Latest news with #EloiseGibson
Otago Daily Times
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Climate scientists decry govt's approach to methane
By Eloise Gibson of RNZ The prime minister has dismissed international climate scientists as "worthies" for criticising the government's approach to methane. But the Green Party says New Zealand appears to be on a "climate denial bandwagon" and needs to end the speculation over what it plans to do about the country's single biggest source of emissions. Christopher Luxon received a letter from 26 international climate change scientists accusing the government of "ignoring scientific evidence" over plans to lower its methane target. New Zealand has one of the highest per-capita methane rates in the world because of its farming exports and the current target is reducing methane by between 24 and 47 percent by 2050. Farmer lobby groups are demanding the government lower the target, and back away from any plans to put a price on methane. Carbon dioxide - a slower acting but longer lived planet-heater than methane - has been priced in New Zealand since 2008. Side-stepping advice from the independent Climate Change Commission, the government last year appointed its own scientific panel to tell it what level of cuts would be consistent with a goal of creating "no additional warming" from farming. "No additional warming" is a concept approved by Federated Farmers and Beef + Lamb, but criticised by many climate scientists as a weak basis for climate action. Adopting a target of "no added warming" would allow the farming sector, which produces more than half of New Zealand's emissions, to keep up its contribution to global heating at today's levels, indefinitely, regardless of new technology and farming methods promising to lower the impact. The panel found cutting methane 14-24 per cent off 2017 levels by 2050 would achieve no added warming, but Cabinet has not said whether it will adopt that range as a target. In the open letter, the scientists say aiming for "no additional warming" implied that current methane emissions levels were acceptable, when they were not. It said the government's approach ignored the weight of evidence showing that methane had to reduce to get control of global heating, which saw 2024 again break heat records globally. The letter says the government's path "creates the expectation that current high levels of methane emissions are allowed to continue [and] that it is acceptable to ignore emissions responsible for 30 percent of the current level of global warming". It says this jeopardises New Zealand's climate commitments and its commitment to the Global Methane Pledge Luxon came out swinging when asked about the criticism, which was prominently reported in UK business newspaper the Financial Times. He said it was lovely there were "worthies" who wanted to send him letters, but academics "might want to direct their focus and their letters to other countries" because New Zealand was already managing methane emissions better than "every other country on the planet". "I'll stack New Zealand's record up against any other country on the planet Earth around our methane emissions," said Luxon. "We're not shutting down New Zealand to send production to other countries that are infinitely less carbon efficient." Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said Luxon was missing the point, by confusing carbon efficiency with criticism of how the country was setting its future targets. "It's really clear that Christopher Luxon has to end any further speculation that his government is on the climate denial bandwagon, they have wasted a year playing around with this mythical notion of 'no additional warming' and now international alarm bells are ringing," said Swarbrick. "Obviously the Climate Commission has been really clear that any entertainment of "no additional warming" would mean households and business carrying a far higher burden and its time to draw a line in the sand." Swarbrick said the government's approach posed huge risks for exports. 'Dangerous precedent' Paul Behrens - a global professor of environmental change at Oxford University - was one of those who signed the letter. In a statement supplied to RNZ he said: "Setting a "no additional warming" target is to say that the wildfires in America, drought in Africa, floods across Europe, bushfires in Australia, increasing food insecurity and disease, and much more to come are all fine and acceptable." "The irony is that agriculture, one of the sectors most vulnerable to climate impacts, has many large, vested interests that resist and lobby against the very changes and just transitions needed to avoid those impacts," he said. Another scientist behind the letter told the Financial Times that the New Zealand government's approach was an "accounting trick" designed to hide the impact of agriculture in countries with big farming sectors, namely Ireland and New Zealand. Drew Schindel - a professor of climate science at Duke University in the US and chair of the 2021 UNEP Global Methane Assessment - said locking in heating from farming at today's levels would mean richer countries with big livestock sectors could avoid responsibility for reducing their climate impact, while poor countries with small animal herds would not be able to grow their farming sectors to produce more of their own meat and milk. "The New Zealand government is setting a dangerous precedent," he said. "Agriculture is the biggest source of methane from human activity - we can't afford for New Zealand or any other government to exempt it from climate action," he said. Federated Farmers has said it will never accept the current target of reducing methane, while Beef + Lamb says its "bottom line" is reducing the target in line with causing "no additional warming." But lowering the target would go against advice from the independent Climate Change Commission, which says reductions of 35-47 percent are needed for New Zealand to deliver on its commitments under the Paris Agreement. It says there are good reasons for New Zealand to raise the target but no basis to lower it. Cabinet needs to respond to the commission's advice before the end of the year. Both Swarbrick and Beef + Lamb say the ongoing delays in making a decision were a problem, with Beef + Lamb saying the delay was creating confusion and concern. Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said Cabinet was still carefully considering the matter. He said he did not take the letter's commentary to heart and "it doesn't stop the direction of travel we are following in undertaking a scientific review". Watts said he remained happy with the context of the review and the expertise of the scientists the government selected to conduct it. New Zealand has separate targets for methane and carbon dioxide, recognizing that methane is shorter lived. Carbon dioxide needs to fall much more steeply to net zero by 2050, affecting drivers, energy users and non agribusiness. When Watts was asked which sectors of the economy would be asked to do more to cut emissions, if methane contributed less to the overall 2050 goal, he said no sector would necessarily need to do more, in contrast to what the Climate Change Commission has found. Methane has caused most of New Zealand's contribution to heating so far, partly because it acts more quickly than carbon dioxide, front-loading the impact before it tails off. Scientists - including the government's pick for prime minister's chief science adviser John Roche - expect methane-quashing drenches and other options to be available to farmers as soon as next year, and that consumers of dairy will be open to farmers using them. But Federated Farmers and Beef + Lamb say farmers should not have to use new technology to reduce their climate impact. Fonterra, meanwhile, is under pressure from its customers over its climate impact and is offering its dairy farmers cash incentives to achieve emissions goals. The open letter is not the first time the government has been criticized for convening a panel to advise on a "no added warming" target. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has dismissed the science review as a purely political exercise, saying that contrary to claims by the farming lobby, there was no new science on methane to justify a fresh review. Upton also said there was no particular reason why farmers should get to 'keep' today's levels of heating, particularly given farming's climate impact is larger than it was in 1990. A top Australian climate scientist told RNZ last year the government's goal was problematic. Professor Mark Howden, Australasia's top representative on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said taking a "sensible" mid-point from various IPCC pathways, methane would need to fall by roughly 60 per cent by 2050 to meet global climate goals, though not all of that reduction needed to come from agriculture.
Scoop
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Climate Change Coverage In A Changed Media Climate
Article – RNZ Media outlets were firing up new projects and joining alliances to cover climate change just a few years ago. Now there's just one mainstream NZ media reporter focused solely on it. Hayden Donnell, Mediawatch producer In 2021 climate change minister James Shaw talked up the government's commitment to the Paris Agreement on Facebook. 'We need to cut global emissions by 45 percent, below 2010 levels, by 2030,' he said. 'Now is the time we must decisively choose the future we want for our children.' The tenor of political discourse has changed a little since then. Our current crop of ministers are less bullish about the transition to a low-carbon economy. 'We're not going to be guilt-tripped by these fanciful accounts that the planet is boiling. We need NZ's natural resources!' Resources Minister Shane Jones said Facebook last year, in a post set against a backdrop of clipart flames. Jones is following in the footsteps of politicians overseas. Donald Trump came to office in the US with the catchy mantra 'Drill Baby Drill' in his inauguration and State of the Nation speeches. In some respects, the media environment has followed a similar trajectory to the political one. Back when James Shaw was issuing those optimistic pronouncements, several of our major media companies were making their own commitments to climate action. Stuff had launched two long-term climate coverage projects. Quick! Save The Planet was launched in 2018. The site's editor, Patrick Crewdson, said it wouldn't give space to what he called 'debunked denialism'. 