Imagine if the government declared a war, but didn't fund it? That's basicly what they've done with climate change. In December 2020 Parliament declared a "climate emergency", finally acknowledging the urgency of the crisis. But efforts to actually act to reduce emissions have been undermined by the usual bureaucratic penny-pinching:
Efforts to rein in the over-subsidising of large industrial polluters and a law that would enable a managed retreat from flood-prone coastlines were delayed because funding for them wasn't received in Budget 2021.Like most austerity, this shortsighted penny-pinching costs more than it saves. The total cost of the work programme is $11.2 million. Using the government's social cost of carbon of $150/ton, that's about 75,000 tons. Or less than 2% of the total industrial free allocation. Reining in existing over-subsidisation would save more than that, so by delaying it Robertson's tight fistedness is actually costing us money. But as usual, Treasury only looks at the costs of action, rather than the benefits.These were just two of several parts of the climate change work programme delayed or scaled down as a result of the failed Budget bid, according to a June Cabinet paper from Climate Change Minister James Shaw.
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Shaw had sought $23 million in funding for MfE but had only received the bare minimum of $6.45m to keep the lights on and existing programmes going. The decision left "an $11.2m shortfall for what is needed to deliver the climate change work programme in 2021/22 that was agreed by Cabinet, and signalled for decision within the coming financial year".
