Climate change: Pure hypocrisy

So, having set itself an utterly pathetic climate change target of 10% - 20%, and derided all talk of going for 40%, guess what target the New Zealand government is demanding from everyone else?

That's right - 30 - 40 percent:

Overnight, New Zealand told delegates from 190 countries in Bonn that the Government’s emissions reduction target of 10-20% below 1990 levels is dependent on developed countries as a whole cutting their emissions to 30-40% below 1990 levels.

“My jaw hit the floor,” said Geoff Keey, who was in the meeting at the time. “New Zealand has effectively told the rest of the developed world that if they work really hard to reduce their emissions by up to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, we’ll do half of that.

“There’s been so much rhetoric from the Government about New Zealand doing its “fair share” – they’re now calling for other countries to pick up our slack.”

This is just pure hypocrisy. And its not just embarrassing - it is also eroding the mana on which our entire foreign policy is based. Under National, we're going from climate leaders to climate freeloaders, and we are eventually going to pay a price for it.

And as the icing on the cake:

New Zealand also admitted that the 2020 target will be achieved mostly by carbon offsets and not through actual emission reductions.

And so the cycle of "announce target, make no plan, do nothing, fail" gears up for another iteration...