirmed his Government's bottom-line at a dinner last week attended by many of New Zealand's biggest players in agriculture and international trade.

Not only did the Prime Minister underline the Government was hedging its bets on this score, but he also indicated that one of the reasons why he had been loath to sign up earlier for the Copenhagen event was because it would clash with the Fleetwood Mac gig (the 70s group that played at Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration will appear in New Plymouth for two concerts this month).

The PM does a great line in corn.

"I could just see the headline ... 'John goes his own way'," he said.

Instead, says Key, he will be at Copenhagen with all the other leaders where he "won't stop thinking about tomorrow".

Ouch. Theoretically, the Prime Minister could still make it back to New Plymouth in time for Fleetwood Mac's second concert on December 20. But he would be pushing it to make the first concert unless he left Copenhagen early by skipping the vital second of the leaders' meetings at which superstars such as US President Barack Obama will be present. Fat chance.

At times like these Key must wish that New Zealanders would just get over themselves and approve the purchase of a Government jet. But the reality is if he had decided to stay home, it would simply have given the impression that New Zealand isn't committed to playing its part in the fight against climate change.

But even before Key made his public announcement, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith had advised a Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefing that the PM intended to go. That briefing was apparently very different in tone compared to the soundings that took place before the 2007 Bali conference.

From insider accounts, it would appear that Smith is much less inclusive of the usual groupings of NGOs and activists that the Labour Government used to bring on board to build a constituency for change and assuage opposition.

The biggest bugbear will be getting the rule changes endorsed.

Under existing Kyoto Protocol rules, New Zealand's overall emissions are set to rise steeply after 2020, which is when the major 1990s forest plantations will be ready for harvesting.

The current rules say unless forests are replanted on the same land where a forest is felled, the carbon stored by the felled trees is deemed to evaporate into the atmosphere and has to be counted in New Zealand's greenhouse gas tally.

Smith and associate climate change minister Tim Groser are trying to effect a switch to get official recognition at Copenhagen that not all the carbon that is sequestered by trees is released at harvest.

Much of it (70 per cent by some reckonings) is locked up in forest products like timber and fibre board. This will no doubt raise scepticism among the purest of "greenies" (if you can't get your emissions down by any other means, then just change the rules!).

But, arguably if the rules were based on poor science in the first place, then all New Zealand's negotiators are doing is restoring some much needed sanity to the debate.

With other nations including Japan - which imports a huge amount of timber on top of its existing forest reserves - sharing this viewpoint, it is possible that a rule change may be effected.

New Zealand is also seeking rule changes over land use and the international carbon market - which the Ministry for the Environment says are important because it will impact on New Zealand's ability to meet its future responsibility target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Key had made it clear the Government's greenhouse gas emissions target is also dependent on the rest of the world reaching a new deal on climate change.

This makes sense given that New Zealand businesses could be strongly disadvantaged if competitor countries do not move.

Smith's new emissions trading scheme - which was passed with the connivance of the Maori Party - will be reviewed for the first time in 2011.

He believes New Zealand would need to "keep nimble-footed" in response to developments in international negotiations, advances in climate change science and as new technologies become available.

But his contention that the Government's ongoing principle will be ensuring New Zealand does its fair share will be difficult to uphold if the big nations choose not to do their fair share.

One of the points that Key makes to business audiences is that all Obama has pledged is a 17 per cent reduction on the United States' 2005 emissions level - which equates to just a 3 per cent cut on its 1990 levels. These are the kind of comparisons that do not register with Greenpeace.

He also believes Copenhagen will be a fizzer unless the "big guys" - China, United States and India - come to the party.

Where the Government negotiators will focus is on getting across New Zealand's position that it has had the fastest population growth of any Annex One country since Kyoto was formed, the fact that 70 per cent of energy is renewable leaves little room for gains on that score, and that agriculture makes up 50 per cent of emissions.

The major switch that really needs to be made is to find a new transitional rule around agriculture emissions that will see them treated more leniently until scientific developments can effect a reduction in the levels emitted by dairy cattle in particular.

On this score, Groser and Smith hope to press home the humanitarian necessity for countries such as New Zealand - which are blessed in water supplies - to grow food for other nations not so blessed.

In all reality while the Government's new emissions scheme is not going to make huge headway in the next 11 years, it does enable Key and his two ministers to front at Copenhagen with some degree of credibility.

Ironically, the Government's own advice is that climate change will be more of a problem - not less of a problem. Key's advice is the implications are likely to hit the world faster and with more severity: "The latest advice: if you go to the Arctic circle in 20 years' time over summer there would be no ice."

He may well wish he had stayed at home to hear Fleetwood Mac sing: "If I could turn the page, In time then I'd rearrange just a day or two, Close my, close my, close my eyes ..."