Going Green?

There's a pair of interesting opinion pieces, one from Colin James in the Business Herald (offline, but up here in a day or two), and the other from Vernon Small in the Dominion-Post, suggesting that National is about to reverse its long-standing opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and action on climate change as part of a broader effort to "go green". This is welcome; National accepting that there is in fact a problem will make it that much easier for the government to pursue solutions, and a British-style environmental bidding-war between the major parties can only be good for the environment as a whole. At the same time, I think National has a bit of a credibility problem here, in that they are led by an outright climate change denier. And even if Don Brash publicly recanted that position while emerging from a screening of "An Inconvenient Truth" and carrying a copy of The Weather Makers, would anyone really believe him? Or would they think (based on his demonstrated lack of integrity and his belief in "a moral obligation to lie") that he was simply saying whatever he thought would get him elected, and that his environmental promises would quietly be forgotten the moment he gained power in favour of the singlemined pursuit of tax cuts for the rich? My money is on the latter.