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Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

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Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#51

Post by jngreenlee »

Taniwha wrote: post #39
jngreenlee wrote: post #6

Unfortunately it looks like just another bureaucracy with opportunity to appoint friends and supporters, but no real teeth or legal authority: "-no remedy or relief is available for failure to meet the 2050 target or an emissions budget, and the 2050 target and emissions budgets are not enforceable in a court of law, except that if the 2050 target or an emissions budget is not met, a court may make a declaration to t…

NZ regularly tops out as one of the least corrupt nations in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index I don't know what happens in your country, but we don't appoint our friends to public sinecures

Hi Kiwi! It is par for the course here in USA :) Glad to hear its better there...now let me immigrate without million dollar investments, heh!

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#52

Post by vkou »

marcusverus wrote: post #8
ConceitedCode wrote: post #3

Full digest of the bill - https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-digests... Lots to read over, but this stuck out to me so far. "gross emissions of biogenic methane in a calendar year are 10% less than 2017 emissions by the calendar year beginning on 1 January 2030; and are at least 24% to 47% less than 2017 emissions by the calendar year beginning on 1 January 2050 and for each subsequent calendar year…

Unless they plan to ban the consumption of meat, the biogenic methane cap seems like it would result in more emissions. If Kiwis don't grow their own beef, they will just have it shipped from abroad. Same consumption pattern, no global change in gross biogenic methane, but now there is the added emissions of shipping the beef across an ocean. Also, I can scarcely think of a more Orwellian idea than that Kiwis may soo…

There is a third option, which you have not considered - tariffs on non-conforming importers.

> Also, I can scarcely think of a more Orwellian idea than that Kiwis may soon be required to hold a (scarce) methane permit in order to raise livestock on their own land. Your sow had a litter, ey? Hope your permits are in order!

Canada operates this exact way with dairy licenses, and last time I dropped by, it wasn't an Orwellian nightmare. It's got a bit of a cronyism problem, but I've yet to see a country that doesn't.

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#53

Post by dzhiurgis »

cgrealy wrote: post #48
notmyfuture wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, also keep in mind that incentive won't last long (ref: https://www.transport.govt.nz/multi-modal/climatechange/elec... ). Once EV's make up > 2% of NZ's vehicle fleet they plan to start charging. Given the suitability of NZ for EV's it would be nice if there was more government support for their uptake.

While I agree that we should be incentivising EVs in NZ, I will point out that NZ is also probably one of the least suitable countries for EVs. Most of NZ is very sparsely populated; your transport choices are basically fly or drive yourself. There isn't much of a rail network and buses take forever. There are basically no motorways. The South Island especially has a lot of mountains, and many roads that cover over h…

Utter nonsense. The longest stretch without a gas station in NZ is something like 1-2 hours. 30 minutes between a house or a farm where you'd be able to get help in an emergency.

Plus 90% of people never leave cities anyway. Finally EVs will soon have longer range than ICE's.

I am not sure what roads do you travel, but I find it's actually quite difficult to hide on NZ roads - if you wanna do something cheeky or sleep - you'll be driving long way to find something that's not private property or fenced farm. Nature is absolutely gorgeous but it's already divided and feels almost artificial (even my father joking they've put speakers in bush to make fake bird sounds).

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#54

Post by EGreg »

yarg wrote: post #46
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9

> Ardern went on to say she absolutely believed climate change was the "biggest challenge of our time" and the "nuclear moment" for this generation. I find it ironic the prime minister is using “nuclear” as a pejorative when it was the left’s irrational opposition to nuclear power that resulted in much of the world's electricity being produced by fossil fuels. If we had embraced nuclear power 2 decades ago, we would…

Perhaps if the war hawks had allowed for the development of nuclear reactors with passive safety mechanisms- rather than exclusively funding R&D on those with weaponisable byproducts, we'd have globally usable nuclear energy technology today. Regarding the irrationality of the fear of current nuclear reactors, requiring active intervention (with control rods) to prevent nuclear meltdown is a genuine and justified cau…

Not to mention that stuxnet proved that we can quickly go from “look at all this desalinated water and zero carbon footprint!” to “crap, we just built tons of honeypots for state level hackers to hold our entire population hostage to the threat of nuclear meltdown triggered by sabotaged software”

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#55

Post by theRandomMoron »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9

> Ardern went on to say she absolutely believed climate change was the "biggest challenge of our time" and the "nuclear moment" for this generation. I find it ironic the prime minister is using “nuclear” as a pejorative when it was the left’s irrational opposition to nuclear power that resulted in much of the world's electricity being produced by fossil fuels. If we had embraced nuclear power 2 decades ago, we would…

Nuclear Power yields some of the lowest power generation per investment of any generation type. It has basically never returned profit, costs money for thousands of years to deal with spent fuel. Not to mention the immense impact of reactor containment failure. Any argument for using Nuclear to reduce CO2 emissions is redundant when the economics, safety and alternatives (wind/solar) are taken into consideration.

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#56

Post by crispinb »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #49
crispinb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the left’s irrational opposition to nuclear power This is nonsense. In nations where opposition to nuclear power is strong (like mine, Aus), there is not a left-right divide amongst the general population. People just don't want it, end of story, irrational or not. There is a huge divide regarding electricity supply in general here - ie. the right wants coal, the left renewables. But neither want nuclear. There hav…

As a leftist, I do concede anti-nuclear was a 60s new left thing that then went mainstream. It may not still be a leftist position today, but it was then. Also, it does fall squarely on one side of the industrialist side of the industrialist-populist divide of the right.

