Last month, the National Party announced they would repeal any price on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, effectively declaring that they would do nothing about them. Today, they've followed that up by announcing that they will repeal the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration:
The National Party has reaffirmed that if elected to Government it will repeal the offshore oil and gas exploration ban, introduced by the Labour-NZ First-Green Government in 2018.Which is simply madness. We can't afford to burn the oil and gas we have already. We certainly can't afford to burn any more that is discovered. The first step to decarbonisation is to phase out fossil fuels. But clearly, National doesn't want that.National’s energy spokesperson Stuart Smith further hashed out the National Party’s approach to climate change in the energy sector, during a speech to the Energy Trusts of New Zealand and the Waipa Networks Association in Cambridge on Thursday.
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In the energy space, Smith argued that New Zealand’s 100% renewable target was costly, delivered few emissions gains and that gas should continue to be a part of the mix.
But its not just oil and gas. While purporting to care about climate change, National opposes any attempt to reduce emissions. They oppose reducing fossil fuel emissions. They oppose reducing agricultural emissions. They oppose reducing transport emissions. They oppose reducing industrial emissions. The natural interpretation of all this opposition is that they don't actually want to reduce emissions at all, and that they want the planet to burn. Which makes them simply unfit to govern.