'We just want to really pound away at climate change coverage on a regular basis. Increase the intensity of it. And to make the problems of climate change feel urgent and tangible and unignorable,' he told Mediawatch at the time. That morphed into The Forever Project, launched in March 2020 just as Covid-19 locked the country down. It was devoted to in-depth climate coverage from science journalists like Eloise Gibson and Olivia Wannan. The New Zealand Herald and other media organisations also got in on the act, signing up to the global Covering Climate Now initiative and creating their own climate projects. Fast forward to today, and the Forever Project still exists, but doesn't have any dedicated reporters. Gibson and Wannan have both left Stuff, the former for RNZ and the latter to do communications for the Carbon Removal Research project at the University of Canterbury. Jamie Morton, who did in-depth climate reporting as a science reporter at the Herald, is now freelancing. Climate change has dropped down the news agenda, and Gibson is now the only dedicated climate reporter at a mainstream news media outlet. This week's Framing the Emergency event at AUT came at a fraught time for the industry. A panel of Newsroom's Marc Daalder, TVNZ Marae presenter Miriama Kamo and Eloise Gibson told the gathering she got her hopes up when she saw other countries' media teams at the COP 15 Copenhagen climate summit back in 2009. 'They would have ten people in the media room working in shifts around the clock to cover different angles on this crisis. I was so jealous, and I thought: 'Is New Zealand ever going to do this?' 'Spoiler alert: it really did not,' she added. Why not? The panel pondered the parlous state of the media's finances and climate change being dragged into the culture wars. They also said despite the dearth of dedicated climate reporters, climate denial is now uncommon – and many journalists increasingly refer to the crisis in stories about subjects from weather to power prices. Climate in the culture war Marc Daalder – Newsroom's senior political reporter who covers health, energy and extremism as well as climate change – said climate change getting caught up in partisan battles between the right and left made it more challenging for journalists to state the 'very basic facts' at the heart of the issue. He pointed to outgoing deputy prime minister Winston Peters casting doubt on NIWA's data last year about carbon levels in the atmosphere. He made similar claims during the 2023 election campaign. 'When they're covering the statements of politicians, it gets really difficult,' Daalder told Mediawatch at the AUT this week. 'I don't think the media has figured out how to – while maintaining the trust of our audience – say 'that's culture war BS. That's just not a thing'.' Gibson pointed out that some media organisations did fact-check Peters' claim. But while doing so can prompt accusations of bias and sometimes online abuse, she saw them as bread and butter for news organisations. 'I don't think you can tailor your reporting to what a small group of people are going to say. You need to tailor your reporting to what you know to be accurate, what you know to be representative, and what you know most people in New Zealand want to know. They just want to know as close as you can get to the facts,' she said. 'I don't actually think that's a partisan or political thing to do. It's just doing your job.' Stating the facts about climate change may not be biased, but that doesn't mean it's not political, Gibson said. 'I don't think you can separate covering climate change from politics because policy and economic decisions are intrinsically tied up in climate change action,' she said. 'You can't not tackle politics in that. But that's not the same as being partisan.' Caught in the cutbacks Both Gibson and Daalder pointed to media cutbacks as the true existential threat to climate coverage. Gibson was worried that low salaries and a lack of opportunity were driving young reporters out of the industry. This wasn't just a hypothetical concern. One former young reporter who'd recently left the industry for a climate advocacy agency was in the crowd listening to the media panel. 'I would find it hard to look that person in the eye and say: 'My job is going to be here for you in 10 years'. I hope there'll be 10 of my jobs, 20 of my jobs – but it's hard.' Daalder said that as newsrooms have slimmed down, specialist climate coverage has been sacrificed in favour of what editorial leaders perceive to be 'core news' coverage. Rather than resisting that, Gibson saw a path forward for reporting that shows how climate change impacts immediate concerns like the cost of living. She cited the cost of gas, changes to the transport system, or the price of solar panels and batteries as matters where the slow-moving climate crisis intersects with the everyday. 'It's not that people are not concerned about climate change, it's that they have got immediate and pressing concerns that are pushing that out of their mind, and they don't have the bandwidth. And it's so obvious now that those two things are compatible and connected. So you don't have to make it relevant. It is relevant.'
Scoop
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Climate Change Coverage In A Changed Media Climate
In 2021 climate change minister James Shaw talked up the government's commitment to the Paris Agreement on Facebook. "We need to cut global emissions by 45 percent, below 2010 levels, by 2030," he said. "Now is the time we must decisively choose the future we want for our children." The tenor of political discourse has changed a little since then. Our current crop of ministers are less bullish about the transition to a low-carbon economy. "We're not going to be guilt-tripped by these fanciful accounts that the planet is boiling. We need NZ's natural resources!" Resources Minister Shane Jones said Facebook last year, in a post set against a backdrop of clipart flames. Jones is following in the footsteps of politicians overseas. Donald Trump came to office in the US with the catchy mantra "Drill Baby Drill" in his inauguration and State of the Nation speeches. In some respects, the media environment has followed a similar