Response: What is being done?
Video 1: UN Development Programme: to play with sound, scroll to the bottom of this page
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What is being done?
Summary
We’re heading for a climate disaster, and yet every year, governments spend hundreds of billions of public funds on fossil fuel subsidies. Imagine if we had spent hundreds of billions per year subsidising giant meteors? That’s what you’re doing right now. – Video 1 (above) Velociraptor (on behalf of the the United Nations).
Fossil fuel CO2 emissions reached record highs in 2025 – Global Carbon Budget
- COP30 (2025): where countries get together and decide what to do about climate change ended with much the same failures as COP24
- COP29 (2024): an abysmal failure that prompted a joint statement from climate scientists across the globe:
…it is today well established that 1.5°C is a limit. Go beyond it and five large tipping point systems are likely to be crossed… In addition, 1.5°C will with zero uncertainty, imply life-threatening extreme events affecting millions of people due to severely amplified droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves, and fires…
In addition, we need to secure the carbon sinks in the ocean and in nature on land, and cross our fingers that no tipping points are crossed during overshoot (as this will likely amplify the rate of warming and create even more extreme climate impacts affecting people across the world). – Joint Statement on the New Common Quantified Goal (NCQG) of Climate Finance and Its Delivery on the 1.5°C Paris Agreement Goal
- November 2025: The NZ Government scrapped climate policies and legislation and reduced the role of the Climate Change Commission.
- The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is the best “road map” for how to most effectively reduce emissions. It is a complicated read; we recommend Carbon Brief’s (free to access) Q&A explainer.
- Per head of population, Aotearoa is the worst country on Earth in cumulative emissions since 1850 (Fig. 3). We’re using more than six times our fair share of the carbon emissions budget that would keep global temperature increases below 1.5°C.
- Our agricultural sector produces ~50% of our emissions (Fig. 1) but, propped up by taxpayer dollars are exempt from the Emissions Trading Scheme. Moreover, Three of New Zealand’s biggest emitters no longer have to reveal their climate impact.
- The Emissions Trading Scheme makes it more financially lucrative to plant radiata pine, than restoring native forests (Fig. 7). This ignores the carbon stored in native forest soils vastly exceeds carbon in the soils of monoculture pine forests. And biodiverse native forest store just as much if not more carbon above the ground, while also providing life-supporting ecosystem services.
- We have run out of time to avoid some of the worsening climate impacts over the coming decades but we can avoid catastrophic impacts if ecosystems are restored and the New Zealand Government stops subsidising fossil fuels.
- See NIWA’s climate projections for Aotearoa New Zealand
Home > Climate wiki >
Video: UNDP: to play sound, scroll to page bottom
Summary
We’re heading for a climate disaster, and yet every year, governments spend hundreds of billions of public funds on fossil fuel subsidies. Imagine if we had spent hundreds of billions per year subsidising giant meteors? That’s what you’re doing right now. – Video 1 (above) Velociraptor (on behalf of the the United Nations).
Fossil fuel CO2 emissions reached record highs in 2025 – Global Carbon Budget
- COP30 (2025): where countries get together and decide what to do about climate change ended with much the same failures as COP24
- COP29 (2024): an abysmal failure that prompted a joint statement from climate scientists across the globe:
…it is today well established that 1.5°C is a limit. Go beyond it and five large tipping point systems are likely to be crossed… In addition, 1.5°C will with zero uncertainty, imply life-threatening extreme events affecting millions of people due to severely amplified droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves, and fires…
In addition, we need to secure the carbon sinks in the ocean and in nature on land, and cross our fingers that no tipping points are crossed during overshoot (as this will likely amplify the rate of warming and create even more extreme climate impacts affecting people across the world). – Joint Statement on the New Common Quantified Goal (NCQG) of Climate Finance and Its Delivery on the 1.5°C Paris Agreement Goal
- November 2025: The NZ Government scrapped climate policies and legislation and reduced the role of the Climate Change Commission.
- The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is the best “road map” for how to most effectively reduce emissions. It is a complicated read; we recommend Carbon Brief’s (free to access) Q&A explainer.
- Per head of population, Aotearoa is the worst country on Earth in cumulative emissions since 1850 (Fig. 3). We’re using more than six times our fair share of the carbon emissions budget that would keep global temperature increases below 1.5°C.
- Our agricultural sector produces ~50% of our emissions (Fig. 1) but, propped up by taxpayer dollars are exempt from the Emissions Trading Scheme. Moreover, Three of New Zealand’s biggest emitters no longer have to reveal their climate impact.
- The Emissions Trading Scheme makes it more financially lucrative to plant radiata pine, than restoring native forests (Fig. 7). This ignores the carbon stored in native forest soils vastly exceeds carbon in the soils of monoculture pine forests. And biodiverse native forest store just as much if not more carbon above the ground, while also providing life-supporting ecosystem services.
- We have run out of time to avoid some of the worsening climate impacts over the coming decades but we can avoid catastrophic impacts if ecosystems are restored and the New Zealand Government stops subsidising fossil fuels.
- See NIWA’s climate projections for Aotearoa New Zealand
What can be done?
The idea of planting trees in vast areas to remove carbon dioxide from the air and reduce the impact of climate change, for example, has attracted a lot of attention, with some claiming it’s the best “low-hanging fruit” approach to pursue, McElwee said. But large-scale tree planting could conflict directly with food security because both compete for available land. It could also diminish biodiversity, if fast-growing exotic trees replace native habitat. – Rutgers University, 2020