Maybe I should have quoted more of the gp:

> .. that resulted in much of the world's electricity being produced by fossil fuels

My point isn't that 'leftists' (a decreasingly useful categorisation in any case) aren't anti-nuclear. It's that this anti-nuclear stance has been causally impotent in most of the nations that haven't chosen to build much nuclear capacity. Australia is a great case in point - even its 'leftist' party is very right-wing (pro-coal, pro-asylum-seeker torture, etc), yet the population, right and left alike, simply will not countenance nuclear power.

There's a great tendency for political pundits to confuse the positions and divisions of lobbyists, politicians and insiders with those of the population at large. Anyone attributing lack of nuclear capacity to 'leftists' is doing just that.

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#57

Post by phs318u »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #44
phs318u wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be unaware that this position was enshrined in legislation that has remained untouched in the last 3 decades including by conservative governments. A couple of interesting facts: 1) the galvanising moment for this was the “Rainbow Warrior affair” in which French intelligence agents were caught after having sunk the Greenpeace vessel of the same name; 2) the nuclear-free zone act does not prohibit use of nucle…

I am aware of all these things. It is a law that will likely stay in place forever, as it is such a divisive and controversial issue, yet has barely any impact on anything in NZ, no politician will ever have a motive to take political risks required to change it. The only thing it’s ever achieved is straining the relationships NZ has with some of its closest allies. Specifically it doesn’t prohibit all power generati…

You’re contradicting yourself. Your earlier post says “they banned all forms of nuclear energy” while now you claim to be aware that they didn’t. Given that this whole article is about energy policy (as opposed to the narrow scope regarding the existing NZ ban on nuclear armed vessels in their waters), what is your point? If 80% of its electricity is already renewable, why the drama over taking that from 80% to 100% over the next 30 years? Doesn’t sound like a huge stretch frankly.

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#58

Post by phs318u »

ip26 wrote: post #43
phs318u wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other approaches to livestock methane reduction being actively investigated (and I’d suggest more promising than perennial unicorns such as carbon sequestration). One example: https://blog.csiro.au/feeding-seaweed-to-cows-our-livestock-...

Even just feeding cows grass instead of corn improves the methane emissions.

I think corn feed is more of a US thing due to the over abundance of subsidised corn production (I’m amazed at how much of the human and animal food chain in the US is corn derived). In Australia and NZ, it’s mainly grass/hay.

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#59

Post by arcticbull »

yarg wrote: post #46
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9

> Ardern went on to say she absolutely believed climate change was the "biggest challenge of our time" and the "nuclear moment" for this generation. I find it ironic the prime minister is using “nuclear” as a pejorative when it was the left’s irrational opposition to nuclear power that resulted in much of the world's electricity being produced by fossil fuels. If we had embraced nuclear power 2 decades ago, we would…

Perhaps if the war hawks had allowed for the development of nuclear reactors with passive safety mechanisms- rather than exclusively funding R&D on those with weaponisable byproducts, we'd have globally usable nuclear energy technology today. Regarding the irrationality of the fear of current nuclear reactors, requiring active intervention (with control rods) to prevent nuclear meltdown is a genuine and justified cau…

> Regarding the irrationality of the fear of current nuclear reactors, requiring active intervention (with control rods) to prevent nuclear meltdown is a genuine and justified cause for concern (as evidenced by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Fear of nuclear is irrational. Chernobyl was the single worst nuclear accident in the history of the world and UNSCEAR projects a death toll of no more than 4,000 [3] from the original accident (which directly killed about 50) onward. A large amount of them are suicide by people who fear they were “contaminated” when the most likely cancer, thyroid (due to radioactive Iodine-131 released) has a 98% survival rate [4]. Better than some flu years. That's what they were taking iodine pills for -- to saturate the thyroid so it didn't take up any of the Iodine-131.

Three mile island killed nobody and Fukushima killed 2-12 (almost 600 died from the actual quake). We learned from all 3 incidents and incorporated substantial additional safety measures for future designs.

The worst hydro accident by comparison, the Bangqiao Dam failure killed 230,000 people instantly. [2]

Nuclear has an order of magnitude fewer deaths per TWh than solar (it’s 10X safer than solar panels, yes) and two to three orders fewer than hydro and coal. [1].

Nuclear is no question the safest and most environmentally friendly energy source in the world by all metrics, and especially carbon emissions.

Of course I’d love to see thorium cycle explored too but we'll never get the funding with negative sentiment towards nuclear. It should be respected, not feared.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/d...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_dis...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_cancer

Re: Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

#60

Post by toomuchtodo »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #40
lostlogin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we had embraced nuclear power 2 decades ago, we would have been in much better shape with respect to CO2 than we are in now. How would New Zealand be better off with nuclear power? Keep in mind our environment. We have lots of water, plenty of sun and wind and some regions have earthquakes, including big ones in areas previously thought safe. Down here ‘we’ are doing just fine without it.

While I don't really think NZ needs nucular, the solar and wind adoption here is appalling. Further, afaik water dams have pretty bad environment impact...

All human efforts have some eco footprint. Hydro dams have similar CO2 emission profiles to wind and solar, so for argument's sake, let's assume their ecological impact is lesser than that of coal or natural gas. The south island of New Zealand is almost exclusively hydro, the north island has just a little bit of coal and natgas (less than 1GW of generation in aggregate) to displace to go 100% zero carbon for electrical generation.

There is an interconnect (Cook Strait cable, 1200MW HVDC) between the islands, and the south island ships power to the north island (primarily hydro), so you can aggregate renewable generation between both islands fairly effectively and treat them together as a single system.

Electricitymap.org South island: https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...

Electricitymap.org North island: https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...

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