My initial response on reading the Report of the Environment Committee on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill (released on October 21) was to go and watch the Honest Government Ad ‘We’re F***ked’ another two or three times. Then I got on with the tedious job of ploughing through all 56 pages of it thoroughly to see if there was anything (anything!) in it that would constitute an improvement on the draft Bill, which received 10,000+ submissions.
(One of them was mine, which basically advised scrapping it and starting again.)
After I had read some mind-numbingly trivial proposed amendments such as…
“Title of Subpart 3
Clause 8 would insert new Parts 1A to 1C into the Act. As introduced, the title of Subpart 3 of Part 1B is “Role of Commission in setting emissions budgets”. We recommend renaming it as “Role of Commission to advise on emissions budgets”. This would more accurately reflect the Commission’s role to provide advice on emissions budgets but not set them, and should remove any confusion as a result of the title.” (pp 10-11) and
“Emissions budgets to be ambitious
As introduced, section 5Z(2)(b)(iv) would require the Minister and the Commission to have regard to “the need for emissions budgets that are ambitious but technically and economically feasible”. We recommend replacing the word “feasible” with “achievable”. We consider that the use of “feasible” could limit how ambitious an emissions budget may be.” (p. 11) I was ready to head off to the Web again to watch Groucho and Chico Marx taking the piss out of legalese in their classic scene from A Night at the Opera, ‘The Sanity Clause’.
…I was also ready for a reality check, in the form of the news that by 2024 (nine years after the Paris Accord which is – was? – supposed to hold the world to 1.5 degrees of warming, and just when the Climate Change Commission is due to do its first review of emissions reduction targets involving international aviation) Wellington airport will have started expanding over the current Miramar Golf Links and will have already spent about half of its $1 billion budget for increasing the size of the airport and its facilities. This is to cater for a projected doubling of annual visitor numbers from 6.4 million today to 12 million in 2040. (More on ‘Foster-ing the climate crisis, Wellington-style’, in my next post.) Back to the Select Committee report…
Are there any good changes recommended? Yes. The time frame for the CCC (Climate Change Commission) to get its reports containing recommendations to the Minister has been shortened from 12 weeks to 10 working days, and the publication of these reports from 12 weeks to 20 working days. The other important and significant change is that the Select Committee recommends that parliamentary scrutiny of emissions budgets targets be required, and that these should be regarded as policy documents with an equivalent status to the government’s investment statements and budget statements. While this is not giving the CCC the powers equivalent to the Reserve Bank to set and enforce targets (which many submitters asked for), it is at least a step in the right direction.
As for the rest – well, meh… Will it even happen? The National Party members on the committee provided a minority view which bears a lot of resemblance to the wishes expressed by their friends in Federated Farmers, and they will obviously argue their points vigorously during the second reading. They will lose, as this is a government bill. But never mind – with their mate Rod Carr as chair of the CCC, it’s unlikely that anything practical will be done that will upset them. Or at least nothing compared to what will upset the people who thought they (or their parents) were voting for urgent action on the climate crisis in 2017, and ended up with this apology for effective action.
Yes I have seen nothing from this government that gives me hope they will make any impression on climate damage (lets not call it change that somehow sounds vaguely positive and its not). From signing the CP-TPP which makes it all too easy for big business to challenge needed reforms to failing to enact a climate emergency and doing anything substantial about the problems the planet faces in terms of real legislation.
Time to stop voting for neo liberals people. Either that or get used to recycling your own pee.
Let’s get real here: No major nation is making any real changes for CO2 reduction.
Not the Europeans, the Americans, the Chinese, the Indians. It’s a joke. The Germans claim they have on the basis of Kyoto, but their figures include pre-unification East Germany.
The reasons are simple:
1. Most politicians are just talking but have no intention of acting. It’s a pretence
2. For large parts of CO2 emissions there simply is no technical solution. We shall continue to burn fossil fuels.
3. There isn’t really a climate emergency.
Denied facts are still facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GijBpG_QC7I
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/19/burning-amazonia-denying-climate-change-devastating-syria-starving-yemen-and-ignoring-kashmir/
4/ If there is a climate emergency stoping CO2 emissions won’t fix it.
D J S
Yes, DJS, just reducing CO2 emissions will not fix it.
This is just one ingredient – albeit a very significant one – that will widen options, allowing different strategies and more complex resilience scenarios and adaptation practice to be applied.
System Change. Now. Radical and Civilized.
Yes, David Stone, reduction of CO2 emissions alone will not fix it.
Far more qualitative and quantitative measures are required.
But CO2 reduction will significantly enhance options, strategies, practicalities for alternative scenarios.
System Change. Now. Radical and Civilized.
heres a good idea ,
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_half_our_planet_loc_sus/
oh yes there is and yes there are solutions .technical and otherwise.
bullshit like yours Andrew is not helpng not one little bit.
What do you mean ‘If’ @ DJS and @ andrew?? You guys would have a clearer view of the facts if you took your heads out of your bums.
