December 7, 2024 • 13 mins
The Greens have today unveiled their new Emissions Reduction Plan, and taking a hit at the current Government's plan while they're at it.
They claim their plan would reduce carbon emissions more than five times the Government's draft Emissions Reduction plan by 2030.
Some of the proposed policies include the reintroduction of the clean car discount, clean heating subsidies for rooftop solar, and reinstating the oil and gas ban.
Green Party MP Steve Abel joins with more.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks'd
be the Greens.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
As I mentioned today, I've released their new emissions reduction plan,
taking a hit at the current government's plan. They claim
that their plan will reduce carbon emissions more than five
times the government's draft emissions reduction plan by twenty thirty.
Some of the proposed policies include the re introduction of
the Clean Card, discount cleaning heating subsidies for rooftop solar,
and reinstating the oil and gas ban. And Green Party
(00:35):
MP Steve Abele is with me now. Steve, Good afternoon.
Good thanks, So there's a fair bit of detail on this.
What's the What are the one or two takeaways you'd
like our listeners to sort of take away from this announcement.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I guess the main thing I'd like for to take
away is that, you know, we think of climate change
as this monumental challenge that we have to step up to.
It turns out that if we actually put in the
effort and decarbonize our society, it ends up also being
better for our overall resilience and cost us less money
in terms of at the household level, in terms of
(01:14):
our transport in terms of the potential penalties will face
if we don't achieve our mission targets.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The demand to end fossil fuels is that realistic.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think what's not realistic is thinking that we can
keep on business as usual, because we know that burning
fossil fuels on a planetary scale drives these extreme weather
events that cost us in lives and livelihoods and our
ability to produce food, and obviously it cost the economy,
(01:54):
and so it's not realistic for us to keep on
burning fossil fuels at the volume that we are. We
see here in New Zealand, we've got this incredible tricity system.
There's mostly clean energy, mostly renewable, and our plan would
allow us to take the whole energy system, you know,
(02:15):
overbuild our generation so that we've got one hundred and
fifty percent more electricity generation using clean energy solar and wind,
and then use that energy to power our transport fleet
trains and buses and cars, and that that will cost
us a lot less than currently were import about eight
billion dollars offshore oil to run our transport. So getting
(02:37):
off that fossil oil is both better for our resilience
and for our pockets.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
How much would that infrastructure cost to get what did
you say? One hundred and fifty percent of what we
what we currently need.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yes, I mean the cost of, for example, our clean
power payment. It's about in about the one point six
billion dollar mark. But you think about the government's current
transport plan over ten years as one hundred and eighty
billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So that isling roads though, isn't it, which we will
still be using.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
That's basically mostly what it is. But it's a lot
of stuff and the new stuff that we don't need,
and we could be instead of investing in that, investing
in the cheaper, more efficient means of getting around our cities,
particularly urban transport systems. So in terms of how we
juggle the money, we can through an emissions training scheme
and through the way we redirect our current fiscal expenditure
(03:35):
actually lower the cost of energy bulls, lower our carbon emissions,
and it is cost effective. In fact, it's much more
cost effective than what we're the current government's doing, which
is kind of throwing fuel on the flames of climate change.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
What you mentioned about that the massive budget we spend
on transport and everything, what don't we what don't we
need to spend that money on. What do we would
put any particular standouts for you?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I think the sort of idea that we could build
our building roads is going to solve our congestion problems.
A lot of those roading projects are really extravagant, very expensive,
and they don't solve congestion. We know that because we
see all over the world, don't we see right here
that if you just keep adding more cars to the equation,
(04:22):
it's a very inefficient way of moving people around. But
what if we ability outcomes if you invest in public transport,
because the train or a bus is a farm more
efficient way of moving lots of people around a city
than private automobiles.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, in terms of commuters perhaps, but I mean we
might all be driving green cars. They're still going to
need the road, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah. I mean it's not that we have no roads.
We'll certainly have roads, But it's about where you direct
your investment in terms of the whole mobility picture. So
roads are an important part of that. But the idea
that we should be cutting funding from public transport or
not thinking that electrification of rail isn't a great and
useful thing to do. You know, when you go to
(05:07):
cities around the world that have the mix right, they
have a lot of other mobility options. You know, to
get from a to B you can take a bike,
or take a bus, or take a train, or take
a car if you need to. And that's fine, but
it's we can't have a situation in most of our
urban centers where the public transport options are pretty scant
(05:27):
and people are kind of trapped in the hegemony of
the automobile, you know, they can't kind of do much else.
