Climate Change: A regime of arsonists

The House is in urgency today to ram through the regime's bill to weaken our methane targets and decouple ETS settings from our international commitments. The bill is a terrible idea, and it turns out that the public service was not afraid to say so:

Officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment advised that the commission's recommendations were the least feasible of all the options, "due to the significant policy change, market drivers, and private sector action required to achieve the technological uptake and system shifts".

However, they also warned that the lower end of the government's preferred target could be seen as "inconsistent" with New Zealand's obligations under the Paris Agreement.

[...]

"If the lower end of the target (14 percent) is achieved, it will increase the warming caused by New Zealand by [about] 3.3 per cent by 2050 and by [about] 6.2 per cent by 2100 when compared with our current trajectory."

Lowering the target could also "dampen the ambition of mitigation actions and behaviours, including investment decisions by businesses".

Basically this is an act of pure arson by a regime that would rather than planey burned than see its donors and cronies inconvenienced in any way. But while they may not be inconvenienced by regulation, at least for as long as this regime lasts, they are sure as hell going to be inconvenienced by the fires, floods, and droughts that will result from this stupid policy. But I guess they'll just stick their hand out and expect the rest of us to bail them out when they are hit by the inevitable consequences of their own short-sightedness as well.

The next government is obviously going to have to repeal this. But they're going to have to go further, and make farmers pay their way, by bringing them into the ETS at the processor level with no subsidies. Farmers have had over 20 years now to adopt lower-emissions methods; if they have refused to do so, then that is a poor economic decision, and it should be them, rather than us, who pay the cost of it. The cities should no longer be subsidising them, or pandering to their backward, arsonist ideology.

Climate Change: No ambition

Last December, He Pou a Rangi Climate Commission looked at our current emissions targets, and recognised that we could do more. Existing technology was expected to lead to a deep and rapid decarbonisation of the economy, including agriculture, resulting in not just lower emissions, but also cleaner air, cleaner water, and a healthier population. We were expected to hit our current net-zero carbon dioxide target nearly a decade early. Based on this, they recommended strengthening that target to a net negative one, compensating for remaining methane emissions and reducing our overall warming effect.

"Nah," said National. "It's all too hard. Let's not bother":

The government has quietly rejected Climate Change Commission advice to set a much more ambitious 'net negative' long-term target for carbon emissions.

Instead, it will retain the original 2050 goal of net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived gases.

That's despite warnings from the Climate Change Commission that the effects of climate change are hitting the country sooner and more severely than expected, and that New Zealand can and should be doing more.

A climate policy expert says the decision is "incredibly consequential" and should have been communicated more transparently.

The stupidity here is stunning. We had a better future in our grasp. And National has thrown it - and us - on the bonfire, out of pure ideological hostility to climate action. (Though their doing it in secret shows that some of them are at least ashamed of the decision, or at least scared of what we will think of it - and of them).

The good news is that they won't last forever. And once this dogshit zombie regime is gone, we can restore policy and get ourselves back on that negative carbon track. The bad news is that the three years of delay they have imposed has allowed much higher emissions, and will have made our future that much worse. We need to hold them accountable for that - not just politically, but criminally as ecocidaires.