Last week, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommended that forestry be removed from the Emissions Trading Scheme. Its an unfortunate but necessary move, required to prevent the ETS's total collapse in a decade or so. So naturally, National has told him to fuck off, and that they won't be changing anything:
But Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, said the government's approach to forestry had already been set in its Emissions Reduction Plan and it did not plan any other changes.So its the usual "policy" from national: do nothing. Kick the can down the road. Leave it for the next government to fix. Because they are going to have to fix it, one way or another, if we want to have a functioning carbon price to reduce emissions. But maybe National - a party still full of climate change deniers and weirdo apocalyptic cultists - doesn't want that either. They may no longer feel that they can openly espouse climate change denial, but they can trash all the policies, do nothing about the threat, and leave us all to burn and drown – which amounts to exactly the same thing.The government had already announced plans to restrict whole farm conversions to forestry on certain classes of productive land.
"The forestry sector will play a key role in driving economic growth by creating more jobs in our regions and boosting the value of exports. It also provides a nature-based solution to climate change, which is a key pillar of the government's climate strategy," said Watts.
