Youth parliament > Press gallery > How is NZ reducing its ecological footprint by Storme Sen

How is NZ reducing its ecological footprint by Storme Sen

Global warming. You hear that phrase everywhere nowadays; scientists and tree-huggers spout it and the millions of mind-boggling statistics to back up their claim at any opportunity.

By Storme Sen

Yet, that phrase is never in the forefront of our minds in our everyday life, not when we take our hour long shower, not when we leave six appliances on at once, not until global warming affects our lives personally do those cold statistics mean a thing.

Since when has the weather gone so insane? Mudslides, earthquakes and floods are occurring in places where they shouldn’t be at alarming rates; polar bears are actually drowning from lack of icebergs to rest on!

Global warming is no longer something we can put off or disown as scare-propaganda.

A recent example of out-of-control weather phenomenon are the tornadoes that hit Taranaki.

New Zealand shouldn’t have global warming problems; we are renowned for our “clean and green” image, right? Wrong.

If we measure the average emissions produced per capita (individually), New Zealand comes in at a shocking 12th place in the world for the highest carbon producing countries in 2006.

As a country that thrives on showcasing its natural resources for the tourism industry and production of biological products for export, New Zealand’s economy is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Our country has very little weather-related disasters occurring in comparison to others such as India, however, our weather disasters cost us a fortune every time with the most expensive being the drought in Canterbury in 1997-1998, costing the government a staggering $1 billion.

So what is global warming? The suns rays have always penetrated our atmosphere, warming the earths surface, enabling life to inhabit our planet, then been reflected back off the earths surface out through our ozone layer.

But now, the pollution we emit traps the harmful rays in our atmosphere so that they cannot be reflected back out of our ozone layer, causing global warming.

This changes our weather patterns, causes droughts, melts our ice caps, provides warmer temperatures for disease carrying vectors and pests, such as mosquitoes, to breed, and changes the conditions for crops to be grown in to name a few examples.

We know a lot of these facts and that global warming is a problem of epic proportions, but now the time has come to do something about it. It was not caused by my generation but it is up to us to carry the burden and we can no longer just say our great great grandchildren will deal with it.

New Zealand has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, named after the Japanese city the environmental summit was held in. The Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries to 5% below the level they were in 1990 between the period 2008-2012.

New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently 25% higher than they were in 1990 and New Zealand is in danger of not achieving its target, setting its current Kyoto deficit at $557 million (The money owed should NZ not fulfill its Kyoto obligations). 

At Youth Parliament 2007, a Legislative Bill was put forward for debate amongst the Youth Parliamentarians. This bill is mainly aimed at reducing household carbon gas emissions and lowering the energy usage of individuals.

The bill will enable a household to open a voluntary carbon account that will monitor their energy consumption via a Smart card system. There will be a fee to open an account and the amount of energy deemed reasonable for consumption will be individually analyzed in accordance with the needs of each different household.

The account will also introduce carbon credits (in the form of tax credits), rewarding a household that makes energy savings of 10% (with $500) and penalizing those that overreach their amount of calculated energy use.

In addition, the bill states that the government will pay up to 50% of the costs of converting to more energy efficient means such as solar power.

This bill was greeted with a plethora of criticism, even though the Minister of Youth Affairs recommended that everyone agree with this bill. Indeed, Youth Parliamentarian Katherine Steel proclaimed that “this bill is proof that the government is f!*king with our futures” when debating.

The Speaker, clearly taken aback, sent Miss Steel out of the chamber for 5 minutes as a penalty and asked her to apologise, telling her that “those words have never been said in Parliament before” while Miss Steel’s electorate Green Party MP Keith Locke, who was observing from the public gallery, ran outside to speak to her, pushing people out of his way in his hurry.

Miss Steel replied that she was “trying to apologise but everyone was applauding”.

The majority of the Youth MPs seemed to agree with Youth MP Johnny Crawford in saying, “This bill is like a cow, a point here and a point there but a whole lot of bulls*%t in between.”

Many Youth MPs pointed out the several flaws in this bill. Namely, if it is voluntary with a sign-up fee no one will do it and making it compulsory is out of the question because it will be “perceived as a state intrusion”.

Furthermore, the people who can afford to undertake this project will be from the middle or upper class who do not need a paltry reward of $500 for cutting back on energy by 10%, why would you want to sign up for something that will add extra cost should you use too much energy, and the cost of performing individual energy usage evaluations for each household that signs up will be astronomical.

The ironically heated debate over this environmental bill also produced talk about whether New Zealand should revoke its strong Anti-Nuclear policy.

Youth MP James Barnett stated that “70% of the world already use nuclear power, I say we follow.” To both huge applause and cries of “Throw him out!” and “Rubbish!”

Some Youth MPs thought that this was worth the hypocritical label because nuclear power would more than meet our energy requirements and produces no greenhouse gas emissions, stating that we are “famous for ‘Do as we say and not as we do’ anyway” (for example, it is illegal for us to cut down native trees and yet we import the native trees of other countries).

A few Youth MPs even threw out the idea of taking any action whatsoever, with Anna Lee saying that “there is no point jumping on the bandwagon to save the world if the world does not even notice you are gone.”

The more idealistic and positive of the Youth MPs were for the passing of this bill, arguing that while this bill was definitely not perfect, it was still a step in the right direction if New Zealand is to maintain its global influence as an environmentally conscious country.

Youth MP Loren O’Sullivan pointed out that “we have not seen any leadership from the government”, with only small initiatives being taken.

For instance, the policy of monetary rewards to businesses that plant trees. The faulty loophole being that it is solely for the planting of trees, and not for the growing of them.

Enterprising businesses might take advantage of this and simply plant the trees then remove them and start the cycle again for profit.

The Youth MPs were divided on this bill, but unanimous in agreeing that the government needed to take larger leaps on environmental issues.

After the enthralling debate that encompassed many controversial speeches, the Youth MPs separated into rooms to vote for this legislative bill.

The result was an overtly peculiar one with 54 “Aye” votes, 54 “No” votes, 12 abstentions and the Speaker’s Youth MP not voting.

This tie in the voting outcome was highly speculative, with some calling it “convenient” and comparing it to the fact that during Question Time, in which the Youth MPs had the opportunity to ask any questions of the Ministers of the departments concerned, the Ministers were given the questions beforehand and hence had time to construct their answers accordingly.

The vote upon this environmental bill was undecided, however, the fact remains that global warming is a reality for New Zealand. We need to stop talking and do some walking! “How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?” asked Youth MP James Walkinshaw. The answer? None, the people need to do it themselves.   

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