You know, I lived in London for two and a
half years. I never needed a car.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, difficult to compare the city of the size of London,
I guess, hasn't that.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Well, it turns out size that actually size doesn't matter
in this instance. But there's lots of cities that are
the same size and some of our bigger cities or
smaller and they have far better transport systems than we do.
So you can still have a much more efficient transport
network by reducing our fixation with the automobile. And it's
(06:03):
just one of the things. But the opportunity we have
news on with our already strong electricity network is that
we can electrify whatever means to transport we we're using,
whether it's the electric bus or train or automobile. And
that's these big emissions cuts and also big cuts to
our our household expenditure and energy builds. Domestic energy bills
(06:27):
go down. There's lots of advantages. The kind of reinvestment
in oil and gas and cold pre is the most
expensive option. That's what the government's pushing for, and it
doesn't solve this catastrophic I guess you have climate change.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
The reintroduction of the clean car disc out. There's a
lot of people who are thinking they just see that
as a benefit for the wealthy, middle income people who
can't afford a new green car. Basically, ev isn't this
just a social welfare for wealthy people who can pay
for it themselves.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I think the thing is that you do it as
part of a suite of strategies, and it's one way
to get greater electrification capability. The cost of a lectric
cars is going down all the time. If we have
a much bigger electric car fleet, the secondhand market becomes
more substantial, and so those sort of inequities in terms
(07:16):
of the cost of buying any electric car which most
people can't afford. You, right, we'll move out the system.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Would you have the discount for secondhand cars as well,
for those whose budget isn't so bad.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Now it's designed for getting new cars into the system,
but then that naturally creates a secondhand electric cars fleet.
But also you get the infrastructure so that you know,
you can readily confidently know you can get from a
to be a long distance and there'll be a place
to charge on the way. And the advantage of that
one is huge, and people took it up, you know,
(07:50):
on an extraordinary scale. The clean cake discount was extremely effective.
And you know, LO looked a lot of taxi drivers
and huber drivers who went and got an electric vehicle
because they did the maths on it was it was
a very good option for them. This government is absolute,
we can to that market. But they've they've kind of
killed it overnight by sending lots of the wrong signals
(08:11):
to the community about the support for electrification. And that's
a real backward step.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
So you've got a play proposing a tax on agriculture,
isn't it and so the farmers are in the gun,
I guess, But isn't the problem. Do you have a
problem with the amount of milk, lamb and beef that
we are consuming? Isn't the consumer as the consumer the
problem and we're going to have to pay for it anyway.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Aren't we? Certainly not in New Zealand. I mean, we
don't consume much of that, and in terms of what's
produced domestically, ideally we do have a you know, milk,
for example, ninety five percent of its exported. But the
the issues about how do we support the farmers who
are moving to the more efficient and more sustainable ways
(08:52):
of farming. And there's lots of really exciting stuffing in
the agriculture space. I'm constantly inspired by what farmers are doing,
but we need to actually recognize that bringing in emissions,
you know, price on emissions at the processor level, which
is you know, not putting the pressure on the farmers
at the farm level, but keeping a track of reporting
(09:13):
of what's going on at that level, and reinvesting that
money back in the agricultural systems to support the transition.
So really it's a cycling money back into agriculture. But
the other thing where we're going to do, which farmers
have been calling out for, is a recognition of biodiversity credits.
So where farmers are protecting a bit of nat a
bush and their land or restoring a wetland, we're going
(09:35):
to recognize that. We're actually going to acknowledge that that
really good work has been done. And I just want
to say farmers do some amazing work in that space.
It's a system problem we have with varying particularly it's
just a shed volume of animals, the amount of waste
they produce and nitrate in the urine and all the
fertilized the use. So the other thing is the cap
on the fertilizer. We're going to have a sinking cap
(09:56):
on the amount of nightride fertilizer use, which be better
for our fresh water as well.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Looking at the sort of their elephants on the room.
Because the question is anthropogenic climate change, isn't it? Have
you within the greens and it's a bigger question, isn't it?
