Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Gary Young,
The environmental cost of making a car (excluding it’s powerplant) would be much the same.
I agree. But the powerplant and computer management in early cars seemed to be less robust and hence the early models were turned over more frequently than conventional. I don't think it's a huge issue but I do think that the reliability and cost (environmental) will drop significantly as makers develop these cars. With that in mind it may make sense to choose adopt 3rd or 4th generation to replace the entire fleet rather than 1st or 2nd. But I really don't know, it is just a question that comes to mind.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Gary Young,
The battery materials can then be recycled
Really? I had thought lithium batteries got contaminated by long use and were not recyclable into new batteries.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Gary Young,
It would, nonetheless, make a difference. I am uncomfortable with the argument that because an action doesn’t help all that much we shouldn’t bother trying it at all.
No I mean quite the opposite. Because it would only make a few percent difference to our (renewable) electricity usage we SHOULD do it.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
what do you know about using trains for freight instead of big stinky trucks?
Our rail infrastructure sucks, slow track mostly. Trucks are more flexible and roads are cheaper to make, but trucks destroy roads. I'm guessing we just don't have the throughput to make constructing a good rail freight system viable. Electric motors have more torque so some trucks could also be electric but it's the battery range that is the issue. Infrastructure could solve part of that, also hybrids where diesel takes over for cruising could work.
But honestly out of my depth too.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Sacha,
Our customers overseas are unlikely to buy that argument
As I've said at least three times now there is a good case for doing something to be part of the worldwide community. But unless what we do to reduce emissions can be transferred to the big emissions producers then it is meaningless. An ETS does nothing that can be transferred, changing technology and practices can be transferred.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
moving the entire transport fleet to electricity powered from our low-CO2 electricity network
I heard somewhere that if all the cars (not trucks) in NZ were electric it would make only a few percent difference to our total electricity usage.
The only issue I have with electric cars is I am uncertain whether the environmental cost of making the cars and batteries is actually better than the cost of burning petrol. At some point their manufacture and maintenance will be better but it may make more sense to run with 5-10% of the fleet electric to build capacity and establish the technology/infrastructure before switching completely.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
so to really drive behaviour you need to either make carbon-based fuel unaffordable, or provide a cheaper alternative. i heard someone say one time, “we didn’t leave the stone age because we ran out of rocks”
I think this is the bit I've been failing to communicate. So far all the solutions to greenhouse gas emissions have been economic, taxes effectively. What these do is make producers pay. But it's simply a cost, unscrupulous people will evade, delay or simply cheat to avoid paying that cost.
A technology change however is likely to be a gain. Perhaps not for the current producers but overall. Make cows burp less by making them more efficient (better grass or better bacteria) and the farmer gains. Make renewable energy sources easier and cheaper to install and people will switch to them rather than being chased from old technologies.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to mccx,
There’s decent evidence that NZ dairying could reduce its emissions without suffering any significant shock to either the sector or the national economy.
There is, and I'm not disagreeing with that. Where I differ is that I don't see the ETS or even a blunt carbon tax as the solution for NZ. Partly because as Che and others have pointed out the ETS is stupid and creates both problems and opportunities for corruption. And partly because I do believe NZ is different in that it's major greenhouse gas producer is one quarter of our export economy - that is pretty much unique. And finally partly because NZ's emissions are so small as to be irrelevant to the planet.
I'm not arguing we do nothing but instead arguing we should do smart things and do them carefully so we don't screw up our (unbalanced) economy at the same time.
To my mind we could do more for the planet by figuring out how to make dairying (and any ruminant farming) low emission than by trying to look good by putting a tax in place.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Sacha,
There are many other export industries NZ does well in without the same public subsidy via environmental damage and privatisation of public resources like water. Or the trading reputation risk from trashing our green brand.
Again, I'm not keen on the damage done by dairying. But I'm also dubious about the value environmentally and economically of applying the ETS or even a simple carbon tax to an industry that is such a big part of our economy, especially when it will not solve the problem at hand.
That said I see no value in making the reliance on dairying worse by subsidising the expansion of the dairy herd especially in areas where the land and soil are unlikely to be able to support it.
But I'll call you on this
There are many other export industries NZ does well in ...
Name them.
I'll help by starting with (from memory) the next biggest export earner, the sale of raw timber logs to Asia! Yup that's right our next best export earner has every chance of being worse for the planet than dairying.As for the rest of our export industries they're all much smaller, a tenth the size of dairying. Not unimportant but smaller. And unfortunately size matters, because big industries can do things small industries can't (like invest).
Again this is bad for NZ. The export reliance on cows and sheep for milk and meat is a bad thing. It means that if those industries are harmed it has a direct immediate effect on our lifestyle. It needs to change. And the harm that dairying does needs to reduce (certainly not expand as Lilith notes).
But ignoring how dependent we are on grass and cows is not wise either.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to George Darroch,
we’d do some thing(s) more or less productive with our rich soils and hospitable climate.
We do. But a lot of our soils are not that rich, we invented superphosphate and top-dressing pastures for a reason. But we do have water.
Our really rich soils are mostly used for horticulture and now viticulture.
But yeah if we didn't have dairying we'd have something else growing ... probably. But the transition to that could be very unpleasant.