Science Media Centre

One billion tonnes. That’s how much the global agricultural industry needs to cut its emissions per year by 2030 to achieve the goals set at COP21 in Paris, according to a new study. An international team of scientists – including a New Zealander – calculated the required emissions cuts based on the goal of keeping […]

New Zealand is lagging behind in terms of climate change action, writes Associate Professor Ralph Chapman in an opinion article in today’s Dominion Post. An excerpt (read in full here): Pilots know that there is a brief window of time between losing oxygen and passing out, a period in which some life-saving action is possible. […]

The Government has today announced a new New Zealand climate target in anticipation of an international climate agreement. According to the announcement on the Ministry for the Environment website: In July 2015, the New Zealand Government announced that our post-2020 climate change target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 […]

New Zealand has been named among the world’s worst performing countries on climate change in a new report released at the Lima Climate Change Conference in Peru this week. The Climate Change Performance Index 2015 has rated New Zealand ‘poor’, placing it 43rd of 58 countries and the seventh worst in the OECD. New Zealand has dropped from […]

After lengthy talks, scientists and government representatives meeting in Yokohama have now finalised the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Working Group 2 report on climate impacts and adaptation. The report’s high-level summary has been released today coinciding with a live streamed webcast. The authors of the report say the effects of climate change are already […]