John Key's greenwash of mining in conservation areas

John Key, in his Statement to Parliament, sought to down play the footprint of mining and therefore to imply that mining of conservation areas was not such a big deal.

"Mining in New Zealand uses just 40 square kilometres of land, less than 0.015 percent of our total land area. The export value of that land however is $175,000 per hectare, which makes mining an extremely valuable use of land."

The assertion works on a simple level: fact (mining area very small) then value judgment (mining okay in conservation areas). A perfect soundbite. Questionable logic. Bad value judgment. However, even the simple part, the 'fact', 40km², is wrong.

Key appears to be parroting Gerry Brownlee who has used the '40 square kilometres of mining' 'fact' in Parliament in mid September 2009.

So where does the statement "40 square kilometres of land, less than 0.015 percent of our total land area" come from?

I think Brownlee and Key must have got it from the mining industry. The website of the New Zealand Mineral Industry Association has this very similar statement on their website.

"Current mining activities area disturbing an area of less than 30 square kilometres and mine sites are being rehabilitated progressively."

While I read Key's speech, I immediately thought that 40km² was far too small a footprint for all the mining in New Zealand and after 5 minutes on the internet I confirmed that 40 km² significantly understates the mining area.

On 21 October 2009, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, noted that there are 111 mining licences ( authorising 82 mines), that operate without resource consents. In other words, the existence of the mining licence prior to 1991 allowed the mining to continue without resource consent under the Resource Management Act.

Dr Wright's recommendation to the Government was that this was a loophole in mining and resource management law which needed to be closed so that the holders of the 111 licences were required to operate under resource consents with up to date monitoring and mitigation conditions.

Dr Wright released a list of the 111 licences that showed that they cover a total licence area of 20,784 hectares (207.84 km²), of which 3,019 hectares are within conservation land (30.19 km²).

According to the MED Crown Minerals annual report 2008-2009 (PDF 1.8MB), on page 16, there are 508 mining permits/licences in New Zealand. So there are another 397 mining licences not included in the land area of 20,784 hectares.

Roughly, the total area must be about double or triple the 20,784 hectares (or 200 km²). So, the 40km² is not only wrong, it's wrong by an order of magnitude for the area of 508 licences.

My values say to me that mining in conservation areas will have significant and irreversible adverse environmental effects. My experience in resource management backs that up. John Key and Gerry Brownlee are making statements of fact that are simply wrong to argue that mining is okay in conservation areas. This is transparently greenwashing and it says very little for their ability to fact check or to critically assess the viewpoint of the mining industry.

Ask not what can you do for conservation...ask what can conservation do for mining

John Key's statement to Parliament proposes more economic growth through more mining in conservation areas. He states that mining uses only 40 square kilometres of land which is less than 0.015 percent of NZ's total land; that new mining will meet strict environmental tests and that increased mining will improve the natural environment via an "off-setting" conservation fund. I have included his words at the end of the post

I immediately sent this email to John Key.

john.key@national.org.nz

Dear Mr Key,

I have just read your Statement to Parliament about economic goals. I am absolutely shocked and disappointed that your Government intends to increase mining on conservation lands via a review of Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act. That policy is completely contrary to the statutory conservation management purpose of those lands.

I am astounded that you as the Minister of Tourism cannot see how damaging this is to 'Brand New Zealand', our clean and green image.

I am also completely unconvinced by your assertion that mining will have to meet strict environmental tests and your comment that mining only occupies 40 hectares of land in the whole of New Zealand. The area of land occupied is not a good indicator of the level of adverse effects of mining. Have you not heard of acid mine drainage, the water pollution from heavy metals which flows out from mines and into rivers? Does your quoted return per hectare from mining include rehabilitation of water ways?

It is clear to me that of all land uses in New Zealand, mining has the highest adverse environmental impact per hectare. It is simply nonsense to suggest that this damage can be either mitigated or compensated for.

I urge you instead to do two things.

The first is to provide statutory protection from mining for all conservation land as if Schedule 4 included all conservation land.

Secondly I urge you to follow up on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's recommendation that current mines on conservation land be required to replace their antiquated mining permits that have no environmental safeguards with adequate consents with up to date mitigation conditions.

Yours sincerely

Here are the paragraphs of his statement concerning mining in conservation areas.

"There is also extraordinary economic potential in the mineral estate residing in Crown-owned land. Mining in New Zealand uses just 40 square kilometres of land, less than 0.015 percent of our total land area. The export value of that land however is $175,000 per hectare, which makes mining an extremely valuable use of land.

