National has abolished all effective climate change policy, and is gaslighting us on the impact of that on emissions targets. National's partners are ouright arsonists and climate change deniers. So where does Labour stand? While they haven't released a full climate policy yet - better start soon? - they did make a small announcement this week, signalling a rapid ETS review to (among other things) look at how to disentangle forestry from the ETS. Good. He Pou a Rangi has been warning about this for years, and a review was in fact scheduled after the last election. National cancelled it. Since then the warnings have only strengthened, and National has kept kicking the can down the road, refusing to be an adult and fix the broken system, because that would upset established interests. The fact that they'll be able to criticise Labour for being the adult in the room is probably seen by them as a bonus - an example of how policy is driven by trolling, rather than any semblance of "responsible government".
Labour's announcement is unclear about whether the review will also consider industrial allocation - another huge distortion of the ETS, which similarly threatens to break it - but hopefully it will. Polluters have already had 18 years of subsidies, and if we want the system to actually be effective, it is long past time they ended.
Unfortunately, Labour is still refusing to be an adult over agricultural emissions, saying that pricing dirty cows was not going to be a default, and that instead
We think that we can work with farmers to do that without putting a price on methane emissions.Which invites the obvious question: how? Because farmers have never engaged in good faith on this, and every time they pretend to, they simply stab Aotearoa in the back.
Labour is, like National, wanking on about "new technology" which reduces farm emissions. But unless they have actual, concrete policy to make farmers adopt it, that technology might as well not exist, and is simply a rhetorical distraction from the horde of dirty, farting cows which are destroying the climate and not paying their way. Pricing emissions was the way of forcing adoption, either directly at the farm level, or indirectly by getting processors like Fonterra to pass it down the chain. If Labour aren't going to do that, then they will have to use direct regulation instead. And if they refuse to do either, they are simply stupid little children, and not remotely serious about our biggest policy challenge.
And on the gripping hand, both Labour's likely coalition partners want to price agricultural emissions, and its a far more significant issue for them than Labour, so Labour's preferences on this are largely irrelevant. A cynic would say they've only adopted this position so they can "reluctantly" be "forced" into doing the right thing by the Greens and/or Opportunity - a dishonest and cowardly tactic from a dishonest and cowardly party...
There's a lot more questions, of course: what are they actually going to do about the Paris liability (something else National has kicked the can down the road on so they can criticise Labour)? What will they do about EVs? Coal? National's bullshit LNG terminal and the gas industry in general? Will they restore the clean car rebate and the GIDI scheme? Will they listen to He Pou a Rangi and strengthen targets? Hopefully there'll be answers to all of this before the election. But given their position on agriculture, I'm not sure they've going to be entirely adult about it.
