The disconnect between methane emissions and the reality of the climate change damage we are witnessing right now is obscene…
New Zealand guts climate policy it bragged about on the world stage
The government has gutted New Zealand’s once world-leading climate disclosure law, just months after officials showcased it to the United Nations as evidence of “significant progress” on climate action.
The climate-related disclosures (CRD) regime was introduced by the Labour-Green government in 2021, making New Zealand the first country to require major banks, insurers and listed companies to publicly report how climate change could affect their bottom lines.
The law aimed to make climate risk a normal part of business, investment and lending decisions – shifting it out of sustainability reports and into mainstream accounting.
When it came into force in 2023, the move was hailed internationally as a model of transparency.
The first reports, published in early 2024, were meant to help investors see which companies were prepared for a warmer, riskier world.
But soon after, companies complained the regime was too costly and complex. Turners Automotive said its first report, only seven pages long, cost about $1 million to produce once new systems were built to track the lifetime emissions of every car sold.
Other companies complained the regime was too onerous compared with Australian companies of a similar size; and they feared prosecution from sharing climate information.
While many companies spent far less than Turners – some under $200,000 by doing the work in-house – officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) began consulting on changes to the law.
By late 2024, MBIE released a discussion document saying the regime’s costs were prohibitive.
Early in 2025, ministers were considering proposals to halve the number of companies required to report.
Those plans were confirmed today, when the government proposed sweeping changes, including upping the reporting threshold for listed companies from $60 million to $1 billion in market value.
All 22 KiwiSaver and investment-scheme managers were also exempted, leaving just 76 entities required to make climate-related disclosures, down from 164.
…the right wing AstroTurf organisations adjacent to the Atlas Network win again!
Dr Bryce Edwards highlights that the recent local council elections had lobby groups like ‘The Local Government Business Forum’ — a coalition including Business New Zealand, the New Zealand Initiative, and Federated Farmers — openly calling for voters to elect candidates with “commercial and financial acumen” and a “pro-growth and pro-development mindset”, part of the problem here in NZ is that business lobby groups can mask their polluter interests with dark Ag money that the wider electorate can’t see.
Once again this anti-environment Government strangles the common goof for their Corporate Farmer mates!
This Government is in total denial about climate change and it’s impact on our environment…
New Zealand’s oceans are warming 34% faster than the global average, with NZ$180bn (US$104bn) worth of housing at risk of flooding, a new report about the nation’s marine environment has revealed.
The ministry of the environment and Stats NZ’s three-yearly update, Our Environment 2025, collates statistics, data and research across five domains – air, atmosphere and climate, freshwater, land, and marine – to paint a picture of the state of New Zealand’s marine environment.
The latest in the series, Our Marine Environment 2025, painted a sobering picture for the country’s oceans and coasts – one defined by warming and rising seas, intensifying marine heatwaves and ocean acidification, brought about by global heating.
…look at what is happening in Antartica…
Scientists discovered something alarming seeping out from beneath the ocean around Antarctica
Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an “astonishing rate,” scientists have found, raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been underestimated.
Huge amounts of methane lie in reservoirs that have formed over millennia beneath the seafloor around the world. This invisible, climate-polluting gas can escape into the water through fissures in the sea floor, often revealing itself with a stream of bubbles weaving their way up to the ocean surface.
Relatively little is known about these underwater seeps, how they work, how many there are, and how much methane reaches the atmosphere versus how much is eaten by methane-munching microbes living beneath the ocean.
But scientists are keen to better understand them, as this super-polluting gas traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.
…and what’s this Government’s response? Let their Corporate Farmer mates pollute without consequence!
Labour foolishly (enabled by James Shaw) tried to cut deals with Farmers and Farmers turned and shat in our face!
Dark money from the agricultural industry soaks into the astro-turf Taxpayer’s Union stable of clients and enables Groundswell to stop any environmental improvements.
National disgracefully appointed a Dairy Industry Stooge as the Chief Scientist while bring back the 100% Pure greenwash tourism campaign!
