Andrew Dickens: Put worldwide battle against emissions into perspective

Andrew Dickens Afternoons

As we digest the local government elections, it's important to realise that in the wider world our concerns are small change.

Roadcones, cycleways and speed limits are small fry compared with Ukrainian war, global recessions and rampant inflation worldwide.

And then there's climate change and controls on our emissions.

In the past fortnight, you may not have noticed stories that put climate issues into perspective.

The sabotage of the Russian gas pipe was the single greatest man-made climate disaster in history.

The pure mass of methane that escaped into the atmosphere was incredible. Remember that methane is over 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Decades of emission controls were written off in just a few days.

Meanwhile, the Government admitted that the drive to replace the entire Government fleet with electric vehicles by 2025 is way off track.

It's looking like 25% of the fleet will be electric, and not by 2025 but more like 2030.

Why?

There are just not enough electric vehicles available. Words are easy but actions are hard.

On Friday, Environment Commissioner Simon Upton told us that to offset all our emissions with trees would require 2 thirds of our country to be pine forests, proving the unsustainability of offsets.

Then there's the fact that came out of an Indian Dairy conference that the Indian cow herd is 10 times bigger than New Zealand's but New Zealand produces more milk than all of India. With a tenth of the cows and a tenth of the emissions. Showing that New Zealand's intensive and efficient farming is climatically better than India's.

This all goes to show that the worldwide battle against emissions is failing.

It shows that we've been lectured by simplistic group think by people who drive their cars to protests to tell us to emit less.

Which is not to say we should give up.

What it says is that we need to praise the small victories and not hysterically demand inefficient broad-stroke virtue-signalling policies.

Because that is the real blah blah blah.

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