Legal action against the Climate Change Commission: Necessary, influential and helpful
OPINION: Last week, a mild-mannered group of climate-focused lawyers under the banner Lawyers for Climate Action NZ (LCANZ) filed legal action against the Climate Change Commission for its recent advice to Climate Change Minister James Shaw. Their legal action is necessary, influential and helpful for New Zealand to do its bit. As one famous billionaire recently said : Physics is the law, everything else is just a recommendation. Its really important we get a single view of what the physics demands. READ MORE: * Climate Change Commission taken to court for lack of ambition * Choice vs necessity: the politics of climate are about to reheat * Climate change: Lawyers say Commission error has set carbon levels too high LCANZ argues that the commissions recent advice was based on an error in maths and physics that led them to significantly underestimate the scale of emissions reductions required by 2030. If the action succeeds, it would likely radically change the commissions advice to the Government and consequently Governments policy decisions on decarbonisation. The commission argues it isnt an error and that its advice is Goldilocks-level just right. The commission is recognised as a leading independent body. But LCANZ also has the support of credible scientists behind its claim this is not just a bunch of misguided lawyers. The physics is best represented by the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC). A lead IPCC author on 1.5 degrees Celsius-compatible emissions pathways has confirmed this week that the commissions advice involves a fundamental error. The Ministry for the Environment and Statistics NZ also chose the methodology used by LCANZ. We have confirmed with experts in the Climate Change directorate at the Ministry for the Environment that the IPCC table values for carbon dioxide emission change... below refer to net greenhouse gas emissions and not gross greenhouse gas emissions. There is no value available in the table for gross emissions. This was the reason these proportional reductions were applied to New Zealands net emissions in 2030 and 2050 relative to 2010, rather than gross, Statistics NZ wrote in an email to LCANZ. LCANZ deems legal action necessary because, the lawyers claim, the commission chose to leave this error in its final advice to Shaw despite it being highlighted in consultation. So why is this legal action influential and helpful for New Zealand to do its bit? If successful, it will be influential as it will shape the changes society sees over the next decade. The claimed error is not a trivial technicality. It leads to a massive difference in numbers that would likely require emissions of carbon dioxide to fall twice as fast by 2030 as has been proposed by the commission. We might see, for example, faster transformations to safer, healthier and more equitable transport, faster reductions of coal and gas and asset write-downs for businesses that have failed to anticipate the change. This legal action needs to happen now as the Government is pulling together a 15-year plan for climate change that needs to be locked in by December 31, 2021. Building 15-year plans is not a trivial exercise and one shouldnt do that if there are mistakes in the maths. Lastly, LCANZs actions will help the politicians to make the difficult leadership calls climate change demands of them. The commission is the single source of truth for the Government, which will find it very difficult to propose policies too far beyond what the commission has advised. By making the science clear through the courts, LCANZ will help make transparent both the emissions reductions we need and any failure to deliver on those obligations. We shouldnt underestimate the scale of change needed nor the political pushback on those politicians wanting to do the right thing. The politicians need all the help they can get. Surely, we just need to get going with climate action? Yes, and we need to get going with science-aligned action that respects the purpose of the Zero Carbon Act contributing to keeping surface temperatures below 1.5C. LCANZ has been very clear this legal action shouldnt delay real work on decarbonisation and there is no real reason it should. It is in our DNA to dislike lawyers and the stuff they do. But this action is necessary to gain a single transparent view of what science demands of New Zealand and drive the policies necessary to create a safe future for us all. We should all be very thankful LCANZ is going in to bat for current and future generations. Dr Paul Winton is an investment adviser and founded the 1point5 Project to raise awareness about the pace of climate action required to achieve global goals.