Todd Talks with Todd Muller National MP

If there were a list of sectors who would feel the pain of an over ambitious Zero Carbon Bill, our primary industries would be near the top.

Last year our new Climate Change Minister, James Shaw, delivered New Zealand’s national statement to the annual United Nations Climate Change conference. He announced to the rest of the world that we had a total commitment to becoming a net-zero emissions economy by the year 2050. This was not a matter of negotiation. “You can’t negotiate with the climate,” he said. 

There was an insatiable desire to be first, fast and famous, but it wasn’t coupled with any detail or definition of what Zero Carbon looks like in practice. Only now are we starting to see serious economic analysis in relation to this commitment.

So what does the analysis say? The headline comment is that: ‘Yes, we technically could do it’. Where I think it starts to come unravelled is when you start to understand what this zero-emissions target actually means.

Economic modelling paints a grim picture with all scenarios showing economic growth slowing, costs on households rising and a carbon price soaring to a level that would see steel production close their doors, our farming families see the value of their asset massively impacted, as they stare down the barrel of costs of up to $200,000 per farm, and land use change from farming to forests on a scale not seen before.

Is this what the Minister really had us imagining when he simplified the issue of climate change down to a single concept of a net-zero emissions economy?

We need to be sensible here. Do we see a world without milk, meat, steel and aluminium? Or do we just see a world where NZ imports the product but exports the jobs and economic opportunities to countries that do the exact same thing in a far less sustainable way?

I know our rural communities already feels their economy is under assault from a Government that is out of touch with the realities of your daily lives. I don’t disagree with you. From agriculture through to industry, and all of the businesses that depend on the dollars that flow on, there is a real risk here that the Government will over-reach.

Yes, it is important we are ambitious. But let’s not let our ambition move at a pace that leaves both businesses and communities behind. National understands this. That’s why we’re committed to addressing the issue of climate change in a way that is both environmentally and economically sensible.

Todd Muller is the National Party spokesperson on Climate Change.