Time to ditch coal

We are still burning the fossil fuel in Aotearoa, despite the government having declared a climate emergency

- BRUCE MAHALSKI

At the most recent United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26), we were told that "coal was being consigned to history". But here in "clean, green" Aotearoa we keep burning the stuff like crazy: based on the latest available data (from 2018), our gross carbon emissions ranked 24th among the "developed" countries and our emissions per person were the sixth highest in the world per capita.

Our first Emissions Reduction Plan is out, and the government has allocated money in the Budget to help businesses ditch fossil fuels. But it's not happening fast enough.

Our largest company, Fonterra, uses about 500,000 tonnes of coal each year across many of its manufacturing sites to turn liquid milk into powder. This produces more than one million tonnes of CO2, which, according to respected scientific journal Nature Communications, is enough to kill 226 people by 2100 due to heat-related causes.

In 2017, Jacinda Ardern called climate change "my generation's nuclear-free moment". A "climate emergency" was declared, but the coal keeps on burning. Some of it is mined locally but a lot is now imported from Indonesia, even as we continue to export coal.