Yesterday, National finally introduced its long-threatened bill to repeal the offshore drilling ban and promote the fossil fuel industry to the House. They'll be ramming it through its first reading under urgency this afternoon, and while it will go to select committee, they will almost certainly try their usual stunt of an undemocratically short submissions period in an effort to limit opposition.
The Greens have made it quite clear that they will be reinstating the ban and revoking any permits granted in the interim, but Labour are being their usual chickenshit selves, and refusing to commit to that. Which makes them fools as well as cowards. Because permits represent extra emissions, which we simply cannot afford. The government's own modelling shows that their policy will increase emissions by 14.2 million tons to 2035, and 51.6 millions tons to 2050. Which is a cast-iron commitment to breach not just our first two emissions budgets, but all future targets as well.
No party which pretends to be committed to climate action can accept this. So Labour has to choose: do they want to maintain credibility with the public, or suck up to ecocidal big business polluters? Because they can't do both.
Meanwhile, what this bill and this climate assessment shows us is that we cannot as a society afford the gas industry. It has to be destroyed. And currently, that's on-track to happen: high prices and shortages are driving industrial users to electrify, the electricity sector is going to be hit by a flood of solar and batteries which will drive gas out of the system, and Methanex - the customer which fundamentally drives demand and effectively underwrites all future development - is shutting down two of its three plants. This is exactly the managed decline we need to see. The gas industry and their corrupt stooges in National hate it, and so we have this desperate rearguard action in an effort to pretend that gas still has a future. But it doesn't and it can't. All we need to put the final nail in the coffin is for Labour to publicly commit to that. But I guess the question here is: when has the NZ Labour party ever done the right thing voluntarily?
