The embarrassing hypocrisy of Key at Paris Climate Change Conference

By
Martyn Bradbury
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10
1

John-Key-sold-environment-300x224

Is this some sort of sick joke?

Key is in Paris calling for an end to subsidising fossil fuel production while at the same time handing over millions in subsidies to do exactly that!

The Fossil of the Day award – a prize handed out at climate conferences for most regressive country – goes to New Zealand, whose prime minister John Key met the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy reform on Monday. 

His government’s cuts to subsidies on fossil fuel energy have become the stuff of legend. The government now underwrites no fossil fuel energy. 

But Fossil of the Day organiser Dan Ilic says: “While New Zealand has abolished subsidies on the consumption side, during the time that the Key party has been in office, subsidies for the production of fossil fuels have gone up over seven times. Seven times!

“New Zealand provides over $80m in production subsidies for fossil fuel industries. To New Zealand that’s a lot of money. In New Zealand $80m can buy New Zealand.”

New Zealand will share the award with Belgium, which the organisers said had lagged behind on its pre-2020 commitments to reduce emission.

So Key is overseas telling Government gets to stop subsidising fossil fuels, and here he is leading a Government that has sunk $80million into fossil fuel subsidies.

Will the mainstream media fall for this and not point out the hypocrisy?

We weren’t ‘fast followers’ on the 40hour working week, nuclear free, universal suffrage or the Welfare State – we were leaders and we should be leaders again on climate change.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. In 2006 or 2007 Key said that climate change was one of the most serious problems facing the world.

    Watching him walk into the Paris conference sure made me squirm in my seat.

    I can’t imagine how he can look other delegates in the eye.

    He’s a total asshole.

  2. These talks will never reach any meaningful decisions because, unfortunately for our planet, most the governments involved are right or centre-right governments who treat global climate change as they would a spell of bad weather – just buckle up for a while and it will soon blow over.
    They will make noises about doing something, and they might even reach some pathetic kind of watered-down agreements – and then they will all go back home and do nothing, as their own sleepy hobbits will demand. Those making the (in)decisions now will be in their graves by the time their greed and stupidity have become apparent so they won’t care.
    The political right have damned this planet to hell. I hope they all end up there too.

    • ‘Those making the (in)decisions now will be in their graves by the time their greed and stupidity have become apparent so they won’t care.’

      Actually, with CO2 now permanently above 400ppm (170ppm above the 800,000-year average) and only a tiny remnant of multi-year Arctic Sea ice remaining, we must expect catastrophic meltdown within 5 years because once the last of the sea ice melts there will be no energy of phase transition and all insolation over the Arctic Sea will result in very rapid warming, which will trigger even faster feedbacks.

      Expect it to get very grim before 2030.

      • Yes, I hear this a few weeks ago. Once the critical point in the melting is reached than nothing can be done to reverse it. This planet is doomed! The ostriches in Paris won’t be able to do anything in 50 years let alone 5 years.

  3. The PM could get international kudos for a stronger more enlightened policy approach on climate change. (As well as planetary emissions control being urgently required anyway.) He could be a leader. The PM hasn’t bothered. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the good guy. Why not? Is it because it’s not as important as what neoliberal capitalist profit perspective tells him is important? The PM and other ‘leaders’ need to get with the right program. Worrying as usual is the amount of support in the polls going his way. So many of us blinkered and myopic and not getting the point.

  4. New Zealand will be @ zero human emissions within 20 years, simply because there will be zero humans left in NZ ) http://guymcpherson.com/2014/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/
    The last time the planet was in runaway climate change the temperature went up 13 degrees within 10 or so years, due to the same thing that is happening now.
    The methane clathrate gun has gone off, we face the probability of a massive ‘burp’ (50gt) more or less any day now, this prediction has been around for about 18 months, we are running out of empty chambers.And regardless of a burp or not, the current ‘leeching’ of CH4 into the environment has gone exponential, some are saying CH4/CO2 is 150/1, making the current CO2/CO2e reading above 700 parts per million, PLUS the other GHG gasses, the environment may not have been is such a clusterfuck for billions of years.
    It is so late in the game, that there is nothing we can do to make the situation worse, and it is impossible for humanity to do anything that will make the situation better.
    We are like an elephant raping ant.
    Maybe Key and all the piss taking wankers @ COP 21 know this?

  5. Governments tackling climate change? Two words: vested interests.

    If they actually come up with anything effective, I’ll be very surprised. There are just too many reasons why it isn’t important enough for them to do anything.

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