It’s just over two years since my predecessor as Carbon News editor, Adelia Hallett, got in touch and asked if I was interested in a part-time gig editing the publication.

Adelia, a former colleague at RNZ, had gifted me a sub a few years before and I had interviewed her on Mediawatch about climate related matters. So I was familiar with the publication.

I took on the job as an "earn and learn" exercise. As is so often the case the main thing I’ve learnt is just how much I don’t know.

I suspect that never in the history of the world has so much concentrated brain power been expended on a single issue with so little to show for it.

My first ever climate story was an interview with the brilliant German physicist Hans Peter Durr close to quarter of a century ago. His argument was simple: We’re living beyond the planet’s limits and the rich world needs to reduce its consumption if we’re to have a future.

We haven’t. And avoiding a cascading climate catastrophe seems increasingly unlikely. 

My last in-depth interview for Carbon News was with the Climate Change Commission’s Rob Carr.

I’d been struck by his reply to a question about the point of New Zealand making sacrifices when we only account for 0.17 of the world greenhouse gas emissions.

He pointed out we could have said the same about the fight against fascism. 

And that sent me scurrying to the New Zealand history websites to compare how 2023 compared to 1943 - one four years since the declaration of a climate emergency, the other four years since the declaration of war. 

In 2023 we’re being asked to pay an extra 12 cents a litre on petrol and getting a 25 cent rebate (to end soon). By 1943 something like 190,000 people had been enlisted, 10,000 or so had died, and we were committing about 50% of national income to the war effort.

Rod Carr agreed our response lacks sufficient urgency.

I believe that that lack of urgency is caused by a failure of democracy and an over-dependence on finding a market solution.

The solution will require more not less democracy, and a more realistic evaluation of what the market is likely to deliver.

I started the job as something of a carbon market sceptic. I’d long accepted the need for a price on carbon but had doubts about creating a market to do that rather than simply a tax.

And I leave the job equally sceptical but also convinced that it’s too late to try and switch directions now. We’ve got an emissions trading scheme and it’s in all of our interests that we do everything we can to make sure its fit for purpose.

The problem is that last November Cabinet rejected the advice from the Climate Change Commission that was aimed at doing that. 

The “cost of living crisis’ trumped the climate crisis and the price of carbon on the secondary market tumbled from a high of $88.50 on the secondary market to $52.50 today. 

Last year, after the decision had been made but before it was public, climate change minister James Shaw told me that more than a decade of research had found that the shift from coal process heat would begin to happen around the $80 market. 

The Greens used to promote the idea of a carbon dividend with all the proceeds of a carbon tax being returned to citizens in the form of a dividend. Canada has done just that and if its experience is anything to go by 80% of people end up better off as a result.

The Climate Change Commission has proposed recycling the revenues from the ETS auctions in a more targeted way to achieve greater equity.

And it’s worth thinking about that phrase the “cost of living crisis.” The economist Branco Milanovic has calculated that if we want to lift the 25% of the world’s population that live on less than $2.50 day to the global mean without increasing global GDP those of us in the rich world would need to reduce our incomes by close to two thirds.

With wage increases running only very marginally behind inflation the “cost of living crisis” isn’t really a crisis at all for most of us. It’s the same old crisis we’ve had for decades a crisis of distribution with the poor being short changed every time.

Rod Carr - a man who loved markets so much he was part of the team responsible for putting cash registers in hospital during the height of the neo-liberal reforms - told me he still love markets but they are: myopic, reckless, and selfish. 

The commission’s advice has been aimed at enabling the ETS to do its job while mitigating against those downsides.

I doubt you’d find many, if any, experts who argue the commission’s advice has been too ambitious or radical. It’s clear eyed, well researched and achievable. 

Yet Cabinet ignored its recommendations. Leading experts were incredulous declaring that Cabinet can’t have understood what it was doing. 

James Shaw, who is minister outside of cabinet, had recommend the decision be accepted.

Despite that, one expert with decades of research on the economics of climate change told me Shaw should have resigned over the decision.

By remaining on as minister he was in effect greenwashing the undermining one of the key elements of his climate change programme.

Last week, Lawyers for Climate Action NZ announced they were taking the climate minister to court to try and force the government to reverse its decision and adopt the climate change commission’s advice on ETS settings.

Shaw argues that he would be running away from his responsibilities and commitments and that it’s better to be inside the the tent than grandstanding outside it.

He says if voters want a stronger climate policy the way to achieve that is to vote Green to give the party more leverage.

But Shaw had the opportunity to send a powerful message to both the Labour Government and the electorate that this is a climate emergency and it has to be treated as such.

And he could have done that without bringing down the government. If the Labour and the Greens do get to form a government after the October elections it will be one where the Greens walking away from the coalition results in a snap election.

France’s citizens assembly on climate change - which some have described as failed experiment - may point the way to the extra-parliamentary response required to reach a societal consensus and how to craft an equitable and hopeful response to the existential problem of our age.

We could learn a lot from the Matiki Mai Aotearoa report, facilitated by the late, great Moana Jackson, which consulted thousands of people at 251 hui to come up with a plan for a new constitution for New Zealand.

Now that I’m leaving Carbon News I hope to find the time to write about those sorts of issues in more depth.

I can be contacted via Twitter: jeremyrosenz or LinkedIn.