Clearly Labour's focus groups are telling it that it needs to pay more attention to climate change - because hot on the heels of their weaksauce energy efficiency pilot programme and not-great-but-better-than-nothing solar grants, they've released a full climate manifesto. Unfortunately, the core policies in it - a second Emissions Reduction Plan, more renewable energy, more money for "research" and the Green Investment Finance fund, plus listening to the Climate Commission on the ETS - is all basicly business as usual. The first and last are both legal commitments, actually required by statute, while the middle is just BAU meh. Meanwhile, the cow in the room is conspicuous by its absence - meaning Labour is still refusing to do anything at all about our biggest polluter.
This is orders of magnitude better than National's "repeal all the policies, make some handwavy noises about electricity" excuse for policy, but its also vastly less than what is required. Labour doesn't deserve a cookie for promising to do the absolute minimum (and not even reverse their previous cuts to climate funding). If you want real climate action, you really need to vote for a party that promises it: Te Pāti Māori or the Greens.
