Climate Change & Nature Aotearoa New Zealand

If we took all our agricultural emissions out of our emissions profile, and left all China’s manufacturing in their profile, our emissions would still be twice theirs per capita. We are among the richest nations in the world and we have access to technologies that should we choose to, we can reduce our emissions… We can afford it, and arguing that because we are little we won’t make a difference, would have meant that every New Zealander who ever fought in any war wasted their effort.

– Dr. Rod Carr, Chair of the Climate Change Commission 2019-2024

If we’re honest and include agricultural emissions (~ 50% of our total emissions), we’re using more than six times our fair share of the carbon budget to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C. We rank 44th out of 45 of the world’s industrialised countries. There are lots of different ways you can argue about how little difference we can make. If you count only countries with a population over 1 million, and you only look at 2021, we’re the 13th worst country (left column on the graph below). But the right column on the same graph tells a different story: per person we’re responsible for more cumulative carbon emissions than any other country (with populations over 1 million) on Earth.