Digging her own hole

Yesterday, while accepting a petition from 45,000 people calling for an end to oil exploration, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her government was "actively considering" the issue. Then, faced with criticism from National and its oil industry backers, she tried to roll back the comments. And so this morning on Morning Report she's "refining" them and making it clear that she was talking about the annual block offer of exploration permits.

Which, when you think about it, is how you end oil gradually: you cut off new exploration, and simply refuse to grant new mining permits for it (or rather, introduce a clause into the Crown Minerals Act requiring the impact on climate change and New Zealand's emissions to be the overriding factor in decision-making, which would have the same effect). Existing emissions gradually taper off as fields are exhausted, problem solved. At the same time, by trying to be all things to all people, Ardern is just digging her own hole. It's the same problem Labour has always had: a refusal to actually say where it stands. But when you're going to talk big about climate change being this generation's nuclear free moment, you need to follow that up by actually picking a fucking side. And you certainly don't wibble around talking about how to accommodate the fuckers who are literally trying to turn a profit by destroying the global climate and ruining the lives of future generations.

Fundamentally, climate change means it is us or the oil industry. We know whose side the Greens are on. But people are doubting Labour, and they only have themselves to blame for it.