If you thought that your contempt for the current administration had peaked let me disappoint you.
There is an especially shitty policy change they have recently announced which is conclusive proof that they are fuckwits, idiots, have no comprehension of science or sense and should be immediately relegated to jobs more suited to them like collecting road cones or wiping tables in their local Starbucks cafe.
Remember when Christopher Luxon wrote to Chris Hipkins and urged him to adopt a credible bipartisan approach to off sea oil drilling? And then completely undermined the effort to seek consensus by leaking the letter to the media?
There is a historical example of consensus being reached for the common good. It resulted in the changes to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 made in 2019. This set up the Climate Change Commission with the intent that an authoritave organisation would make evidence based recommendations on what the country should do to reduce emissions.
National voted for the changes. It reserved its position on methane and said that some changes woud be made when it regained power. But it committed generally to the idea that the country’s climate change response should be forged by a political consensus informed by expert advice.
It also set out five principles that it claimed it was bound by.
These included that the system must be science based, technology driven, the country’s response must be in keeping with its global trading partners, there must be long-term incentives to businesses and consumers to reduce emissions, and the economic impact needs to be minimised.
Last election National said this about its climate policy:
National is absolutely committed to New Zealand’s climate change targets, including:
* Net zero greenhouse gas emissions excluding biogenic methane by 2050;
* Biogenic methane reduced by 10 per cent by 2030 and 24-47 per cent by 2050 compared to 2017 levels; and
* New Zealand’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below gross 2005 levels by 2030.
But it seems that all of this has essentially been hot air. In policy area after policy area since it gained power National and its mates have undermined the country’s climate change response.
This week National effectively walked away from the bipartisan approach that had existed at least in theory in relation to climate change.
In a very strange press release Minister Simon Watts announced the release of the Government’s Assessment Framework for Carbon Removals, designed to provide support to people and organisations who want their activities that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere recognised and rewarded.
Of itself this is a good idea. Think Labour’s deal with New Zealand Steel that not only removed the equivalent of 300,000 cars from New Zealand’s roads and saved the Country the cost of buying a significant number of credits. This is the sort of project that should be funded and there should be an assessment framework to decide on these sorts of proposals. National went to town however at the time and Christopher Luxon called the deal outrageous. So much for providing incentives to businesses to reduce emissions.
But tacked onto the announcement was a further announcement that the Government was effectively gutting the country’s climate change response. The claim was that the changes would ensure the legislation was working efficiently and as intended. But the work of the Climate Change Commission was going to be undermined and the Government would have the power to unilaterally change emissions reduction plans without even consulting on it.
Marc Daalder at Newsroom has the following comments on the change:
Under the proposal, the independent Climate Change Commission will no longer advise the Government on how to meet carbon budgets as it prepares its five-yearly emissions reduction plan. The Government, meanwhile, will be able to amend or even wholly replace its emissions plan without any consultation.
The targets themselves will also be subjected to less public scrutiny. The Climate Change Commission will no longer be required to consult the public on its recommendation on what level the emissions budgets should be set at, nor will the Government have to consult on its final decision when setting the budgets.
…
In addition, Watts also said the Government would move to disconnect the Emissions Trading Scheme and New Zealand’s carbon budgets from the commitment to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement. Currently, the scheme’s price settings and unit volumes must accord with the Paris target and emissions budgets must be set in a way that contributes to the Paris Agreement.
The Paris accord allows for targets to be met through domestic emissions reductions and so-called offshore mitigation – purchasing carbon credits from overseas or paying other countries to reduce their emissions. New Zealand’s first Paris target (covering 2021 to 2030) was set with the intention that two thirds of the required reductions would be met through offshore mitigation.
Since the coalition came to power, however, Watts and other ministers have signalled that they will not purchase offshore mitigation, but have failed to explain how they plan to meet the target.
They have refused to do so because as soon as the liability crystallises sufficiently it will have to be added to the country’s financial books and blow a rather large hole in them. The choices are stark. Reduce emissions, buy credits or default on our international obligations.
And the changes to the Climate Change Commission’s role are bizarre. The whole idea of the Commission was to have an expert body attempting to form a political consensus over proposals that were created by an expert independent panel. Leaving it to politicians, particularly those on the right is a recipie for failure.
It has been reported that the Beehive press release was not sent out to all media. This is bizarre given the importance of the changes. Clearly the Government wanted this to not attract attention.
The excellent Marc Daalder has said this about the Government’s policies:
[A]t every turn, the Government has opted for the available option that would actually lead to more pollution and a warmer world – even if it costs more, even if it jeopardises New Zealand’s reputation, even if it overturns a campaign promise or clashes with the Government’s priorities in other portfolios.
The recent examples include these:
* Released a new energy policy that doubles down on expensive fossil fuels. In fact, we’ll import Liquefied Natural Gas which will literally double the price of gas. (Meanwhile, Australia has announced three free hours of power every single day for millions of households because of the influx of cheap solar.)
* Weakened the climate-related financial disclosure regime, exempting more than half of the companies currently subject to the requirements just months after bragging about the policy on the world stage.
* Announced the halving of the ambition of New Zealand’s methane target, in defiance of the independent Climate Change Commission which had advised strengthening it instead. Climate Change Minister Simon Watts conceded the new target is not consistent with the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5C – a legal requirement in New Zealand and under international law.
