Tag: New Zealand

Countries That Can Increase Their Ambition

Submitted by MBrockley on

ECO is anxiously awaiting New Zealand's expected pledge by Warsaw. With that in mind, it seemed timely to revisit an article from last year's "CAN Collectibles" series on countries that can increase their ambition: 

 

New Zealand

 

National term of endearment/greeting

Bro/Mate

Annual alcohol consumption

9.6 litres per person per year

Annual cheese consumption

5.7 kilograms per person per year

Best things about New Zealand

Beautiful environment - some of it still unspoiled. Maori Culture. Wine

Worst things about New Zealand

Wanting to be Australia. Addiction to cars. Pathological need to spoil the unspoiled bits

Things you didn’t know

New Zealand isn't all clean and green. New Zealand is the first country in the world to catalogue its entire known living and fossil life from 530 million years ago to today

Existing Unconditional pledge on the table

It's all conditional, which means the unconditional pledge is to do nothing

Existing Conditional pledge (upper end)

10-20% reduction in net emissions below 1990 gross emissions levels by 2020

Next step to increase ambition by COP18

This year: Submit a meaningful QELRO that would require a 40% reduction by 2020, produce a low carbon development plan, tell us when gross emissions will peak, listen to the voices of progressive business leaders and agricultural scientists who can help us get there rather than the usual head-in-the-sand lobby groups, and get a new attitude

Rationale

Untapped low cost abatement opportunities. The potential economic benefits of low carbon economic development. Making good on the promise to create a low carbon development plan

Extra rationale

A clear conscience

 

Tags: 
New Zealand
Related Event: 
Bonn Climate Change Conference June 2013
Related Newsletter : 
ECO 10, June Bonn 2013, English

CANADA AND NEW ZEALAND TIE FOR THE INFAMOUS COLOSSAL FOSSIL 2012 AWARD

Submitted by MBrockley on

Final Fossil of the day at COP18

 

This year’s Fossil of the Year Award, The Colossal Fossil, goes to Canada and New Zealand! After a 5-year reign as the Colossal Fossil, it seems Canada is refusing to bow out gracefully into the irrelevance that comes with being an historic climate laggard. They, instead, stood strong for inaction throughout the UN climate talks, challenged only by the up and coming New Zealand.

Although Canada can share the honour for one more year, Fossil feels that Canada’s tar sands are, frankly, giving Canada an unfair advantage in this competition – Canada has been carbon doping!

For a country whose emissions are similar in scale to the Canadian tar sands, New Zealand has demonstrated exceptional blindness to scientific and political realities. Surprising many and disappointing all, New Zealand has fought hard to unseat 5-time Colossal Fossil winner, Canada, in a campaign of extreme selfishness and irresponsibility. While New Zealand may have helped drown the talks for another year, New Zealand's small and vulnerable Pacific neighbours should take heart that they have not been forgotten - New Zealand intends to drown them too.

 

Tags: 
Fossil of the Day
New Zealand
colossal fossil
Region: 
Canada
Organization: 
Climate Action Network
UNFCCC
Related Event: 
COP18/CMP8 Doha Climate Conference

CANADA AND NEW ZEALAND TIE FOR THE INFAMOUS COLOSSAL FOSSIL 2012 AWARD

Submitted by MBrockley on

fossil-pressrelease-dec7.pdf

 

This year’s Fossil of the Year Award, The Colossal Fossil, goes to Canada and New Zealand! After a 5-year reign as the Colossal Fossil, it seems Canada is refusing to bow out gracefully into the irrelevance that comes with being an historic climate laggard. They, instead, stood strong for inaction throughout the UN climate talks, challenged only by the up and coming New Zealand.

Although Canada can share the honour for one more year, Fossil feels that Canada’s tar sands are, frankly, giving Canada an unfair advantage in this competition – Canada has been carbon doping!

For a country whose emissions are similar in scale to the Canadian tar sands, New Zealand has demonstrated exceptional blindness to scientific and political realities. Surprising many and disappointing all, New Zealand has fought hard to unseat 5-time Colossal Fossil winner, Canada, in a campaign of extreme selfishness and irresponsibility. While New Zealand may have helped drown the talks for another year, New Zealand's small and vulnerable Pacific neighbours should take heart that they have not been forgotten - New Zealand intends to drown them too.

