Shape Your Future Now – Comment on the NPDC Emissions Reduction Plan
We need to make huge reductions in carbon emissions, urgently. You can help make the necessary actions a reality today by commenting on the NPDC Emissions Reduction Plan by July 29th 2022.
It's important. Kiwi’s (that’s you and me) have barely shifted the needle on our emissions. The Council has a critical role in enabling changes on a large scale, and empowering public action. This goes far beyond cutting the 5% of district emissions the council controls directly – where the Plan is strong – and extends to how Council investments, rules, policies and activities enable us (individuals, families, businesses and communities) to cut our 95% of the district’s emissions by what we do every day.
Read on to see what we love about the plan, and what we think is critically missing for success and future generations. Then Have Your Say to NPDC.
Our Challenge
The target is to cut emissions by one-third by 2030 and another third by 2040. We've barely scratched the surface of this huge ambition.
Simply doing what we do today in a cleaner way (e.g. buying EVs and LEDs) is not enough. This is because it takes time to replace the things we already have, and because buying or building new (low carbon) things generally comes with embodied carbon (carbon used to make and transport those goods), which accelerates carbon emissions overseas.
So we also need to change what we do and how we do it.
To have the choices that enable change we need to think differently: about how and where we build, about the infrastructure, tools and behaviours for travel, and about what we use and buy. This will often require collective action and different offerings and choices from both government and NPDC investments and services. There is no better place than the Plan to illustrate what is required of us collectively – as a district – to deliver our equitable low carbon future, and assure us that we have the means to get there.
Assessing the Plan
You can see we love the way the Plan sets the big picture, embraces how many initiatives and sectors come together to deliver change, celebrates the good progress NPDC has made and maps plans for its direct emissions.
But no plan is perfect. You may see better ways to spend the $800k for EVs with some hard yards on innovation, have concerns at missed numbers (or trees) or other details to help the NPDC waka meet its direct and immediate obligations.
Or your focus may be more “big picture”. For instance, with NPDC’s direct emissions only accounting for 5% of our district total, so many of our critical emissions arise from decisions that are strongly influenced by what councils do, stimulate or provide. In this, the Plan lacks ambition. NPDC’s actions can empower us as citizens, and hold our elected regional leaders (governance) accountable for meeting their obligation to steer our District waka to an equitable and sustainable future for our tamariki.
We urge you, right now, to glance through the Plan and
Have Your Say – comment to Council by 29 July;
2. Write down one new thing you will act on at home, work or elsewhere to cut emissions, and describe what motivates you, the barriers to that action, and how you will overcome those barriers. Then do it.
The opinions in this article are the personal perspectives of the author, Jamie Silk and not necessarily those of Sustainable Taranaki. Jamie is an advisor on bold low carbon and clean energy transition strategies and partners with specialist consultancies Silk Advisory and Climate Navigator. For the last 5 years, he has been pivotal in educating the wider community of the importance of active, shared and public transport and the need to transition as soon as possible.
