We've all seen the cartoon above, about the endless cycle of New Zealand climate change policy. But the Zero Carbon Act was supposed to stop it, by forcing the government to actually make plans and account for its failures if it didn't actually do anything to achieve them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working out that way:
There’s a risk the Government will not reduce emissions enough to meet its first emissions budget.This is technically legal - the Zero Carbon Act allows governments to borrow up to 1% of the next budget to meet a previous one. For the 2026-2030 budget period, that equates to about 3 million tons. But its obviously not what was meant to happen, and raises the prospect of successive governments perpetually borrowing from the future in order to legally - but not actually - meet commitments they've made impossible due to their own short-term thinking and pandering to polluters. Which is kindof the whole problem in a nutshell: constantly throwing our problems onto future generations.But this does not necessarily mean the Government has fallen short of the emissions reduction rules it has set itself. While emissions reductions might not be sufficient to fall within the budget, the Government can “borrow” against a future budget, meaning it technically lives within its commitments.
This short-term dumping of our problems on the future needs to stop. And if mainstream politicians are the barrier to that, well, that is what elections are for. Meanwhile, if we're looking at ways of making up Hipkins' climate shortfall, the 2021 ETS participant emissions report gives a good idea of places to target for immediate shutdown.