Surprise, surprise, the Government have once again capitulated to the angry Farming Gods of NZ and left them out of any obligation to do anything meaningful about climate change…
Greenpeace brands Government sellouts over ETS backdown
Greenpeace is calling the Government’s surprise backdown on its commitment to put farming into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) a major sell-out.
The Prime Minister is expected to announce that agriculture, the country’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, will be exempt from a price on its emissions until 2025. The ETS is one of the Government’s main tools for controlling emissions and meeting climate targets.
“The Government has buckled to lobbying pressure from the dairy industry and big agri-business,” says Greenpeace campaigner, Gen Toop.
“Agriculture is our biggest climate polluter. An emissions trading scheme without the sector in it is a joke and won’t be able to combat the climate emergency – the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.”
“The Government is protecting the short term profits of a few in the dairy and agricultural sector at the expense of the rest of us and the future of our entire planet.”
The Labour party policy was to bring agriculture into the ETS in this electoral term. This was reiterated in their coalition agreement with New Zealand First, where they committed to only pricing 5% of agriculture’s emissions, effectively giving the sector a 95% subsidy.
Toop says, “It is unjust that this Government is allowing the dairy and agriculture industry to carry on with business as usual. The climate science is clear, this is not business as usual.”
…I appreciate we can never allow the perfect to defeat the good, but in this case the ‘good’ is doing sweet bugger all.
It’s almost as if there has been no change of Government at all.
The Angry Farming Gods must be pacified, despite their pollution, despite the water theft, despite their entire economic model being a sunset industry about to be eclipsed by synthetic milk and meat.
If the climate crisis is this Generation’s nuclear free moment then what Jacinda just announced is turning up to the Oxford Debate to declare you won’t actually start the debate for another half decade.
Meanwhile the planet is melting.
I have argued that the current political spectrum can not adapt fast enough to combat the climate crisis and that there will be new fracture lines erupting because the stress between the peoples demands for real change and the capitalist interests the political class protect will reach an explosion point.
With this gutless acquiescence, that explosion point just got closer.
Id hate to have to price the clean up bill. Bags not.
Lots of sellouts. CGT. OIO decisions. Environmental issues. Sad.
Don’t get me started with the OIO. They are still allowing large tracts of land to be sold to overseas buyers, and they are not alone. This government has just signed away another 20,000ha to a Japanese company, not even bothering with the OIO.
“ Government gives Japanese-owned forestry company Pan Pac Forest Products permission to buy NZ land.
Land Information Minister and Green MP Eugenie Sage has given a foreign-owned forestry company a free pass to buy thousands of hectares of New Zealand land without applying to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO). Associate Finance Minister David Clark signed off on Pan Pac’s pass, known as a ‘standing consent’, alongside Ms Sage.
The free pass allows Pan Pac to make 25 transactions involving 20,000ha of land and is valid until 2022. Ms Sage defended the decision, saying Pan Pac had been in New Zealand since the 1970s, was a large exporter of quality timber and needed to secure its wood supply.
Ministers signed off on the decision on 19 September but kept it under wraps until now.
OIO group manager Vanessa Horne confirmed that the deal allowed Pan Pac to buy farm land to convert to forestry.”
Why the heck can’t we lease it to them? You try to buy land in Japan, good luck with that, no way is that allowed. Why are our politicians so stupid?
Structural weakness
Arrangements like this reveal the structural weakness of the NZ Green Party, and the spectrum of NZAO political parties in general.
The centre of gravitation is too far to the right.
Probably, a fundamentally new party (or similar platforms) to the left of Labour and Greens would gradually be able to configure new forms of balance.
A radical shift in socio-economic parameters is required to gear up toward climate resilience.
Perhaps an option: changing the Green Party from within, friendly take-over, re-orientation in strategy and practice, helping to release our brothers and sisters from neo-liberal ghosts and obsessions.
….. and what may others say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1SFN5NaUyw
“Climate change is my generations nuclear free moment” or some such words. Inspiring? You bet.
Did it suck us in that this person who said it meant business? Yes.
Capitulation to the point of stupid? Oh my dear God, yes. Winston just sured up his base and destroyed yours Jacinda!