trajectory to the political one. Back when James Shaw was issuing those optimistic pronouncements, several of our major media companies were making their own commitments to climate action. Stuff had launched two long-term climate coverage projects. Quick! Save The Planet was launched in 2018. The site's editor, Patrick Crewdson, said it wouldn't give space to what he called "debunked denialism". "We just want to really pound away at climate change coverage on a regular basis. Increase the intensity of it. And to make the problems of climate change feel urgent and tangible and unignorable," he told Mediawatch at the time. That morphed into The Forever Project, launched in March 2020 just as Covid-19 locked the country down. It was devoted to in-depth climate coverage from science journalists like Eloise Gibson and Olivia Wannan. The New Zealand Herald and other media organisations also got in on the act, signing up to the global Covering Climate Now initiative and creating their own climate projects. Fast forward to today, and the Forever Project still exists, but doesn't have any dedicated reporters. Gibson and Wannan have both left Stuff, the former for RNZ and the latter to do communications for the Carbon Removal Research project at the University of Canterbury. Jamie Morton, who did in-depth climate reporting as a science reporter at the Herald, is now freelancing. Climate change has dropped down the news agenda, and Gibson is now the only dedicated climate reporter at a mainstream news media outlet. This week's Framing the Emergency event at AUT came at a fraught time for the industry. A panel of Newsroom's Marc Daalder, TVNZ Marae presenter Miriama Kamo and Eloise Gibson told the gathering she got her hopes up when she saw other countries' media teams at the COP 15 Copenhagen climate summit back in 2009. "They would have ten people in the media room working in shifts around the clock to cover different angles on this crisis. I was so jealous, and I thought: 'Is New Zealand ever going to do this?' "Spoiler alert: it really did not," she added. Why not? The panel pondered the parlous state of the media's finances and climate change being dragged into the culture wars. They also said despite the dearth of dedicated climate reporters, climate denial is now uncommon - and many journalists increasingly refer to the crisis in stories about subjects from weather to power prices. Climate in the culture war Marc Daalder - Newsroom's senior political reporter who covers health, energy and extremism as well as climate change - said climate change getting caught up in partisan battles between the right and left made it more challenging for journalists to state the "very basic facts" at the heart of the issue. He pointed to outgoing deputy prime minister Winston Peters casting doubt on NIWA's data last year about carbon levels in the atmosphere. He made similar claims during the 2023 election campaign. "When they're covering the statements of politicians, it gets really difficult," Daalder told Mediawatch at the AUT this week. "I don't think the media has figured out how to - while maintaining the trust of our audience - say 'that's culture war BS. That's just not a thing'." Gibson pointed out that some media organisations did fact-check Peters' claim. But while doing so can prompt accusations of bias and sometimes online abuse, she saw them as bread and butter for news organisations. "I don't think you can tailor your reporting to what a small group of people are going to say. You need to tailor your reporting to what you know to be accurate, what you know to be representative, and what you know most people in New Zealand want to know. They just want to know as close as you can get to the facts," she said. "I don't actually think that's a partisan or political thing to do. It's just doing your job." Stating the facts about climate change may not be biased, but that doesn't mean it's not political, Gibson said. "I don't think you can separate covering climate change from politics because policy and economic decisions are intrinsically tied up in climate change action," she said. "You can't not tackle politics in that. But that's not the same as being partisan." Caught in the cutbacks Both Gibson and Daalder pointed to media cutbacks as the true existential threat to climate coverage. Gibson was worried that low salaries and a lack of opportunity were driving young reporters out of the industry. This wasn't just a hypothetical concern. One former young reporter who'd recently left the industry for a climate advocacy agency was in the crowd listening to the media panel. "I would find it hard to look that person in the eye and say: 'My job is going to be here for you in 10 years'. I hope there'll be 10 of my jobs, 20 of my jobs - but it's hard." Daalder said that as newsrooms have slimmed down, specialist climate coverage has been sacrificed in favour of what editorial leaders perceive to be 'core news' coverage. Rather than resisting that, Gibson saw a path forward for reporting that shows how climate change impacts immediate concerns like the cost of living. She cited the cost of gas, changes to the transport system, or the price of solar panels and batteries as matters where the slow-moving climate crisis intersects with the everyday. "It's not that people are not concerned about climate change, it's that they have got immediate and pressing concerns that are pushing that out of their mind, and they don't have the bandwidth. And it's so obvious now that those two things are compatible and connected. So you don't have to make it relevant. It is relevant."