Ever seen a very heavy thing topple over? ( Think jenny shipely and jerry brownlee drunk together at a wedding dance where they both fall over onto the band? )
It starts out ominously slowly so we reach out to stop it and if we catch it in time we can jostle it back upright. But if we leave it too long as in, in this instance, the [it] being the climate [it] will topple and crash and will make quite the din as big jizz gets a drum stick stuck up his arsehole. ( One can only dream. )
There are some fearsome pollutions coming out of Indonesia where some years ago I was in Jakarta and was horrified to find I could hardly breath the air. It tasted of chemicals and smelled like scorched metal. I was there for a week and spent the whole time in a shopping mall drinking coffee and smoking the free promotional cigarettes given to me by two beautiful young women dressed in tight purple cocktail dresses who wandered about the place in a most unsettling fashion.
Jakarta is one gigantic chimney fuming dangerous pollutants into the atmosphere of our pale blue dot and that’s just one gigantic city and without pollution control systems, certainly back in the day.
What about the mega cities in China? South America? Eastern Europe? India? Malaysia, The Phillipines? Etc? The forests of Malaysia and Indonesia are on fire. The Amazon’s burning because of a narcissistic lunatic who also doesn’t believe the planet’s toppling while on fire. Anyone with entry level common sense can see that.
Except, of course, those who subscribe to the myths of their own convenient creation.
(Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an extremely dangerous mental illness. I would argue, the very most dangerous for its far reaching and dire consequences.)
And while our beautiful biosphere melts which will, of course lead to mass starvation then suffocation, some of us will still stick steadfastly to what we don’t know because we know better.
Of course, no rant’s worth the ranting for the want of a finger-point.
While them beastly foreigners burn down the planet to make, for example, plastic baubles for our Crassmass, we’re conveniently oblivious to the uncomfortable reality that is we, us, the dreaded ‘consumer’ who demands that production targets are met by them so as we can feel a fleeting sense of tainted joy as we rip another plastic Barbi from her box of twinkle-sparkle.
As we cue up at The Warehouse with our few meagre dollars the banksters deign to allow us to keep for our very own selves ( Thank you Mr Bankster xxx. Thank you for your abuse. We are deserving. We are deserving.)
So. Who’s burning down the planet?
It is you @ DJS and you @ Andrew. And me too. And us. All of those of us who are ‘lucky’ enough to have too much then enjoy the luxury of wasting it while people in poverty in miserably vulnerable situations in exhausted, worn out countries must keep churning out the vile shit we really don’t need but we buy anyway ” ‘cause it’s noice aye?” while they’re a bowl of rice away from starvation.
But don’t you worry about them.
It is We who are about to be hoisted by our own petard.
Yep, we give this “Transformational” Labour coalition a fail but National should be binned so if these Governmental ministers don’t get their heads out of the sand they wills be treading in water looking for firm sand 10 ft under their feet as a shark devours their body parts.
We are now reaching the cliff-face where shit is about to affect every soul on the planet.
So get ready to tread water.
Jacinda along with her cabinet is a big disappointment to us all sadly.
Truck freight activity volumes are still increasing at 6% annually while rail just continues to wither.
So transport (GHG) ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions is about to rise again.
So Labour coalition planned for increased rail freight service was meant to slow freight transport emissions, – but they have failed at this also since (the tarmac man) Steven Joyce as the last ‘minister of transport’ deliberately shut down our public rail services for road freight transport.
We truly are fu…cked now it does seem.
Thanks for nothing, National/Laboiur..
Yep, we give this “Transformational” Labour coalition a fail but National should be binned so if these Governmental ministers don’t get their heads out of the sand they wills be treading in water looking for firm sand 10 ft under their feet as a shark devours their body parts.
We are now reaching the cliff-face where shit is about to affect every soul on the planet.
So get ready to tread water.
Jacinda along with her cabinet is a big disappointment to us all sadly.
Truck freight activity volumes are still increasing at 6% annually while rail just continues to wither.
So transport (GHG) ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions is about to rise again.
So Labour coalition planned for increased rail freight service was meant to slow freight transport emissions, – but they have failed at this also since (the tarmac man) Steven Joyce as the last ‘minister of transport’ deliberately shut down our public rail services for road freight transport.
We truly are fu…cked now it does seem.
Thanks for nothing, National/Laboiur..
Jacinda needs to wake up as this climate change report in September says it all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/25/new-un-climate-report-massive-change-already-here-worlds-oceans-frozen-regions/
Climate and Environment
New U.N. climate report: Monumental change already here for world’s oceans and frozen regions
Growing coastal flooding is inevitable, and damage to corals and other marine life has already been unleashed
September 25, 2019 at 9:00 p.m. GMT+12
Climate change is already having staggering effects on oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the United Nations.
The warming climate is killing coral reefs, supercharging monster storms, and fueling deadly marine heat waves and record losses of sea ice. And Wednesday’s report on the world’s oceans, glaciers, polar regions and ice sheets finds that such effects foreshadow a more catastrophic future as long as greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked.
Given current emissions levels, a number of serious effects are essentially unavoidable, says the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
increased rail service is such a good idea . not only to get trucks off the road but to rebuild our rural communities .
how could they have dangled the promise of doing some thing about this and then doing nothing .
how bloody heartbreaking .
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