Caught my eye Click a picture to enhance it. Blue text = a clickable link./This week, a headline in the New Zealand news-site Newsroom caught my eye. It read: 'We are bending the climate curve.' "Are we really?" I wanted to know, so I read through writer Marc Daalder's story. Here's a salient extract. 'A drop in greenhouse gas emissions due to Covid-19 measures was sustained well beyond the end of movement restrictions and lockdowns, new data shows.' In fact, climate pollution continued to fall through all of 2022, with the December 2022 quarter delivering the lowest figure in at least nine years barring the period covering the first lockdown, Statistics New Zealand reported on Thursday. While the pace of the decline isn't yet sufficient to meet New Zealand's climate goals, it suggests we have well and truly bent the emissions curve and are on our (slow but steady) way to a net-zero economy.' SurprisedI was surprised because I had in my head a gloomy picture of progress in reducing emissions, partly prompted by illustrations such as this. To check further I went to Statistics New Zealand.For the year to December 2022, GHG emissions fell 3.1 percent (2,369 kilotonnes). The most significant contributors to this fall were the electricity, gas, water, and waste services industry, manufacturing, as well as agriculture, forestry, and fishing. More detail'In the September 2022 quarter, seasonally adjusted total quarterly emissions decreased 3.5 percent'. Here is some of the detail.
Government viewBack in April, Climate Minister James Shaw was cautiously pleased about the 2021 and 2022 progress as shown by the stats results But then he curbed his pleasure with warnings. '“Early indications are positive, however. Recent quarterly data from Stats NZ shows that emissions declined by 3.5 percent in the three months to September 2022, their lowest level in eight years. “A few weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its starkest warning yet that there are only a few years left to take the necessary action to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. '“While today's data shows we are taking the right steps, to get where we need to be the steps will need to keep getting bigger,” said James Shaw.' Good news but too slowDespite the 3.5% and other hopeful signs, I have for years thought our government and other governments, have just been too slow and too distracted to act effectively, faced with the threats climate change bring,. But before I say anything more I'd like us to watch this very short extract, clicked out by The Guardian, from a video recorded just yesterday by the UN Secretary General . So, James Shaw! I think the steps will need to keep getting much, much bigger. Don't you? □ John McInnes Friday 28 July 2023 ##########
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