Newsroom
27-05-2025
- Business
- Newsroom
Climate solution all but buried before it begins
It is sold as a bold step into the future, a technological fix to one of the world's dirtiest problems. But is New Zealand's climate solution, its first carbon-capture and storage project, over before it begins? 'Having read the submissions from the various companies on the Government's regulatory plans, it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen in the next four-and-a-half years before 2030,' RNZ's climate correspondent Eloise Gibson tells The Detail. 'Maybe after that, but I can't see it happening at a scale that's going to take the pressure off, in terms of having to cut our emissions. It's going to be one of the things in the Swiss army knife, I hope, but we are not going to be putting it out in the next couple of years.' The project, led by Todd Energy and backed by the Government, aims to capture carbon dioxide from industrial processes and inject it deep underground in Taranaki, at the Kapuni gas field, locking it away for centuries. The start date has been pencilled in for around 2027, and from then until 2030 it is expected to store a million tonnes of CO₂, with a further almost million tonnes stored over the following five years. It's a big part of the Government's broader plan to meet its legal obligations to cut emissions by 2030 – about a third of the carbon savings needed. But Gibson tells The Detail the project's future is now uncertain unless Todd Energy gets 'more money or less liability or a combination [of both]'. 'There is a whole raft of things that have changed, one is the carbon price is low compared to other countries … then there is the issue of the liability regime, so if there is a leak 15 years after you have filled up a field and closed it off, who is responsible for that … so there is wrangling going on around the rules.' Globally, carbon capture and storage has a mixed track record. Some projects, like Norway's Sleipner, have stored CO₂ safely for decades. Others have failed spectacularly, costing billions and storing less than promised. New Zealand's unique geology – riddled with seismic faults – adds a layer of risk. And if CO₂ does leak, it could undo years of emissions gains and pose unknown threats to groundwater and ecosystems. Then there is the fear that the method becomes a get-out-of-jail-free card for polluters. But putting that aside, if the project does not go ahead in New Zealand, what replaces it so the Government can meet its emissions targets? 'I approached the climate minister, and he did stress that the Government takes an 'adaptive approach' with their emissions budget, which I guess means they can pivot if something doesn't pan out,' Gibson says. 'But given they have cut a bunch of Labour-era policies that could have given them about a million tonnes of savings – which is what they need if this falls over – they are not likely to start these up again and there's absolutely nothing on the table that I have seen that would fill that gap, that this Government would support, so it does give them a problem.' Ultimately, Gibson says she wants the Government to use 'everything in the toolbox'. 'I don't think this is a time to be ruling out solutions. But it's also not a time to be distracted by expensive solutions, when we have other stuff that we know works, right there.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
RNZ News
27-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Climate solution all but buried before it begins
Photo: 123RF It is sold as a bold step into the future, a technological fix to one of the world's dirtiest problems. But is New Zealand's climate solution, its first carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, over before it begins? "Having read the submissions from the various companies on the government's regulatory plans, it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen in the next four and a half years before 2030," RNZ's climate correspondent Eloise Gibson tells The Detail . "Maybe after that, but I can't see it happening at a scale that's going to take the pressure off, in terms of having to cut our emissions. It's going to be one of the things in the Swiss army knife, I hope, but we are not going to be putting it out in the next couple of years." The CCS project - led by Todd Energy and backed by the government - aims to capture carbon dioxide from industrial processes and inject it deep underground in Taranaki, at the Kapuni gas field, locking it away for centuries. The start date has been pencilled in for around 2027, and from then until 2030 it is expected to store a million tonnes of CO₂, with a further almost million tonnes stored over the following five years. It is a big part of the government's broader plan to meet its legal obligations to cut emissions by 2030 - about a third of the carbon savings needed. But Gibson tells The Detail the project's future is now uncertain unless Todd Energy gets "more money or less liability or a combination [of both]". "There is a whole raft of things that have changed, one is the carbon price is low compared to other countries ... then there is the issue of the liability regime, so if there is a leak 15 years after you have filled up a field and closed it off, who is responsible for that ... so there is wrangling going on around the rules." Globally, CCS has a mixed track record. Some projects, like Norway's Sleipner, have stored CO₂ safely for decades. Others have failed spectacularly, costing billions and storing less than promised. New Zealand's unique geology - riddled with seismic faults - adds a layer of risk. And if CO₂ does leak, it could undo years of emissions gains and pose unknown threats to groundwater and ecosystems. Then there is the fear that CCS becomes a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' for polluters. But putting that aside, if the project does not go ahead in New Zealand, what replaces it, so the government can meet its emissions targets? "I approached the climate minister, and he did stress that the government takes an 'adaptive approach' with their emissions budget, which I guess means they can pivot if something doesn't pan out," Gibson says. "But given they have cut a bunch of Labour-era policies that could have given them about a million tonnes of savings - which is what they need if this falls over - they are not likely to start these up again and there's absolutely nothing on the table that I have seen that would fill that gap, that this government would support, so it does give them a problem." Ultimately, Gibson says she wants the government to use "everything in the toolbox". "I don't think this is a time to be ruling out solutions. But it's also not a time to be distracted by expensive solutions, when we have other stuff that we know works, right there." Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
