A National disgrace. This government does not even intend to reduce emissions but to meet the pathetic targets by buying others’ carbon credits.
New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2015 were 24.1 percent higher than 1990 levels – a far cry from the country’s commitment in the Paris agreement.
Gross greenhouse gas emissions from human activity for the year were 80.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, compared with 64.6 million tonnes in 1990.
Last year, New Zealand ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and committed to reducing emissions by 11 percent on 1990 levels by 2030.
The government has just released its Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the official annual estimate of all human-caused emissions and removals in New Zealand.
The country is obliged to produce it as part of its commitment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) which was used to reach the Paris agreement.
New Zealand’s gross emissions per person were the seventh highest among the 41 industrialised countries which took commitments under the UNFCCC – even though they have fallen 0.1 percent from 2014.
The 1990-2015 inventory is used to track how well the country is doing in reaching its 2020 emissions reduction target – of a 5 percent reduction from 1990 levels – not the Paris Agreement.
The government said the country was on track to meet that target, by using a combination of carbon credits issued in 1990 and additional credits from Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere.
Extracted from http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2017/05/nz-7th-worst-pollute-in-world.html – May 2017