The Government will shortly be releasing a discussion document for public consultation on potential changes to Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act. Schedule 4 is the part of the Crown Minerals Act which prohibits mining or prospecting on specified areas of Crown land.

The discussion document will recommend that some areas of Crown land be removed from Schedule 4 and in addition that some areas currently not in Schedule 4 be added to it.

Notwithstanding the public consultation process, it is my expectation that the Government will act on at least some of these recommendations and make significant changes to Schedule 4. This is because new mining on Crown land has the potential to increase economic growth and create jobs.

I know some people have expressed concern about increased mining but I can assure New Zealanders that any new mines on conservation land will have to meet strict environmental tests.

Moreover, the Government is also proposing to establish a new Conservation Fund, potentially drawing on royalty revenue from mining operations on Crown land. The Conservation Fund would resource special conservation projects around the country. That means that if there is an increase in mining activity, New Zealand’s natural environment would also be improved."

New Zealand's climate change policy takes us down the Yale Environment Performance Index

Kiwiblog notes that New Zealand ranks 15th in the Environmental Performance Index 2010. No Right Turn notes that New Zealand's rank has fallen from 7th to 15th.

Rather than blog about it I thought I would graph it. Note that New Zealand is doing worst in all the climate change categories. That high score for agricultural subsidies, fourth in the list, is because the taxpayer is going to subsidise the agriculture sector under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme.

To see or download the dotchart, it is on Wikimedia Commons.

The seventy percent fossil fooled country

Quite often I hear politicians or journalists say that New Zealand can't really be expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels as 70% of our energy is renewable, due mainly to our hydro power schemes.

A typical recent example was business journalist Fran O'Sullivan, writing in the New Zealand Herald on December 9, 2009.

O'Sullivan wrote this about NZ's positioning on climate change prior to the UNFCCC summit at Copenhagen.
"Where the Government negotiators will focus is on getting across New Zealand's position...the fact that 70 per cent of energy is renewable leaves little room for gains on that score"

The trouble is this 'truism' is not only a bad reason for not reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is also factually incorrect. As the barchart above shows, renewable energy including Hydro power supplies 30% of New Zealand's energy supply. Fossil fuels supply 70%.

So, I sent Fran an email.
"Fran, You state; "Where the Government negotiators will focus is [in respect of climate change negotiations] on getting across New Zealand's position...the fact that 70 per cent of energy is renewable leaves little room for gains on that score, and that agriculture makes up 50 per cent of emissions." I think you are confusing electricity generation with NZ's gross energy supply. Only 30 percent of NZ's gross energy supply is renewable. Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_New_Zealand and the Ministry of Economic Development 2009 energy figures. Kind regards"

Fran replied the same morning "Yes you are right. Real oversight on my behalf will get it corrected on website".

As I write this, six weeks later, the '70%-renewable' statement is still on the NZ Herald website. We seem doomed to be seventy percent fossil fooled for a while longer.

PS.
The source of the data for the barplot is the Ministry of Economic Development 2009 Energy File. I created the barplot with the R programme.

The commands were:

engy<-c(83.1, 280.8,159.9,80.3,113.2,47.4, 1.2)

names(engy)<-c('Coal','Oil','Gas','Hydro', 'Geothermal', 'Other renewable', 'Waste')

cols <-c("brown4","green","green","brown4", "green", "brown4", "brown4")

png(file="NZ_Energy4.png",pointsize=14, width=650, height=550)

par(mar=c(6,9,6,2)+0.1,cex.main=1.5, cex.lab=1.2)

barplot(sort(engy),horiz=T,las=1,xlim=c(0,300), border=1, space=0.8, col=cols)

legend(165,4,c("Non-renewable 69%","Renewable 31%"),lty =1,lwd=4, col= c("brown4", "green"))

title(main="New Zealand Primary Energy Supply 2008", xlab= "Gross Petajoules")

mtext(side=3,line=0.25,"Source: Ministry of Economic Development")

dev.off()

I have uploaded two versions to the Wikimedia Commons website; an SVG chart and a PNG chart.

More on The Story of The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme

This post will also appear on the Project Rameka blog. It includes the Story of Cap and Trade video again.

My friends Jonathan Kennett and Bronwen Wall set up 'Project Rameka', a carbon sink project near Takaka. I am one of the trustees of this project.

