How could our right-wing Government take climate change seriously?

Climate change is something everyone on the political spectrum has a reason to solve fast.

Do you care about working people? Disasters hurt workers far more than rich people.

Do you want to keep government debt low? Avoiding the clean up costs of unprecedented storms will save the government a lot of debt.

Do you want New Zealand to be less dependant on other countries? An all renewable grid means no price shocks from world events.

We currently have a Government that loves utilising market forces (National), restricting public spending (ACT), and protecting New Zealand farming (New Zealand First).

Like it or not, they’re the government we have in the most crucial decade for stopping the world from warming too much.

So, I want to explore a couple of ways they could cut emissions while upholding the principles their parties stand by.

Let’s fix the market and price all of our emissions.

National loves a market solution to a problem, so let’s supercharge a market solution to climate change.

Right now, we have one way of charging for carbon dioxide – the Emissions Trading Scheme. In this article, we will call it the Carbon Market.

The Carbon Market is where emitters buy carbon credits. When an emitter creates a tonne of carbon, they burn through a carbon credit. The Government says how much carbon can be emitted each year, and sells carbon credits in an auction where demand sets the price.

The Carbon Market is how National wants to solve climate change. It’s got some serious problems which need fixing to do so.

Firstly, government gives big emitters millions of free carbon credits to keep polluting cheap.

There are also about 68 million tonnes of carbon credits that emitters and investors have stockpiled to use or sell later. For context, New Zealand emitted 75 million tonnes in 2022. I personally have about $800 of stock in a fund that holds carbon credits.

Agriculture is responsible for 53% of NZ’s emissions but isn’t affected by the Carbon Market. Unlike every other industry, they don’t have to pay a cent for warming the world.

The price of a carbon credit has a cap – if producing a tonne of carbon costs too much, the government automaticallyfloods the Carbon Market with more credits to keep polluting cheap.

So, how do we fix the carbon market?
The Climate Change Commission has some headache-inducing technical recommendations to fix the Carbon Market.

Their biggest recommendation is auctioning significantly fewer carbon credits between now and 2030. That’s to force the stockpiled credits to be used instead of hoarded. If too many credits are held, the Government has no way to incentivise emitters to cut pollution because of cost. Emitters will just use their treasure trove of credits they bought for cheap.

The Commission also wans to raise the price cap on carbon to at least $196 next year, and to $238 by 2029.

These are great ideas and will make the Carbon Market more effective. I want to explore how we can stretch it further based on National’s belief in the market to solve problems.

Let’s make agriculture pay for their emissions. If agriculture isn’t paying, the market puts undue burden on other industries to cut their pollution twice as fast. That’s not fair.

Let’s also get rid of the “corporate welfare” of those free carbon credits. Big business shouldn’t need handouts to cut their emissions. Luxon said so himself. If they don’t want to pay they should innovate.

Last, let the market decide what the price is. We should scrap the maximum price of carbon altogether. Carbon pollution is destroying our way of life. The market can make it expensive enough that businesses will see cutting their pollution as the cheaper option.

Right now, carbon costs $50 a tonne. Frankly, I’d like to see the cost of carbon be closer to $300 a tonne. With a higher price, the market has reason to innovate its way out of the crisis and save on costs.

Let’s give people the money from the Carbon Market

“Wait!” You say, “ACT will never support this! They hate the Government collecting more money!”

It’s true.

If I take them at their word, ACT believes that people will always make better decisions than Government can. They don’t want the public sector getting in the way trying to do things people could achieve themselves.

Let’s give people the option. Give the money raised from the Carbon Market back to people earning less than $70k a year to get through the price rises. That translates to about $1000 per person in the first year if the carbon price is $300. The costlier carbon is, the more money people would get.

As a matter of fact, ACT campaigned on a similar policy to this in 2023. It was one of their less insane policies on climate change.

That money is enough to soften price rises but it’s not enough for a family to replace their gas stove, or buy an electric car.

To have families with less get through the transition, then grants are crucial. The Coalition Government could subsidise rooftop solar, electric stoves and EVs like John Key subsidised home insulation.

These ideas give people the agency to decide how they will cut their own carbon.

Let’s support farmers with subsidies to become a low carbon agricultural powerhouse

New Zealand First wants to keep costs low for farmers. They watered down our methane targets for 2050 because agriculture belches most of our methane. They’re also strongly supportive of the Government’s recent decision to stop farmers paying for warming the world.

I absolutely sympathise with how hard it is for farmers to transition to low carbon farming. It’s stressful enough to make ends meet now without the added stress of learning and implementing new farming methods.

But, low carbon agriculture, also known as regenerative agriculture, is incredible. It yields nearly 25% more compared to traditional agricultural methods. It also significantly reduces how much carbon gets created by farming.

The problem is, changing your farming system entirely is expensive and takes between three to five years. That’s a huge barrier for farmers who are struggling to keep afloat.

What if we paid farmers a subsidy for the first few years as they switch to regenerative agriculture?

Let’s support this culturally important industry, and provide them the money to weather a change in business model.

It stops small farming communities from being wiped out from cost increases. Once farms have transitioned to low-emissions models, farmers can benefit from the production gains.

New Zealand First loves protecting traditional Kiwi industries, and this will help protect our agricultural industry from many things:

• Firstly, from the financial shock that comes from paying for their pollution.
• Secondly, from the devastating disasters that come with a warmer world.
• Lastly, from becoming irrelevant as our big trading partners like the European Union refuse to buy high carbon products.

Farmers will need to make the transition. It’s the way the world is going. If we want to protect that industry from being offshored, then intervening with subsidies to speed up the transition is the way to go.

Whatever your politics, there’s a way to solve climate change.

Responding to climate change doesn’t mean turning Christopher Luxon into Chlöe Swarbrick. There are real reasons why right wing governments should cut pollution that have nothing to do with justice for nature.

Life is trade-offs – and how we cut carbon from our economy is no different. There are ideal approaches available for every political persuasion - from full nationalisation of energy to anarchist growers collectives.

It doesn’t require a socialist government leading New Zealand for forty years to stop the worst of global warming.

It does take politicians that are serious about the problem. I don’t believe our current leaders are serious - they say they care, but their actions show they don’t.

These ideas are just a few ways the Government could treat climate change seriously while staying true to their values.

Everyone has a reason to protect our world. If we are going to stop the worst of global warming, we need to take it seriously.