But the global population is obviously growing at an unsustainable
rate every year, every few years, we seem to add
a billion, you know, people to the planet, and therefore
the demand for our food and our beef and our land,
(10:22):
et cetera is hardly going to diminish, is it? You
guys got any thoughts about whether there needs to be
some action taken internationally speaking about the global population growth
rate and which probably is connected with the empowerment of
women in poor countries, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
It is very much connegave with that. But the other
thing is that lots of modeling, you know, most of
the modeling shows that the global population will plateau in
coming decades quite significantly.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Well, I mean, goodness me, what are we at now?
I mean, what's the plateau going to settle out? Two
or three billion? Well, that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So let's get bag step because you know, for example,
the efficient you know, the amount that one person consumes
in one part of the world versus somebody another part
of what can be quite substantially different. And you find
that the sort of distribution of wealth, the distribution of food,
and the distribution of resources makes a big difference. And
(11:21):
it turns out that the wealthier countries are the least efficient.
And it doesn't mean that we can't find huge efficiency
games in the way that we provide people's needs food, fiber,
housing and the like. And in terms of the egg space,
particularly the idea that we're just going to keep sort
(11:41):
of consuming these volumes of animal products, which are actually
quite an inefficient way to get nutrition into human bodies.
And I think my personal view is that animal products
will always be a part of our diet, but we
could for a healthier diet ourselves, but also for the
good of fresh water and the climate, a less livestock
(12:03):
dependent economy would be better. And here in New Zealand
there's really exciting opportunities around that.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Hey, just one last question, what about nuclear great source
of green energy, isn't it? Would you guys ever support that?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So it's amazing massive hydrogen and nuclear reactor in the
sky called the Sun. I'm a big supporter of that
nuclear energy, and it turns out we've got this incredible
way of capturing it is very efficiently through solar panels.
So you know that there's your answer right there. And
solar panels are way cheaper than you know, clear power plants,
(12:39):
which are very expensive to build. Even if we didn't
have a population that doesn't want nuclear power in the zone,
which we clearly do, you wouldn't find anyone want to
build a power plant here in a hurry because expensive
interesting pole.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That one day, but we can we can discuss that
another time, Steve. I really appreciate, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
The cost of nuclear in terms of keeping it safe,
dealing with the waste. They're actually really water intensive nuclear
power plants and they have a problem with overheating.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Okay, Steve, I'm going to have to wrap it up
there there, but thank you so much for your time.
Really appreciate and enjoy the rest of your day. That's
Steve Abel. That's around the announcement of the Greens new
emissions reduction plan.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
For more from the Weekend Collective, listen live to news
talks'd be weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks'd
be the Greens.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
As I mentioned today, I've released their new emissions reduction plan,
taking a hit at the current government's plan. They claim
that their plan will reduce carbon emissions more than five
times the government's draft emissions reduction plan by twenty thirty.
Some of the proposed policies include the re introduction of
the Clean Card, discount cleaning heating subsidies for rooftop solar,
and reinstating the oil and gas ban. And Green Party
(00:35):
MP Steve Abele is with me now. Steve, Good afternoon.
Good thanks, So there's a fair bit of detail on this.
What's the What are the one or two takeaways you'd
like our listeners to sort of take away from this announcement.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I guess the main thing I'd like for to take
away is that, you know, we think of climate change
as this monumental challenge that we have to step up to.
It turns out that if we actually put in the
effort and decarbonize our society, it ends up also being
better for our overall resilience and cost us less money
in terms of at the household level, in terms of
(01:14):
our transport in terms of the potential penalties will face
if we don't achieve our mission targets.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The demand to end fossil fuels is that realistic.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think what's not realistic is thinking that we can
keep on business as usual, because we know that burning
fossil fuels on a planetary scale drives these extreme weather
events that cost us in lives and livelihoods and our
ability to produce food, and obviously it cost the economy,
(01:54):
and so it's not realistic for us to keep on
burning fossil fuels at the volume that we are. We
see here in New Zealand, we've got this incredible tricity system.
