Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Sebastian Leuzinger: AUT Professor and Plant Ecologist on the report on New Zealand's climate change efforts

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Sebastian Leuzinger: AUT Professor and Plant Ecologist on the report on New Zealand's climate change efforts · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Climate Change Commissions says our rate of emissions reduction needs
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to more than double over the next few years. However,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: they do say that our rate of our emissions in
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: total have been coming down. Sepastian losing it is aut
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: professor and planned to cologists with me this morning. Sebastian,
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  Speaker 1: good morning.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good morning, good morning. Once.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: It's interesting reading this the bits that I did read.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to pretend I read the whole thing.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The Greenhouse get you haven't either, good, I'm glad that.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm not there on the pages. I mean, yeah, yeah,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I got it. You claim up yesterdays.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Now Greenhouse gases down every year since twenty nineteen, so
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  Speaker 1: down two point three percent per annum from twenty nineteen
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  Speaker 1: to twenty twenty three. Then we came down in twenty
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: twenty four. We are likely to go down two point
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  Speaker 1: three again in twenty twenty five. Where's the headlines of celebration?
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was thinking that too, sorry, so might
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: take of the reporters. So it's a little bit so
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I was tinted with the negative well view and that's
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: probably justified. But we're dont tracking that badly so compared
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  Speaker 2: to other o ECD countries for example, we're in the midfield,
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  Speaker 2: so it's not it's not you know, it's not a C.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: It's probably somewhere in the B range. And if we
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: were to mark this, I think there's a there's there's
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: a bit to go, but we're definitely we're tracking. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: I think great.
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  Speaker 1: And is it a concern that the world because our
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  Speaker 1: number is coming down but the global numbers still going up,
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  Speaker 1: so you know what, what's the point Sebastian.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, it is a concern. It is a concern.
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  Speaker 2: And in New Zealand were placed with a bit special
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: So our issue is the agriculture, right, and that's just
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: that's a hard one to tackle really because it's about
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: fifty percent of our emissions, maybe via methane. So we've
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: got to look at the other side and there's so
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: this forest. We can definitely do more there. But again
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: we're doing the right thing and the other thing is
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  Speaker 2: just reductions. And I mean the report points out quite
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  Speaker 2: nicely that evs are now cheap it to run, for example,
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  Speaker 2: and transport is our one big other culprit and I
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  Speaker 2: think you know, there'll be an easy one to tackle,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and decentralizing power for example, we could we could do
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: more in solar heat pumps. The report points that out
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: quite nicely as well. Yeah, agriculture is a hard one.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I don't think we can. You know, the farms are
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the one at least part of our economic spine, so
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: we can't really do that much. There. You to do
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: best practice, but I don't think we've got end this job.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: There interesting take, Sebastian, and I agree with you because
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  Speaker 1: agriculture is one of those ones where this is Sebastian losing.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: By the way, aut professor and Plant College are saying,
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  Speaker 1: we're doing okay and it's about a be Mark for
• 2:57
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