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This week’s motion is “Southland lignite should stay in the ground”. Tarsh Turner argues the affirmative while John Brinsley-Pirie argues the negative.

Affirmative
 
The development of Southland’s lignite deposits represents a major threat to the global climate, and will not bring sustainable long-term economic gains for New Zealand. Solid Energy has access to an estimated 1.35 billion tonnes of lignite. They plan to convert this into a range of products including briquettes, urea fertiliser and diesel fuel. Due to the significant impact of these plans on NZ’s emissions profile, if we are serious about halting anthropogenic climate change then we must not develop these deposits. Furthermore, the short-term economic benefits will be dwarfed by the long-term economic costs.
 
Under the Copenhagen Accord, NZ has made a “politically-binding” commitment to reducing national greenhouse gas emissions to 10-20% lower than 1990 levels by 2020. Making diesel from lignite emits 2.7 tonnes CO2 per 100L of fuel more than making it from conventional crude oil. One lignite-to-diesel plant alone will increase our national emissions bill by 20% – that is an extra cost to NZ of $275 million per year at current “best guess” estimates of a future carbon price of $50/tonne.
 
In 2008, the Government introduced our Emissions Trading Scheme, with the purpose of “assisting NZ to meet its international obligation…[and] reducing NZ’s net emissions below business-as-usual levels.” It is clear that using Southland’s lignite will be inconsistent with this goal, resulting in a significant increase from our current emissions profile, which is already on track to be 30% above 1990 levels by 2020. Also, some industries are given free carbon credits from the Government under the ETS to help them meet their carbon liability. It is possible that in 2020 up to 80% of the emissions liability of lignite users could be met as free credits, meaning that large scale lignite developments are likely to receive subsidies of millions of dollars per year from the taxpayer (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, 2010).
 
What’s more, the true cost of lignite is not imbedded in its current price – it is future generations who will pay the cost of mitigating the effects of climate change. Global climate responds slowly, at least initially, to natural and human-made forcings of the system, meaning that the effects of our current emissions are yet to be seen. To ignore the future consequences of lignite use is to allow a tragic intergenerational injustice to occur.
 
Plans to use Southland’s lignite deposits make a mockery of NZ’s clean green image. This will have consequences for our tourism and export industries which capitalise on this brand. As top NASA climate scientist James Hansen recently remarked, “We just can’t go down this path of developing the lignite coal.”
 
- Tarsh Turner 
 
Negative

My opposition raises three questions.
 
First, are the initial costs of mining sufficient to warrant mining? This is easily answered. If mining were such a waste of money, there would be no company who would want the contract. Indeed, why would the government risk costing the country so much debt to Kyoto? The fact that there are companies who are interested in diving into our soil shows that there is some value there. The government is willing to stimulate competition (and I’m guessing they know about our political agreements) because they see a benefit to the country.
 
Companies want the contract because massive economies such as Germany base a lot of their energy on lignite coal (about 25% of their net energy production) and are still demanding it.
 
Now that we can assume value from mining, we should look at the wider effect that mining will have on the NZ economy. As NZ has a fairly large mining sector anyway (for anyone in Dunedin, go no further than Logan Park), it seems fairly logical that any company who began mining would indeed hire NZ workers. While it may not have the $100 billion benefit the ACT party claims it will, there is a significant benefit of overseas companies such as BHP Bingham hiring NZ miners, who then spend in NZ. So we have value of the minerals and benefit to NZ.
 
; text-autospace: none;">Will this exponentially increase our debt under the Kyoto protocol? No. The key fact that the affirmative failed to realise is that NZ will not be mostly using this lignite. We will be selling it. So there is a simple free market fix. Basically because the government has supreme power to hand off the contract, they can take the external cost of the debt and internalise it within the cost of the tender for a company, or even the company could internalise the cost into the price of the coal. Free market win, Kyoto win, NZ win. Oh and as for the processing plant the affirmative referred to, as places like Germany base so much of their energy on processing this, I’m sure they would be happy to buy the unprocessed product.
 
Thirdly; Will there be harm to the environment? No. Lignite is one of the cleanest forms of coal, it doesn’t release any of the harmful toxins such as sulphite like regular coal does. This is a benefit because as there is such high demand for lignite, not using it simply means that big consumers of lignite will turn their attention to less clean sources. By allowing them time and access to lignite, you better the chances that they will phase out coal use and focus on cleaner and greener energy production, like nuclear energy.

- John Brinsley-Pirie