There's mostly clean energy, mostly renewable, and our plan would
allow us to take the whole energy system, you know,
(02:15):
overbuild our generation so that we've got one hundred and
fifty percent more electricity generation using clean energy solar and wind,
and then use that energy to power our transport fleet
trains and buses and cars, and that that will cost
us a lot less than currently were import about eight
billion dollars offshore oil to run our transport. So getting
(02:37):
off that fossil oil is both better for our resilience
and for our pockets.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
How much would that infrastructure cost to get what did
you say? One hundred and fifty percent of what we
what we currently need.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yes, I mean the cost of, for example, our clean
power payment. It's about in about the one point six
billion dollar mark. But you think about the government's current
transport plan over ten years as one hundred and eighty
billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So that isling roads though, isn't it, which we will
still be using.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
That's basically mostly what it is. But it's a lot
of stuff and the new stuff that we don't need,
and we could be instead of investing in that, investing
in the cheaper, more efficient means of getting around our cities,
particularly urban transport systems. So in terms of how we
juggle the money, we can through an emissions training scheme
and through the way we redirect our current fiscal expenditure
(03:35):
actually lower the cost of energy bulls, lower our carbon emissions,
and it is cost effective. In fact, it's much more
cost effective than what we're the current government's doing, which
is kind of throwing fuel on the flames of climate change.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
What you mentioned about that the massive budget we spend
on transport and everything, what don't we what don't we
need to spend that money on. What do we would
put any particular standouts for you?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I think the sort of idea that we could build
our building roads is going to solve our congestion problems.
A lot of those roading projects are really extravagant, very expensive,
and they don't solve congestion. We know that because we
see all over the world, don't we see right here
that if you just keep adding more cars to the equation,
(04:22):
it's a very inefficient way of moving people around. But
what if we ability outcomes if you invest in public transport,
because the train or a bus is a farm more
efficient way of moving lots of people around a city
than private automobiles.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, in terms of commuters perhaps, but I mean we
might all be driving green cars. They're still going to
need the road, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah. I mean it's not that we have no roads.
We'll certainly have roads, But it's about where you direct
your investment in terms of the whole mobility picture. So
roads are an important part of that. But the idea
that we should be cutting funding from public transport or
not thinking that electrification of rail isn't a great and
useful thing to do. You know, when you go to
(05:07):
cities around the world that have the mix right, they
have a lot of other mobility options. You know, to
get from a to B you can take a bike,
or take a bus, or take a train, or take
a car if you need to. And that's fine, but
it's we can't have a situation in most of our
urban centers where the public transport options are pretty scant
(05:27):
and people are kind of trapped in the hegemony of
the automobile, you know, they can't kind of do much else.
You know, I lived in London for two and a
half years. I never needed a car.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, difficult to compare the city of the size of London,
I guess, hasn't that.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Well, it turns out size that actually size doesn't matter
in this instance. But there's lots of cities that are
the same size and some of our bigger cities or
smaller and they have far better transport systems than we do.
So you can still have a much more efficient transport
network by reducing our fixation with the automobile. And it's
(06:03):
just one of the things. But the opportunity we have
news on with our already strong electricity network is that
we can electrify whatever means to transport we we're using,
whether it's the electric bus or train or automobile. And
that's these big emissions cuts and also big cuts to
our our household expenditure and energy builds. Domestic energy bills
(06:27):
go down. There's lots of advantages. The kind of reinvestment
in oil and gas and cold pre is the most
expensive option. That's what the government's pushing for, and it
doesn't solve this catastrophic I guess you have climate change.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
The reintroduction of the clean car disc out. There's a
lot of people who are thinking they just see that
as a benefit for the wealthy, middle income people who
can't afford a new green car. Basically, ev isn't this
just a social welfare for wealthy people who can pay
for it themselves.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I think the thing is that you do it as
part of a suite of strategies, and it's one way
to get greater electrification capability. The cost of a lectric
cars is going down all the time. If we have
a much bigger electric car fleet, the secondhand market becomes
more substantial, and so those sort of inequities in terms
(07:16):
of the cost of buying any electric car which most
people can't afford. You, right, we'll move out the system.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Would you have the discount for secondhand cars as well,
for those whose budget isn't so bad.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Now it's designed for getting new cars into the system,
but then that naturally creates a secondhand electric cars fleet.
But also you get the infrastructure so that you know,
you can readily confidently know you can get from a
to be a long distance and there'll be a place
to charge on the way. And the advantage of that
one is huge, and people took it up, you know,
(07:50):
on an extraordinary scale. The clean cake discount was extremely effective.