After the Kiwibuild implosion and the vanishing act from doing anything about housing altogether, light rail from Wynard to Mt Roskill by 2021 that’s not delivered one inch and is now dead, Radio NZs new public broadcast platform that got canned its now the sector that contributes most to NZ climate change is no longer considered as part of the solution to climate change. Fuck it, let’s just double down, build coal fired power stations everywhere, drill for oil in the Waitemata, drive V12 pick up trucks and smoke crude oil cigars.
Actually, is there any promise they have delivered? I’m sure some small things but Jesus wept, I cannot recall so many policies and promises simply abandoned or just not honoured by any party, ever.
The cold reality of all this is, unless Labour’s leaders get their shit together real quick, as in less than the next month, and start addressing these horrendous failures, the phone will not just be if the hook come next election, it will be in the bin perhaps forever. But thus far they seem to have all the wherewithal of the dinosaurs when that rather large meteor hit some 65 million years back. Business as usual!
I for one could not give a shit about surpluses Grant, it’s there deficit of your party’s promises that worries me!
Pretty much Xray.
Fool me once etc
James Shaw said we have to go easy now, or else the next government might change it. Your damn right their not going to change it. The Nats and the Farmers are going to sing to high heaven, about how they have done their bit for the world. You idiot.
What you do instead, James, is whack them over the head now with a 90 percent figure (Farmers aren’t happy unless their complaining about something), and then act reasonable and bring that figure down a little. Take a leaf out of AOC’s negotiating manual and go large. Do this and you might be the “next” government.
” We won’t get any real meaningful change until we have a Labour or Labour/Greens government by themselves without NZ First ”
You can take Winston and Jones out of the picture but it would not make any difference.
The back downs and betrayal of its voting base in the last two years shows they have learned nothing from opposition and only shows once again how lacking they are in principles and the will and belief to protect its own ” people ” from the ravages of the economic system and the cruelty of the National party as a front for vested interests.
This is why Corbyn is fighting in the U.K and Sanders is doing battle in the states , to bring their parties back too where they are meant to be , for the people that don’t have the protection of the free market aristocracy and are enslaved as a result.
The only way we will get any hope of a alternative is a takeover of the Labour party and clearing out all the people who believe in in the mythical Blair third way which is neo liberalisim with a smiling face on or a new centre left vehicle that has the vision , leadership , organization , guts and intelligence too really be a force for all those who are not represented in parliament or government.
What exists now are three National parties and a compromised environmental party that is caught in the spiders web of Wellington and has conveniently forgotten what it had believed in for 40 years.
We were never going too get real change with this government because they don’t want too change what they believe is working it just needs some ” tweeking ” and again another smiling face for the public.
And the neo liberals evil empire’ control is so great that many only believe in and see the almighty $$$$$$
The money men had their revolution now it is time we had ours.
Fuck it vote for National then as the notion of taking any steps to begin change will never be enough? Teaching children that a perfect world can be a reality is no different to bullshit religious dogma spouted by the right about the god fantasy.
or let the disruption wipe out the dairy industry our kiwisaver and consumer boycots can help by pulling any investment in dairy or fonterra the latter is doing that without any help . a recent articul by rod oram suggested Irish dairy farmers are embracing climate change and shot past nz farmers in technology and value with 50 billion of debt nz farmers are the architects of there own demise i really think with should learn from the us nuclear industry in accounting for clean up cost in advent of failure
boycott new zealand dairy products
Dairy products are toxic to health and the environment as well as our sense of humanity. Plant based food use less land, water, and can improve the precious soil we depend on. Some farmers have seen the light and changed their way of living off the land.
So you hate cheeses, I suppose, it is astonishing how people can reject some of the most sophisticated food products humans invented over centuries or millennia.
https://www.cheese.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese
Also, farmers are working long hours and do physically demanding work, feeding the people and contributing to sizeable exports.
Changes are needed, but condemning dairy products and running down farmers will not solve anything much.
The planet is not ‘melting’ – polar ice and glacial ice is melting.
The planet will never melt, unless it gets sucked up by a black hole eventually.
Yes, more needs to be done, but farmers at least produce food, which we all need.
What about the convenience loving urban population and their addiction to fossil fuel cars?
That is where change can be made more quickly and practically, getting people out of individual motor vehicles, and into buses, trains and so forth.
Comments are closed.