RICHARD PREBBLE: Why We Cannot Talk About Climate Change

I recently posted an article about New Zealand's carbon market.

It asked whether the Government should fix the carbon price or continue auctioning carbon credits.

That was the debate I hoped to have.

Instead, I received more than ninety comments, numerous emails and texts.

Only one person discussed carbon pricing.

Some told me climate change is a hoax. Others said I was dangerously understating the threat of climate change.

MPs have told me they receive much the same response. Whatever the issue, climate policy quickly becomes an argument about whether climate change is real.

We have reached the point where sensible discussion has become almost impossible.

Climate policy has become tribal.

Once an issue becomes tribal, evidence no longer matters. People defend the position of their side instead of asking whether new information should change old beliefs.

Years ago, I read Norman Dixon's brilliant book The Psychology of Military Incompetence. It examines why intelligent generals can make disastrous decisions.

One of its central conclusions is that organisations fail when evidence that challenges accepted thinking is treated as disloyalty rather than information.

That is what worries me about today's climate debate.

For New Zealand policy, the endless argument over whether climate change is entirely man-made, partly natural or something in between no longer changes the choices before us. Virtually every country we trade with accepts the Paris framework. America can walk away. New Zealand cannot.

The real question is whether our policies still reflect the best available science.

The science has moved on since the Paris Agreement was negotiated.

Scientists from Oxford University, New Zealand and elsewhere have challenged the way agricultural methane is measured.

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries. Methane behaves differently. It breaks down after about twelve years. The carbon dioxide produced is then reabsorbed by the grass that livestock eat. Agricultural methane is part of a biological cycle.

That does not mean methane has no warming effect. It does.

But it does mean stable methane emissions do not continue adding to warming in the same way as continually accumulating carbon dioxide.

That is a significant scientific development.

New Zealand should welcome it, not ignore it.

Our methane emissions are already falling, largely because sheep numbers have declined. New technologies, feed additives and, perhaps soon, vaccines promise much larger reductions.

New Zealand should become the world's leading centre for methane reduction research.

If we can help livestock farmers reduce emissions without reducing production, we will have created something the entire agricultural world wants to buy.

Yet our political debate is still trapped in yesterday's arguments.

National, Labour, the Greens and much of the bureaucracy insist we must meet our Paris commitments exactly as they are currently written, even though Treasury calculates that doing so could cost New Zealand billions of dollars.

ACT argues the agreement should be renegotiated or New Zealand should leave.

New Zealand First says the agreement does not fit the Pacific but does not appear to have made reform part of our foreign policy.

National appears to have settled on a simple climate policy: adhere to the Paris Agreement whether it still makes sense or not.

The Oxford analysis deserves to be taken seriously.

If it is correct, reducing agricultural methane can do more than simply slow future warming. It can make a measurable contribution to cooling.

That would change the debate.

New Zealand should argue that countries with large agricultural sectors should be encouraged to reduce methane because doing so delivers a climate benefit that the existing Paris accounting does not properly recognise.

That is not asking for weaker climate policy.

It is asking for better climate policy.

The Paris Agreement should evolve as the science evolves.

That is how science is supposed to work.

History is full of examples where institutions ignored inconvenient evidence because it threatened settled beliefs.

Climate policy should not become another.

Imagine New Zealand arriving at the next climate conference not asking for an exemption but saying we have found a better way.

If reducing agricultural methane can make even a small contribution to cooling, why would we not want the Paris Agreement to recognise it?

I expect this article will produce another flood of comments explaining either that climate change is a hoax or that I am a dangerous sceptic.

I hope a few readers respond to the argument I have actually made.

The science has moved on.

It is time the policy did too.

The Honourable Richard Prebble CBE is a former member of the New Zealand Parliament. Initially a member of the Labour Party, he joined the newly formed ACT New Zealand party under Roger Douglas in 1996, becoming its leader from 1996 to 2004.