And you know, LO looked a lot of taxi drivers
and huber drivers who went and got an electric vehicle
because they did the maths on it was it was
a very good option for them. This government is absolute,
we can to that market. But they've they've kind of
killed it overnight by sending lots of the wrong signals
(08:11):
to the community about the support for electrification. And that's
a real backward step.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
So you've got a play proposing a tax on agriculture,
isn't it and so the farmers are in the gun,
I guess, But isn't the problem. Do you have a
problem with the amount of milk, lamb and beef that
we are consuming? Isn't the consumer as the consumer the
problem and we're going to have to pay for it anyway.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Aren't we? Certainly not in New Zealand. I mean, we
don't consume much of that, and in terms of what's
produced domestically, ideally we do have a you know, milk,
for example, ninety five percent of its exported. But the
the issues about how do we support the farmers who
are moving to the more efficient and more sustainable ways
(08:52):
of farming. And there's lots of really exciting stuffing in
the agriculture space. I'm constantly inspired by what farmers are doing,
but we need to actually recognize that bringing in emissions,
you know, price on emissions at the processor level, which
is you know, not putting the pressure on the farmers
at the farm level, but keeping a track of reporting
(09:13):
of what's going on at that level, and reinvesting that
money back in the agricultural systems to support the transition.
So really it's a cycling money back into agriculture. But
the other thing where we're going to do, which farmers
have been calling out for, is a recognition of biodiversity credits.
So where farmers are protecting a bit of nat a
bush and their land or restoring a wetland, we're going
(09:35):
to recognize that. We're actually going to acknowledge that that
really good work has been done. And I just want
to say farmers do some amazing work in that space.
It's a system problem we have with varying particularly it's
just a shed volume of animals, the amount of waste
they produce and nitrate in the urine and all the
fertilized the use. So the other thing is the cap
on the fertilizer. We're going to have a sinking cap
(09:56):
on the amount of nightride fertilizer use, which be better
for our fresh water as well.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Looking at the sort of their elephants on the room.
Because the question is anthropogenic climate change, isn't it? Have
you within the greens and it's a bigger question, isn't it?
But the global population is obviously growing at an unsustainable
rate every year, every few years, we seem to add
a billion, you know, people to the planet, and therefore
the demand for our food and our beef and our land,
(10:22):
et cetera is hardly going to diminish, is it? You
guys got any thoughts about whether there needs to be
some action taken internationally speaking about the global population growth
rate and which probably is connected with the empowerment of
women in poor countries, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
It is very much connegave with that. But the other
thing is that lots of modeling, you know, most of
the modeling shows that the global population will plateau in
coming decades quite significantly.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Well, I mean, goodness me, what are we at now?
I mean, what's the plateau going to settle out? Two
or three billion? Well, that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So let's get bag step because you know, for example,
the efficient you know, the amount that one person consumes
in one part of the world versus somebody another part
of what can be quite substantially different. And you find
that the sort of distribution of wealth, the distribution of food,
and the distribution of resources makes a big difference. And
(11:21):
it turns out that the wealthier countries are the least efficient.
And it doesn't mean that we can't find huge efficiency
games in the way that we provide people's needs food, fiber,
housing and the like. And in terms of the egg space,
particularly the idea that we're just going to keep sort
(11:41):
of consuming these volumes of animal products, which are actually
quite an inefficient way to get nutrition into human bodies.
And I think my personal view is that animal products
will always be a part of our diet, but we
could for a healthier diet ourselves, but also for the
good of fresh water and the climate, a less livestock
(12:03):
dependent economy would be better. And here in New Zealand
there's really exciting opportunities around that.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Hey, just one last question, what about nuclear great source
of green energy, isn't it? Would you guys ever support that?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So it's amazing massive hydrogen and nuclear reactor in the
sky called the Sun. I'm a big supporter of that
nuclear energy, and it turns out we've got this incredible
way of capturing it is very efficiently through solar panels.
So you know that there's your answer right there. And
solar panels are way cheaper than you know, clear power plants,
(12:39):
which are very expensive to build. Even if we didn't
have a population that doesn't want nuclear power in the zone,
which we clearly do, you wouldn't find anyone want to
build a power plant here in a hurry because expensive
interesting pole.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That one day, but we can we can discuss that
another time, Steve. I really appreciate, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
The cost of nuclear in terms of keeping it safe,
dealing with the waste. They're actually really water intensive nuclear
power plants and they have a problem with overheating.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Okay, Steve, I'm going to have to wrap it up
there there, but thank you so much for your time.
Really appreciate and enjoy the rest of your day. That's
Steve Abel. That's around the announcement of the Greens new
emissions reduction plan.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
For more from the Weekend Collective, listen live to news
talks'd be weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.
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