The KCDC’s total waste of Ratepayer money on this is put at $5.4 million

by Andy Oakley

While New Zealand households are struggling with skyrocketing living costs, crumbling roads, and rates bills that keep climbing, councils across the country have found something far more important to spend your money on: cutting CO₂ emissions that have never been proven to drive dangerous global warming.

From Kāpiti Coast to Hutt City, Nelson, Bay of Plenty, and dozens of others, local authorities are busy drafting and implementing “Emissions Reduction Plans” and “Climate Action Plans” complete with net-zero targets, electric fleet conversions, solar panels on council buildings, EV chargers, cycleways, and endless “education” programmes. These plans are sold to ratepayers as delivering “prosperity, health, and energy security.” The reality? They deliver higher rates, more unreliable energy, and zero measurable impact on the climate.

Geologist Professor Ian Plimer has stated it plainly for years: “No one has ever unequivocally proven that CO₂ emissions drive global warming.” And if it could be shown, you would first have to prove that the 97% of CO₂ emissions that are entirely natural somehow don’t drive warming either. Scientists at the CO₂ Coalition — including world-class physicists like William Happer and Richard Lindzen — have repeatedly demonstrated through peer-reviewed physics that CO₂’s warming effect is largely saturated, that climate models dramatically overestimate warming, and that more CO₂ has been an enormous net benefit to plant life, agriculture, and global greening.

Yet councils continue to pour ratepayer funds into symbolic gestures that achieve nothing except driving up the cost of energy wherever they have been tried overseas (Germany’s Energiewende, California’s blackouts, the UK’s fuel poverty crisis). In New Zealand, these plans are not isolated — they are part of a coordinated push by Local Government New Zealand and central government policy that forces councils to “have regard to” national emissions targets. The result? Scarce dollars diverted from real infrastructure, flood protection, and essential services into virtue-signalling projects that make energy more expensive and less reliable.

I recently made a formal submission to the Kāpiti Coast District Council on their Draft Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-30. You are welcome to copy it and question your Council.

Here it is in full:

To: Kāpiti Coast District Council — Submission on: Draft Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-30

Submitted by: Andy Oakley, 19.05.2026

Dear Councillors and Council Staff,

I am writing to make a formal submission on the Draft Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-30 (”the Plan”). I have reviewed the full document, including the Introduction (p. 3), “What we’re doing” (pp. 4-6), the sections on Transport (57% of district emissions, pp. 7-9), Energy and Buildings (16%, pp. 10-12), Waste (9%, pp. 13-14), Sequestration (pp. 16-18), “What you can do” (p. 19), the Appendix on monitoring (pp. 21-22), and the Glossary (p. 24). The Plan sets an aspirational goal of net zero emissions by 2040, promotes actions such as fleet electrification, EV charging networks, solar installations, heat pumps, waste minimisation, active transport infrastructure, and carbon sequestration through planting and pest control. It claims these will deliver economic savings, health benefits, energy security, and a “more prosperous, healthier and low carbon Kāpiti.”I respectfully submit that the entire Plan is based on a flawed scientific premise and represents a complete waste of time, ratepayer funds, and community effort. It should be abandoned in favour of pragmatic, evidence-based priorities that focus on genuine prosperity and resilience rather than futile emissions reduction.

Core Scientific Premise: No Evidence that Human CO2 Emissions Drive Global Warming

The Plan’s entire rationale rests on the assumption that reducing human CO2 emissions is necessary to mitigate dangerous climate change. This assumption is not supported by empirical science. As geologist Professor Ian Plimer has stated repeatedly: “No one has ever unequivocally proven that CO2 emissions drive global warming… And if it could be shown, then you would have to show that the 97% of emissions which are natural do not drive global warming.”

This premise aligns directly with the work of scientists associated with the CO2 Coalition (co2coalition.org), a group of nearly 200 experts, including physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, and engineers with credentials such as Nobel Prizes, National Academy memberships, and thousands of peer-reviewed papers. Key members and collaborators include:

• William Happer, Ph.D. Physics (Founder/Chair): Lead author on multiple Coalition publications demonstrating CO2 saturation physics. Doubling atmospheric CO2 has only a tiny additional warming effect because the absorption bands are already largely saturated. See “Saturation Graphics” (2025) and “Happer – Lindzen CAFE Rule Comment” (2026), which show climate models vastly overestimate warming.
• Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. (frequent collaborator): Co-author with Happer on EPA comments rejecting the “endangerment finding” for CO2, arguing there is no evidence of dangerous human-driven warming and that policies like fuel economy standards are ineffective.
• Gregory Wrightstone, M.S. Geology (Senior Fellow): Author of reports like “Arkansas & Climate Change: No Warming. No Crisis. No Problem” (2025) and “Texas and Climate Change” (2025), which use empirical data to show no climate crisis attributable to CO2.
• Other experts (e.g., John Clauser, Nobel Physics; Patrick Moore, Ph.D.; Jim Steele, M.A. Biology): Emphasise CO2 as “plant food” essential for life, with current levels near historically low values. Human emissions have contributed to global greening, thriving plant life, and agricultural gains, with no measurable harm. Publications such as “Fossil Fuel Emissions from 1750 to Today Caused No Harm” (Happer, 2026) and “Fossil Fuels, Climate Change, and the Vital Role of CO2” (Shanmugam, 2026) directly contradict the Plan’s alarmist framing.

The CO2 Coalition’s publications consistently show:

• Climate models fail against field measurements (”The CO2 Problem: Climate Models vs. Field Measurements”).
• Natural factors (solar cycles, orbital changes, albedo) dominate long-term climate; CO2’s greenhouse effect is minor compared to water vapour and clouds.
• No “crisis” exists—Earth is greening, food production is up, and extreme weather trends do not match CO2-driven predictions.

These experts argue that the Plan’s focus on “net zero” ignores the scientific method and empirical data in favour of politically driven assumptions.

The Plan Is a Waste of Time and Money – Proven Failures Elsewhere

Wherever similar emissions-reduction policies have been aggressively pursued (e.g., via renewables mandates and fossil-fuel phase-outs), the results are higher energy prices, reduced reliability, and economic harm—exactly the opposite of the “savings” and “energy security” claimed in the Plan (pp. 3, 10).

The CO2 Coalition has documented this extensively:

• Renewables (wind/solar) are intermittent and require expensive backups, leading to grid instability. See “Net Zero: An Existential Threat to Grid Reliability – and More” and articles on the “Energy Trilemma” (reliability, affordability, sustainability), where prioritising emissions cuts undermines the other two pillars.
• Examples include policies in Pennsylvania, California, Germany (Energiewende), the UK, and Australia: electricity prices have soared, blackouts and curtailments have increased, and industries have been damaged. Coalition analyses (e.g., “Shapiro Energy Policy Is a Formula for Expensive Electricity”; “The Ongoing Fiction of Cheap Wind and Solar”) show that states avoiding heavy renewables mandates have the lowest prices.
• “Energy Addition, Not Transition” (Furfari, 2025) argues fossil fuels remain the reliable bedrock of progress; forced decarbonisation raises costs without environmental payoff.

In Kāpiti, actions like subsidising EVs/chargers, solar on Council buildings, heat-pump conversions for pools, Pathways Network spending, and Ratepayer Assistance Schemes (pp. 9, 11-12) will impose upfront costs on ratepayers with no measurable climate benefit. The Plan admits emissions have already fallen modestly (6% district-wide, 69.5% for Council operations) through natural efficiency and market shifts—without needing this costly framework. Pursuing “net zero by 2040” (requiring 6.3% annual cuts) will deliver higher rates, unreliable energy, and opportunity costs for real infrastructure needs.

Recommendations

1. Withdraw the Plan and the underlying Emissions Reduction Strategy. Cease tying Council decisions to unproven CO2-driven warming claims.
2. Focus on genuine priorities: Affordable, reliable energy; resilient infrastructure; economic growth; and adaptation to natural climate variability.
3. Reject net-zero targets and associated spending (e.g., Climate Action Loan conditions on supply-chain reporting).
4. Promote CO2 benefits: Recognise that higher CO2 levels support plant growth, food security, and a greener district.

The science from CO2 Coalition experts and Professor Plimer shows this Plan is not evidence-based policy—it is ideological overreach. I urge the Council to prioritise Kāpiti residents’ prosperity over symbolic gestures.

Thank you for considering this submission. I am happy to discuss further.

Sincerely, Andy Oakley

References (key CO2 Coalition sources available at co2coalition.org/publications/ and http://www.co2coalition.org):

• Happer, Lindzen et al. publications on saturation physics and EPA comments.
• State-specific reports (Arkansas, Texas, Virginia) showing “no crisis.”
• Grid reliability and energy transition critiques.

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Earlier, I produced a video trying to arrest the very same Council trying to put danger notices on the titles of our houses in coastal Kapiti, effectively making them uninsurable and driving down values.