Thursday, November 29, 2012



Climate change: Another fossil

Its day three of the climate talks in Doha, and new Zealand has picked up its second "fossil of the day" award over our pathetic climate change policy:

The Second Place Fossil of the Day goes to New Zealand, again, because not only did Wellington deliberately decide not to put its target into the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, but today proposed that access to the CDM should be open to all and should not depend on whether a country is signing up to a second commitment period. To make it clear, New Zealand pointed out that otherwise the Adaptation Fund will not have enough money to keep functioning. Come on Kiwis, forget about the hobbits and think about your neighbors! You have to be serious… if you want to feast on carbon markets you have to work up your targets first!

I'm wondering if collecting these awards is some new target National has set for itself: get as many fossils as possible to prove their anti-environment cred to their anti-environment rump. But they're bad for our international reputation, and for a country which runs a mana-based foreign policy relying on the goodwill and esteem of other nations, disastrous.