Coal lobby needs to come clean on misleading opinion poll

Wednesday, 17 October 2012, 2:57 pm
Press Release: Generation Zero

Coal lobby needs to come clean on misleading opinion poll
Wednesday 17 October, 2012
Press release – Generation Zero

Youth organisation Generation Zero has joined others in criticising mining lobby group Straterra for using a biased and misleading opinion poll to argue that most New Zealanders support the expansion of coal mining.

The poll – originally carried out for Solid Energy – has come under scrutiny from Coal Action Network Aotearoa and market research experts for using leading questions to encourage favourable answers.

Generation Zero agrees and is calling on Straterra to be upfront and honest.

”If Straterra and Solid Energy genuinely want ‘informed debate’ as they claim, then they should be happy to release the full survey and results to the media rather than just selective bites, and they should not conduct a survey containing a number of misleading questions and statements in the first place,” said Generation Zero national coordinator Louis Chambers.

In an interview, Straterra CEO Chris Baker said the poll challenges “the perception that there is a lot of opposition in New Zealand to mining, such as [mining] lignite [coal]”.

But the poll primed participants with unsubstantiated or false claims including that coal mining could be carried out without an “overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions”, and that producing diesel from coal could “help keep future prices no higher than they are today”.

“New Zealanders don’t get cheap milk just because it’s produced here, and similarly we wouldn’t get cheap diesel,” said Mr Chambers.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Jan Wright estimates that just one coal-to-diesel plant as proposed by Solid Energy would increase New Zealand’s CO2 emissions by 5.5 million tonnes – approximately 15% of current gross emissions.

Dr Wright also cites that carbon capture and storage technology is overall unproven, expensive and “there is no known suitable reservoir to store carbon dioxide from a South Island lignite industry”.

“If we want informed debate, these are the kinds of hard facts that New Zealanders must be presented with,” said Mr Chambers.

“We think New Zealanders will know better than to trust a poll on coal mining designed by a coal company and promoted by a fervently pro-coal lobby group.”

“Against what Straterra says we have a survey by Horizon Research from June saying the majority of New Zealanders regard climate change as an urgent or immediate problem and 79% believe climate change policies should have medium to high priority.

“New Zealanders are excited about a low carbon future. If mining fossil fuels is going to be part of that transition, then we need to have an honest and clean discussion that doesn’t misrepresent the interests of New Zealanders.”

ENDS

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