 

Contact:

Ria Voorhaar
Communications Coordinator
Climate Action Network – International
rvoorhaar@climatenetwork.org
Home mobile: +49 157 3173 5568
Local mobile: +974 33 38 6907

 

Tags: 
Fossil of the Day
New Zealand
colossal fossil
Region: 
China
Organization: 
Climate Action Network
Related Event: 
COP18/CMP8 Doha Climate Conference

MORE FOSSILS FOR NEW ZEALAND, USA AND CANADA: ACCOUNTANTS NEEDED TO TALLY TOTALS

Submitted by MBrockley on

 


Photo Credit: CAN Europe

The First Place Fossil goes to New Zealand and the USA for not wanting to advance common accounting rules here in Doha.  CAN was shocked in today’s spin off group on 1b1 when New Zealand had the gall to declare that countries will not agree on common accounting in Doha and thus a pragmatic approach would be to continue talking.  Oh New Zealand, if only that approach would work on climate change!!  But we all know, as Hurricane Sandy dramatically reminded us, climate change waits for no government. So the pragmatic approach would, in fact, be to finally agree that a tonne is a tonne is a tonne and all must be reduced!  The USA has long not moved on this issue and today’s session was no different. But as South Africa helpfully reminded us, it is no longer acceptable to just refer to the system as “rigorous, robust and transparent” but you actually need to agree on the rules to make that happen.  Time to get to work!

Canada wins the Second Place Fossil of the Day award. Oh Canada. When will you give fossil a break? You have failed on Kyoto and you are embarrassing on mitigation, but it seems you will not be content until you hit rock bottom on finance too. You won a first place fossil two days ago for holding finance in the green climate fund hostage, and now we have confirmed you are also breaking with agreed practice when it comes to NAMA support.

By walking away from the agreement to provide information on support available for NAMAs in the Registry, as you indicated yesterday in the SBI, you are not only breaking promises but you are destroying trust. Canada, it is true that we gave up on you a long time ago, but we had hoped if you weren’t going to do anything about your emissions you would at least do your fair share to support those suffering from your soaring pollution.

Lets break it down:

Oh Canada. When will you give fossil a break?
No money, no target, no pledges to make.
Mitigation? No way. Kyoto? Won't play.
GCF or NAMA no new money coming from our way.

Oh Canada, we thought you were done.
Promises broke, trust left with no-one,
Progress, you keep stalling. Your stock keeps on falling,
Positions on finance, mitigation, and more...frankly appalling

Tags: 
New Zealand
Topics: 
Finance
Mitigation
Region: 
Canada
USA
Organization: 
AWG-KP
AWG-LCA
Climate Action Network
Kyoto
Related Event: 
COP18/CMP8 Doha Climate Conference

Fossil bounty for backtracking Canada and New Zealand

Submitted by MBrockley on

 

The First Place Fossil is awarded to Canada, who has capped support rather than emissions. Newsflash! This just in from the Canadian Environment Minister! Developing countries need to just take a deep breath and wait until we have an all-in global deal before they should expect any support from Canada to move towards a clean energy future through the Green Climate Fund. In talking to reporters yesterday, Canada’s environment minister took a moment to tell journalists that he would ‘make it clear’ at the meetings in Doha that developing countries shouldn’t expect more money towards climate financing from Canada, because after all, Doha “isn’t a pledging conference.”
 
Thanks for clearing that up, Minister! We are sure that that will do wonders for your stellar credibility and reputation at these talks. Thankfully the Minister IS coming to Doha with at least one commitment: Canada is still firmly committed that tar sands emissions will rise far beyond the 2 degree climate limit.
 
World to Canada: You are supposed to be ramping finance up and emissions down; not the other way around!”

The Second Place Fossil of the Day goes to New Zealand, again, because not only did Wellington deliberately decide not to put its target into the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, but today proposed that access to the CDM should be open to all and should not depend on whether a country is signing up to a second commitment period. To make it clear, New Zealand pointed out that otherwise the Adaptation Fund will not have enough money to keep functioning. Come on Kiwis, forget about the hobbits and think about your neighbors! You have to be serious… if you want to feast on carbon markets you have to work up your targets first!

The United States gets the Third Place Fossil for once again rejecting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yesterday President Obama signed a misguided Bill coming from Congress aimed at preventing compliance of US airlines with EU regulations, for flights into and out of the EU. If Congress doesn't like the EU approach, we hope they realize the only alternative is a strong multilateral agreement. We urge Obama to reject any approach based on isolationism, and take this bill as an green light to pursue a strong multilateral agreement for the global  aviation sector, including putting a price on carbon, and to lead the way a strong and binding global climate agreement under the UNFCCC.

 

Tags: 
Fossil of the Day
New Zealand
Topics: 
Bunkers
Finance
Flexible Mechanisms
Mitigation
Region: 
Canada
USA
Organization: 
Kyoto
Related Event: 
COP18/CMP8 Doha Climate Conference

Pages

Subscribe to Tag: New Zealand