19 September 2012

Doctors demand ‘Come Clean on Emissions Trading Scheme’

“The New Zealand Government needs to come clean about its commitment to addressing climate change”, says Dr Rhys Jones from the NZ Climate and Health Council, responding to a proposal to water down the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) even further.

Dr Jones says: “The independent Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment calls the ETS a ‘farce’, and the UN’s climate review team has already said that New Zealand has no plans for much of our promised emissions cuts.”

“The Government must stop pretending to New Zealanders that it has any intention of leading us into a sustainable future. The rhetoric – that we are playing our part in global efforts to avert climate change – is simply dishonest. New Zealanders are amongst the developed world’s top emitters – and that’s sending a terrible message to the rest of the world.”

“The truth is that the ETS is just corporate welfare for big polluters and ordinary New Zealanders will pay the price. Costs to taxpayers will total $1.3 billion over the next four years according to the Parliamentary Commissioner. This figure could become $44 billion in the 2020s, based on the Sustainability Council’s calculations at a plausible $100-a-tonne carbon price. At the same time, our changing global climate is pushing up prices for ordinary New Zealanders from weekly food bills to insurance premiums.”

“The irony” says Dr Jones, “is that our country has so many natural resources to grow food, plant forests and generate almost all our energy sustainably. There are also real health gains from low emissions lifestyles so New Zealanders can live longer, healthier and happier.”

“Yet here we are, watering down an already weakling Emissions Trading Scheme, welcoming fossil fuel industries with open arms at today’s New Zealand Petroleum Summit 2012, and threatening our natural export resource base of farming, forestry and fisheries.”

“It’s time for the Government to come clean – to admit to New Zealanders that it has no intention of addressing climate change. In reality, we’re growing lethal emissions like there’s no tomorrow”, ends Dr Jones.

OraTaiao: The NZ Climate & Health Council
www.orataiao.org.nz

Background
Dr Rhys Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a public health medicine specialist at the University of Auckland. He co-convenes OraTaiao: NZ Climate and Health Council.

Links to reports and events
• OraTaiao submission on “Updating the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme: A consultation document”, May 2012
http://www.orataiao.org.nz/file/view/OraTaiao+ETS+Review+Submission+May+2012.pdf
• The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2012/0052/latest/versions.aspx
• Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Submission.
http://www.pce.parliament.nz/assets/Uploads/PCE-Submission-on-the-Climate-Change-Amendment-Bill.pdf
• The Sustainability Council of New Zealand’s ‘The Carbon Budget Deficit’ report
http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/docs/TheCarbonBudgetDeficit.pdf;
the table on page 27 details the $44b external carbon budget deficit for 2021-30 at $100/tonne
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Report of the in-depth review of the fifth national communication of New Zealand, February 2011.
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2011/idr/nzl05.pdf
• Weakening of ETS raises taxpayers' liabilities
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/7664505/Weakening-of-ETS-raises-taxpayers-liabilities
• Ora Taiao Submission on The Emissions Trading Scheme, October 2009
http://www.orataiao.org.nz/file/view/NZCH+%28OraTaiao%29+ETS+submission.pdf
• The New Zealand Petroleum Summit 2012, 19-20 September, Amora Hotel, Wellington
http://www.petroleumsummit.co.nz/

More about doctors and the ETS
OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council are senior doctors and other health professionals concerned with climate change as a serious public health threat. Climate change remains a clear and present danger of unprecedented scale, and is accepted by health authorities worldwide as the leading global health threat this century.

Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Select Committee is presently reconsidering New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The Council holds that:

• The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, now before Select Committee, will leave in place indefinitely the subsidies for heavy emitting industries, makes no provision for agriculture to enter the scheme, and removes the requirement for regular independent review.

• The ETS will continue to be a heavily taxpayer subsidised scheme with looming fiscal liabilities. It risks siphoning funds away from public services like health and education and New Zealand families, particularly Māori and low income New Zealanders, will suffer as a result.

• The ETS doubly affects the most vulnerable, because not only will funds be diverted from the public purse, but the scheme also fails to protect communities from the direct and indirect health effects of climate change. Māori communities in particular will suffer because of poorer existing housing and community infrastructure, and economic reliance on threatened fishery and shellfish stocks. Weakening the ETS will also see New Zealand fail to realise the considerable health co-benefits that are associated with moving to a low carbon economy.

OraTaiao contends that if NZ won’t choose a prosperous low emissions economy, we cannot expect anyone else to. NZ should drop the pretence that it is playing its part in global climate change mitigation.

About climate and health
Climate change is widely recognised by world health authorities and leading medical journals to be the biggest global health threat of the 21st century and this is well-accepted by New Zealand medical professional bodies. Major threats—both direct and indirect—to global health from climate change will occur through water and food insecurity, threats to shelter and human settlements, population displacement and migration, extreme climatic events, changing patterns of disease, risks to security (e.g. war), and loss of economic potential.

Conversely, addressing climate change is an opportunity to improve population health and reduce inequities. In New Zealand, well designed policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can bring about substantial health co-benefits including reductions in heart disease, cancer, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, respiratory disease, and motor vehicle injuries, and improvements in mental health. These substantial health gains are possible through strategies such as transport infrastructure redesign to encourage active travel, healthy eating (including reduced red meat and animal fat consumption), and improving home insulation.

About OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate & Health Council
www.orataiao.org.nz
OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council is an incorporated society comprising over 150 senior doctors and other health professionals concerned about climate change impacts on health and health services.

Leading medical bodies throughout the world are saying that politicians must heed health effects of climate change, doctors must speak out, and doctors demand their politicians be decisive, listen to the clear facts and act now.

OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Climate is part of this international movement. It has published a number of articles about climate change and health in peer-reviewed medical journals, which can be found on its website www.orataiao.org.nz.

The Council’s messages include:
• Climate change is a real and urgent threat to the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders.
• New Zealand must be an active partner in global cooperation to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions to 350ppm CO2equivalents by:
o rapidly halving our own emissions by 2020;
o paying our fair share of international investment in a global future.
• New Zealand can, and must, respond to climate change in ways that improve population health, accord with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, create a more equitable, just and resilient society, and promote a healthier economy within ecological resource limits.

ENDS

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