Climate change election debate

It's the start of the election campaign. Last night I went to a climate change election debate hosted by Oxfam.

I was fascinated that while political parties thought it was worth sending the cabinet minister for climate change (Nick Smith), the leader of one of the political parties (Russel Normal of the Greens)and the opposition spokesperson for climate change (Labour's Charles Chauvel) to take part, and Adrian Macey, chair of the UN climate change talks also attended, there were only about 150 people in the audience, many of whom were the usual suspects.

Both climate change and the ETS/global political environment favouring mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seem like they have the potential to change our lives more significantly than most other issues that might be debated in this election so you'd think people might be more interested.

Points I was interested in from the debate:

Both Labour and National were pessimistic about a replacement to the Kyoto agreement being agreed before the current commitment period runs out in 2012. Therefore NZ may have no ongoing financial commitments.

The Maori Party's stance tries to balance protecting low-income earners from rising costs with taking a kaitiaki role. It appears to focus on tweaking climate policy to help benefit Maori, such as subsiding reafforestation for carbon sinks on the East Cape.

The Greens originally favoured a carbon tax and redistribution of revenue. Their current climate change policy/emissions reduction plan includes purchasing international offsets.

Labour's line is that the lignite in Southland would stay in the ground. No state company would mine for it and any new company would pay the full costs of emissions. But deep sea drilling would be allowed with appropriate safeguards.

National tosses up between various possible uses for the Southland lignite (urea, briquettes or diesel production).

Nick Smith talked about "good" fracking and "bad" fracking - "bad" shallow fracking that shouldn't be allowed and "good" fracking that relates to geothermal exploration.

Nick Smith, as ever, was the consummate politician. However, when he tried to claim credit for National for implementing the ETS it did draw a laugh from the crowd.