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