By BRIAN FALLOW
The Kyoto Protocol is not the only game in town if New Zealand wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, says Business New Zealand.
It has proposed a set of measures it says are better suited to reducing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming than Kyoto's cap-and-trade approach, which business leaders see as a threat to the competitiveness of export industries.
They include:
An improved depreciation regime for plant and Machinery, to encourage the replacement of outdated technology that is often dirtier and less energy efficient.
Reforming the Resource Management Act to remove impediments to small-scale electricity generation using renewable sources.
Changes to the financing of roads, to improve the efficiency of the transport sector.
On the international front, Business New Zealand says the "climate-change pact" announced between the United States, which has walked away from Kyoto, and Australia needs to be monitored and New Zealand involvement sought.
Such a pact exists only in the sketchiest outline at present, and it has been decried by environmentalists as a support group for tokenism.
"US policy is fundamentally business as usual," said Garry Law, of the Environmental Defence Society.
Since the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s, the US had decoupled energy growth from economic growth, with the latter consistently outstripping energy growth.
Committing to more of the same was unlikely to impress developing countries as a sacrifice they should match, said Law.
Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson said Kyoto, the fruit of a decade of United Nations negotiations, was the only concerted international action on offer.
"The climate-change research alliance between Australia and the United States is not an alternative to an international agreement that is likely to be ratified by the majority of developed nations," he said.
"The protocol establishes workable, global mechanisms for the long-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The US-Australia partnership bears no comparison, nor does it pretend to.
"The US proposes to reduce emissions intensity by improving energy efficiency, but expects that total emissions will continue to grow with the economy."
Business New Zealand remains opposed to ratification of Kyoto "at this stage" because it would cover a bare majority of developed countries, and major trading partners such as the United States and Australia would be outside it.
Besides, the lobby group said, New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions represented a fraction of 1 per cent of the global output.
Chief executive Simon Carlaw said Kyoto was looking increasingly "creaky".
He said it was difficult to comment, except in general terms, on Kyoto's impact on New Zealand firms' competitiveness in the absence of the Government's preferred-policy package.
That is now expected next week.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
United Nations Environment Program
World Meteorological Organisation
Framework Convention on Climate Change
Executive summary: Climate change impacts on NZ
IPCC Summary: Climate Change 2001