The three of us are climate-change junkies and we have been going to some talks about climate change hosted by Victoria University of Wellington. Jonathan has posted on a talk by NIWA's main climate scientist David Wratt and on a talk about sea level rise and the Antarctic Andrill ice-core drilling project. Usually, we grab something to eat afterwards, and have a yarn about what we thought of the talk.

One talk I went to by myself was about the NZ emissions trading scheme. I caught up with Bronwen and Jonathan soon afterwards and filled them in on the talk. They both thought I should post on the Project Rameka blog about the NZ emissions trading scheme (or "ETS" for short), as it has implications for the carbon credits that Project Rameka, as a carbon sink, will be eligible to receive.

Also, shortly afterwards, Climate Issues Minister Nick Smith rammed through some major changes to the 2008 Labour version of the ETS, in a big rush so New Zealand would look like a country with a good climate change policy at the UN climate summit at Copenhagen. Yeah, right!

I have been trying to write that post for a while now. It's a massively complex scheme and I had been struggling to come up with something readable about it. Jonathan has said, correctly of course, that it's got to be short and easy to read, each post no longer than about 500 words, and not too technical. 'Mission impossible', I thought, then I joked to Jonathan: "What say I sum it up in a cartoon?"

But, joking aside, I found a video about emissions trading! That's got to be easier to take in than reading some jargon-heavy blurb about economics and climate change! Here it is!

The video is called The Story of Cap and Trade from Annie Leonard who was behind the Story of Stuff viral video.

'The Story of Cap and Trade' gives us a nice simple definition of an emissions trading scheme.

1. There has to be an annual limit on carbon emissions, a 'Cap'.


2. The 'Cap' is the total number of 'permits to pollute' or emissions permits.


3. The 'Cap', and obviously the number of permits, declines over time.


4. Within the 'Cap', innovative companies that reduce their emissions can sell permits to other companies, the 'Trade'.

Annie Leonard says 'we get rich and we save the planet! What's not to like'.

But, seriously, Annie Leonard says there are several pretty major things not to like

about emissions trading:

1. Free 'giveaways' of permits to the polluters (which undermines the price incentive not to emit).


2. Offsetting - polluters may buy unverified permits that do not represent valid emissions reductions, so emissions don't reduce.


3. Climate injustice to less-developed countries, where many 'offset' projects are set up.


4. The lack of internationally agreed Caps.


5. 'Cap and Trade' is a distraction from real policies that reduce emissions, and is really about maintaining 'business as usual'.

There is also a 'Story of Cap and Trade' annotated referenced script (PDF), and a FAQ.

What do you think of the video? I think it's great explanation of a hard topic.

The story of Cap and Trade

I have been meaning to write something about emissions trading and the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme for a while.

Instead here is a video by Annie Leonard which describes emissions trading in a fairly simple way.

The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo.

Leonard's main criticisms are:

1. emission permits will be given away free to emitters, in effect, rewarding them for causing the problem. That will certainly be the case in New Zealand, where billions of $NZ worth of permits will be allocated to agriculture and trade exposed and emissions intensive industries over an 80-year period.
2. emission offsets (carbon offsets) will be fraudulently obtained, thus undermining the cap on emissions
3. caps on emissions are essential to a cap and trade scheme, but there are no internationally agreed caps.
4. emissions trading is a distraction from the real measures to decarbonise economies, and as such it encourages 'business as usual'.

Kate Sheppard, writing on the Mother Jones website, says that Leonard grossly simplifies emissions trading. I am not so sure. I think Leonard has hit the nail on the head.

Robin's ashes

Today, at 11:00a.m., Mrs Johnson and I interred Robin's ashes at Karori Cemetery. Robin's ashes had been sitting at home for over a year in an octagonal-sided wooden container.

We left home in a steady misty drizzle (typical Wellington in December!), but 'Huey', the mountaineer's weather god was also in attendance and the drizzle had stopped while we were at Karori Cemetery.

The container doesn't go into the bed of the rose garden, it goes into a hole in the grass next to the bed. A Wellington Council employee placed the container in the hole. Mrs Johnson placed a trowel of mulch on top and I filled the hole in with a spade. It seemed the right thing to do. I signed a form and we left. Huey also departed, and the drizzle started again. Mrs Johnson and I then had a latte and a muffin at the Boutique Dining Room Cafe on Karori Road.

Here is a photo or two of Robin's plaque.