While the great and good thrashed out the details of initiatives to try to moderate the effects of climate change, in Wellington, our MPs were discussing New Zealand’s efforts to act locally while thinking globally.
An innovation of this Parliament has been regular special debates on a wide range of issues and coincidentally enough, on Thursday, the House spent an hour mulling over a report from the environment select committee on this year’s Emissions Budget and the Government’s first Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP).
These not inconsiderable documents attempt to evaluate how much carbon is emitted and by whom, and then how to go about cutting that back until the what looks like a highly aspirational target of net zero emissions by 2050 is met.
Minister for Climate Change James Shaw is currently fulminating in the land of the pharaohs at the world’s lack of progress on decarbonisation, rather as he does when he is at home.
In his absence, MPs debated the three budgets (stretching out to 2035) and the first reduction plan, which he announced back in May.
It may seem entirely too soon to be assessing progress on a massive reduction drive which has barely got out of the starting stalls as yet, but as the report sets out the plans are indeed new, as well as being comprehensive, and a stocktake at this early stage to identify any immediately obvious issues is probably no bad thing.
"We were advised that there are over 300 actions in the ERP that are at various stages of development," it said.
"The initiatives collectively contribute towards three objectives: directly reducing emissions, laying the foundations for future reductions and system change, and ensuring an equitable transition."
The debate kicked off with committee chairwoman and Green list MP Eugenie Sage issuing the standard, but entirely pertinent, warning that climate change is real and that the clock is ticking.
In stark contrast to her sensible siren, Environment Minister and former Otago MP David Parker spent much of his time slamming National’s performance in this area, in what National Oceans spokesman Todd Muller in his response called "a disgraceful, partisan rant", before embarking on a similar exercise himself.
Rather than making a wide-ranging verbal assault on the opposite party, Dunedin Labour list MP and select committee deputy chairwoman Rachel Brooking had done her homework and prepared her speech.
In fact, in a classic case of over-achievement, she had prepared enough material for about five speeches, a fact Ms Brooking lamented when she had about 90 seconds left of her five-minute call and reams worth of topics she wanted to traverse.
"I do have pages, here, of things to talk about in terms of energy, transport, waste . . . I'll just, very quickly, say that it's important, when we're thinking about energy, that we remember that electricity is not all of our energy.
"We have electricity, most of which is renewable, but we've got a whole lot of other energy as well in terms of fossil fuel and gas, and we want to make as much of that as possible renewable from electricity, so that's a target of 50% total final energy renewable by 2035."
As Ms Brooking traversed earlier, the ERP is comprehensive and contains several targets, although as the report acknowledges some of them are nebulous and difficult to quantify.
"We can't just rely on the emissions trading scheme, because the ETS is all about offsetting the pollution that you are doing when it comes to carbon, not biogenic methane — that is not in the ETS — we really want to focus on these gross emissions and how do we reduce our carbon emissions."
The report also wrestles with the concept of "additionality" — what proportion of any emissions reduction the Government can claim is due to its efforts, over and above whatever initiatives various sectors were putting in place off their own bat — and the requirement for an equitable transition.
However, it was written before the proposals to fold agriculture in to the emissions reduction process were released for discussion: as Ms Brooking noted, there had been some heated debate earlier about the role of dairy farmers in all this, but not that much light was cast on the subject.
This was a big week for Ms Brooking: quite apart from the climate change debate, on Tuesday she got to ask Question One of Mr Parker, on what progress the Government had made on reforming the resource management system?
As a member of the Randerson review of the resource management system in her pre-parliamentary days, let alone as a caucus member now, Ms Brooking was of course well aware of what progress has been made — the first readings of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill will be held next week — and she had a big smile on her face as she asked her questions.
Ms Brooking will doubtless have much, much more to say on that subject in the coming months, although hopefully she will have been able to pare her many worthy words down to five minutes or so by that stage.
Late to bed, early to rise
Parliament has been working overtime this week in an effort to clear the books before Christmas, which has forced Dunedin Labour MP David Clark to also work some extended hours.
His Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill had its second reading on Tuesday night, then Dr Clark had to be back in the House first thing Wednesday morning for not only the third reading of what is now the Plant Variety Rights Act, but also the second reading of his Natural Hazards Insurance Bill.