Tuesday, March 29, 2011

New Zealand and Climate Change

Recently I received my New Zealand citizenship and thought I'd do some research about the country. The first thing that I checked out is what the country is doing to fight climate change. While it doesn't take much to beat Canada when it comes to actually doing something about climate change, New Zealand really puts us to shame. They actually have a Ministry of Climate Change!

Let compare budgeted spending on the environment per capita for 2010/11.

Canada
Federal $49
BC $37
Total C$86

New Zealand
Climate Change $241
Environment $32
Conservation $96
Total  NZ$369 or C$271.62


New Zealand outspends Canada by a factor of 3. On the climate action front, New Zealand has an Emissions Trading Scheme to reduce GHG emissions. Also, New Zealand has the goal of a 10% to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 and a 50% reduction of net greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050. Pretty impressive. Meanwhile Canada's "goal" is to reduce greenhouse gases by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020. Clearly much, much more can be done in Canada.

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