The madness of a 40% reduction by 2020

No Right Turn blogs:

The UK government has just announced an ambitious plan to meet its 34% by 2020 climate change target. The details look like nothing less than a green revolution:

Now you may look at this and think hey the UK is going for a 34% by 2020 target, so why not have NZ go for a 40% by 2020 target.

But here is the key difference. This is about how much below 1990 levels you can get. Now as of 2007 NZ was around 20% to 25% above 1990 levels. So in fact we would be having to go from 120% of 1990 to 60% of 1990 – in other words cut our emissions in half in just a decade. It simply can not be done without shooting a hell of a lot of cows.

The UK in 2006 was already 20% below its 1990 level. So the UK has to just go from 80% to 66% (a 14% reduction on 1990 levels), while NZ would have to go from 120% to 60% (a 60% reduction on 1990 levels).

This is why I call a 40% target by 2002 madness. It ignores where we are at today. It would lead to a huge number of jobs destroyed, and could well lead to increased emissions from other countries as they would take up our drop in agricultural production.

a massive investment by electricity companies in home insulation – £3.2 billion over four years to insulate 7.5 million homes.

This sounds a lot. But the UK economy is 20 times the size of the NZ economy. So in NZ terms that is the equivalent of spending 160 million pounds over four years or NZ$409 million.

And National’s 2009  budget announced $320 million over four years for home insulation. So in fact the UK commitment is only 25% greater.