Science Media Centre

Now that the Government has ratified the Paris Agreement, the clock is ticking on action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, writes Victoria University Professor of Public Policy Jonathan Boston on stuff.co.nz. An excerpt (read in full): Imagine allocating the remaining global carbon budget of about 260 billion tonnes on a per capita basis. New […]

New Zealand became the 63rd country to ratify the Paris Agreement – getting in ahead of the European Union and within the first 55 per cent of countries required to meet the threshold to bring the agreement into force. New Zealand has pledged to reduce emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. […]

There are numerous ways New Zealand can tackle climate change, says a new report, but we must act now. The Royal Society of New Zealand’s climate mitigation report, launched this morning, outlines how New Zealand can shift to a low-carbon economy, reducing greenhouse gas emission across a range of sectors, including: heat supply electricity supply […]

As the COP21 climate negotiations gather pace in Paris, new research suggests global carbon emissions are projected to fall in 2015. This drop in emissions is a turnaround from the more than 2 per cent growth seen on average for the previous decade. It also comes at a time when the world is experiencing global […]

The Australian federal government announced today its plans to cut carbon emissions by between 26 and 28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030. The announced target comes ahead of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in December 2015. In preparation for creating an international climate […]

New Zealand is far from doing its “fair share” of climate action, with its climate plans rated as “inadequate” by an independent international analysis: the Climate Action Tracker. “New Zealand’s climate target shows it’s far from doing its ‘fair share,’ and is anything but ambitious,” said Bill Hare, CEO and Senior Scientist at Climate Analytics, […]

The Government is restarting a forestry scheme that will pay landowners to plant forests, aiming to prevent erosion, improve water quality and mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions. This week the Government confirmed the Afforestation Grant Scheme will invest $22.5 million in forest planting over the next 6 years. The scheme provides grants of $1,300 a […]

Carbon dioxide emissions, the main contributor to global warming, are set to rise again in 2014 – reaching a record high of 40 billion tonnes, according to a new global stock-take. A 2.5 per cent projected rise in burning fossil fuels is revealed by the Global Carbon Budget 2014, an analysis published in the journal Earth […]

The release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s third and final fifth assessment (AR5) report has garnered much media attention in New Zealand. The Working Group 3 report on greenhouse gas mitigation was finalised in Berlin this week and outlines the research showing that stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere requires […]

The Ministry for the Environment has issued its latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2012) and Net Position — the official annual report of human caused emissions of greenhouse gases in New Zealand. The inventory is produced each year as part of New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the […]