Headline: National admits defeat on climate change
National has today admitted defeat on climate change by setting a 5 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020, Labour’s Climate Change spokesperson Moana Mackey says.
“National previously committed to a reduction target of 10 to 20 per cent. Labour has consistently said anything less than 15 per cent is a white flag to the international community. It says we’re not prepared to do our fair share and take serious action on climate change.
“Today’s announcement is disappointing but unsurprising, given National has gutted the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), devastated the carbon forestry sector and pulled out of Kyoto,” Moana Mackey says.
New Zealand’s international reputation has taken a hammering in recent weeks, she says.
“This will do nothing to restore credibility to our clean green image. We are the last developed country to announce a target — a target which was due last year — and we still haven’t seen any plan as to how the Government expects to achieve even this very modest reduction.
“A recent report shows deforestation is rising and foresters are leaving the ETS in droves. New Zealand is heavily reliant on forestry to offset our ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions which show no sign of peaking.
“A Labour government will get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions by strengthening the ETS, rejoining Kyoto and providing support for industries which help reduce emissions such as forestry,” Moana Mackey says.
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A BBC “Hard Talk” with Stephen Sarkur on National Radio last night painted about as grim a picture as is possible regarding any chances of the world avoiding massive climate change. Focusing on the Arctic and interviewing Innuits, oil company spokespeople etc there was no evidence that there is going to be any slowdown in the search and use of fossil oils and worst of all, once the tundra melts, this will release as much greenhouse gases as humans do. Current leaders like John Key will still be alive when this happens and like 80 and 90 year old war criminals, should be held to account when it becomes obvious to everyone that they chose to deliberately not act when they should have, leading to hundreds of millions of deaths and the loss of vast amounts of species on the planet.
What Fambo said +1. This government is morally bankrupt. The dumb, greedy, wilfully destructive bastards will go down in history as being complicit in the destruction of the holocene. That’s if any residual civilisation survives to write a history. I don’t know how they sleep at night.
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