Up to date results (well if you call up till 2005 up to date) show that we’ve been increasing rather than decreasing CO2 output.
While Aunty Helen might wax poetic about NZ becoming carbon neutral it is interesting (and obvious) to note that at the same time as economic activity has been increasing, CO2 outputs also have.
It reminds me of some statistics during the consent hearing for the Kate Valley Landfill in North Canterbury. At the hearing we heard that refuse volume growth correlates almost exactly with economic activity growth – an obvious correlation that seems to have passed the politicos by.
What would be really interesting would be to here Clark et al explain how we will have economic growth while at the same time reducing carbon emissions.
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I think personal carbon credits will be the ultimate objective over time.
Growth doesn’t mean carbon emissions won’t continue to grow but we can also start managing them better and the rate of growth should be slower. Also not all economic growth adds to carbon emissions.
However until all this gets personal – might be hard for global change which will come from personal changes.
If this link works you should be able to compare NZ and Australian carbon over the over the past 40 years.
http://tools.google.com/gapminder/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=6;ti=2002$zpv;v=1$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=EN%2EATM%2ECO2E%2EPC;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=SP%2EDYN%2ELE00%2EIN;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=20;iid=SP%2EPOP%2ETOTL;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=1004;iid=SP%2EPOP%2EDPND;by=grp$map_x;scale=lin;dataMin=0;dataMax=184$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=24;dataMax=82$map_s;sma=50;smi=1.2$inds=AUS_dGOcRaR;NZL_hGOcbbp
My experience of the climate change office is that they really don’t understand the global nature of climate change. The government’s goal of being carbon neutral is farcical in the extreme.
The only way to bring emissions down is to limit fossil fuel production at source. Everything else is just shuffling the deckchairs.
The answer is alluded to in that article you referenced.
“The fishing industry was found to be the most energy intensive industry while the least were communications and finance and business services.”
We can have growth but only in tradeable services like coms, finance etc.or similar
Does that sound like knowledge work?