* Scrapped plans to price emissions from agriculture, despite the National Party campaigning on the policy in 2023 and promising to implement it by 2030.
* Abstained on a critical vote in the International Maritime Organisation on a price on international shipping emissions, against Pacific and European allies who were blindsided by New Zealand’s backtracking.
* Announced plans to unilaterally gut key provisions of the Zero Carbon Act without consulting the Opposition. Although National was intimately involved in the creation of the legislation, Watts said there was no need to follow that consensus-based approach going forward.
* Delayed the 2025 deadline for a carbon neutral public service by 25 years, out to 2050.”
And this is just over the past six weeks.
Russell Norman at Greenpeace has an earlier and more exhaustive list up to June 2025. And reading it will make you cry.
My breif summary of the Government’s wrecking of every emissions reduction police it can get its hands on includes these:
* Cancelling the Big Battery Project.
* Abolishing the Government Investment in the Decarbonising Industry Fund.
* Cancelling the new interislander ferries, the carbon efficient rail supporting ones.
* The undermining of the national policy statement on freshwater management.
* Killing off Wellington’s low emissions transport plan.
* Cancelling Auckland’s light rail project.
* Reversing New Zealand’s position on restrictions to bottom trawling seamounts. Bottom trawling releases masses of carbon stored on the ocean floor.
* Announced a draft policy statement on land transport which slashed spending on cycling and walking and increased funding to motorways.
* Cancelled Auckland’s Regional Fuel Tax which then caused the Eastern Busway to be cancelled.
* Refused to have “sustainable management” in the purposes clause of the fast track law.
* Suspended the requirement for councils to identify significant natural areas (ie forests) so they could be protected.
* Increased speeds on roads.
* Hand picked a committee to review methane levels based on the “no additional warming” metric.
* Cut staffing to Ministry for the Environment staffing.
* Reduced the liability of oil companies for cleaning up their mess.
* Abolished public subsidies for young people.
* Changed RMA laws to remove the requirement for resource consent decision makers to prioritise ecosystem health and human health when making decisions about freshwater allocation.
* Budget 2024 was projected to increase emissions by about 2.8 million tonnes and $2.4 billion was cut out of programmes designed to reduce emissions.
* Overturned the offshore oil and gas exploration ban and changed the Crown Minerals Act to promote oil and gas exploration.
* Postponed a price of emissions for agriculture and fertiliser companies.
* Disestablished He Waka Eke Noa which was to designed to bring in a pricing mechanism for agricultural emissions.
* Announced a carbon capture and storage framework even though the technology has consistently not worked.
* Announced a vague five point climate change plan at the same time that news emerged that the country’s climate response was going backwards.
* Weakened carbon efficiency standards for imported cars.
* Published a draft Emissions Reduction Plan which relied on magic technology to cut methane emissions and magic carbon capture and storage.
* Cut funding to climate science.
* Cut jobs in the Environmental Protection Agency.
* Announced it would amend the RMA to effectively overturn court decisions which restrict water pollution.
* Announced RMA reforms that would not only stop the rollout of freshwater farm plans but would also weaken drinking water standards and indigenous biodiversity protection rules.
* Pushed an amendment to the Companies Act to remove a requirement for Directors to consider environment, social and governance issues when making decisions.
* Enacted the fast track legislation which included support for a list of preferred projects including coal mines and irrigation projects, which will increase emissions by facilitating dairy expansion.
* Removed the renewable preference and renewable energy targets from the Government Policy Statement on Electricity.
* Blocked regional councils from rolling out regional freshwater plans.
* Cancelled regulations for low emission buildings.
* Delayed company carbin disclosure rules.
* One Minister said they would not buy offshore carbon credits to meet our Paris commitments.
* Appointed fossil fuel lobbyist John Carnegie to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.
* Released its final emissions reduction plan for 2026-30 which still relied on magical methane inhibitors and carbon capture and storage and lots and lots of pine trees on public and private land.
* Cut in half the number of companies that have to disclose their emissions.
* The Climate Minister told Federated Farmers that there was no legal obligation to meet the Paris targets, and no liability.
* Further undermined the ETS by agreeing to double the subsidies to Rio Tinto by giving them free ETS carbon credits of $75m per year.
* Closed the Green Investment Fund.
* Gutted the proposal for freshwater farm plans.
* Abstained on putting a price on international maritime climate pollution as part of global efforts to cut shipping emissions.
* Appointed John Roche, a dairy industry insider, to the role of Orime Minister’s chief science officer.
* In budget 2025 the allocated $200 million to co invest in new oil and gas exploration, gave an unlimited 20% write off for new investments and cut the predator free program as well as overseas climate financing from $250 million to $100 million.
* $up to $50 billion dollars on Roads of National Significance.
Get the picture?
This is a bunch of climate vandals. They have shredded any pretence they had of wanting to do something meaningful about climate change. They have sacrificed their emissions reduction credibility to the wishes of farmers and industry and their donors. They have used climate change policies to engage in meaningless culture wars.
Luxon is especially guilty of this. He has failed to lead the Government and has let Act and NZ First’s thirst for culture wars undermine the Government’s emission reduction policies at a time when efforts should be accelerated, not stalled.
We are no more than 12 months away from the next election. If you care about the world your kids or grandkids live in then get active.
We have to vote them out. Otherwise they will wreck the place and make New Zealand a laughing stock among nations that respect the science and know the enormity of the problem we are facing.