Just consider the manner in which Corporate Dairy have seized control of NZ’s political right…
The Climate Change Commission recommends methane cuts of 35-47%. However, under pressure from lobby groups like Federated Farmers – whose ex-President Andrew Hoggard is now an ACT Party MP – the Government established a separate panel to review the methane target in line with this controversial tool. That panel landed on a much weaker methane target.
…this total policy capture by polluter interests is the reason we are being attacked on the global stage by International Climate Scientists…
Scientists accuse New Zealand and Ireland of trying to cover up livestock emissions
Leading climate scientists have accused politicians in New Zealand and Ireland of using an “accounting trick” to back their sheep and cattle industries, warning their support for methane-emitting livestock could undermine global efforts to fight climate change. In an open letter shared with the Financial Times, 26 climate scientists from around the world warned that New Zealand’s proposed new methane targets risk setting a dangerous precedent.
…that’s right!
The Corporate Dairy industry has spent millions donating to National and putting dark money into Right Wing astroturf organisations to shut down any meaningful climate emissions targets that the rest of the world has noticed the policy corruption and are now calling us out.
We are being attacked internationally for being a climate criminal all because National refuse to stand up to their Corporate Dairy interests.
The Carbon Capture ‘technology’ that National have banked all our emission offsets on doesn’t work…
Carbon capture: Pivotal project for cutting greenhouse gas emissions looks shaky
A critical part of the government’s plan for cutting greenhouse gas emissions over the next five years appears to have fallen over.
…and in the last budget National cut 50% to climate finance, barely any cuts to emissions, all while slashing foreign aid for our Pacific brothers and sisters by cutting climate aid by $100m.
This Government is a Climate Denial Government who are refusing to do anything about the coming adaptation because they are paid by the polluters.
A cow shits the same as 14 humans, we have 10 million cows, that’s the equivalent of 140million humans pissing and shitting into our rivers!
We must brutally take the Framing Industry to court for their environmental crimes, which is exactly what happened last month…
Climate Legal Action Necessary Response To Govt Inaction – NZCTU
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi welcomes the legal action taken against the Minister of Climate Change by a coalition of legal experts as an important step in ensuring that Aotearoa meets its climate action obligations.
“We strongly support legal action to ensure that the Government is held to account for its legal obligations under the Climate Change Response Act,” said NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff.
“The union movement is deeply concerned by the Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-2030, which contains no significant policies to reduce emissions and will fail to get New Zealand meaningfully closer to our 2050 net-zero commitment.
“The actions – or lack of them – by this Government on climate change are the actions of climate deniers, not responsible leaders.
“Workers and communities need real political leadership that combats global emissions and invests in creating a just transition for industries and workers. We need leadership that develops and upholds long term consensus, not more U-turns.
“Instead, we have a government that cancelled 35 climate policies without consulting the public first, as required by law. Robust public engagement is essential.
“Climate policy is yet another area where this Government is prioritising corporate interests over democratic accountability and the interests of working people.
“Evidence is clear that a near-total focus on tree planting through vast pine forests is not a sufficient response – we must reduce emissions at source.
“Alongside the weak emissions budget, in Budget 2025 we saw a total abdication of responsibility on climate change and ensuring a Just Transition for working people in an increasingly volatile world.
“The NZCTU supports bold climate action to reduce emissions, adapt to the changing climate, and transition to a zero emissions economy that provides full employment for workers,” said Wagstaff.
…we must forget negotiating with them and use the law to force them to change their polluter ways.
This is a climate denial Government paid for by the polluters!
Brothers and sisters, we’re all going to die on a burning planet thanks to the lies of the Petro-industrial complex and their polluter mates.
If you are not incandescent with rage, you are not paying attention.
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The problem the right have is all their solutions fall squarely into the realm of magical thinking. Market solutions, carbon capture, and growth – growth – growth. Are the stuff of crack addicts at this point.
They can’t face reality, even when it hits them in the face, how in God’s name are we going to convince them action is needed now, to have a future for our species.
This National government will cut funding and targets they see as not making any money for them or their funders.
How much longer do we have to endure/survive this horrible, corrupt, lying, cheating, climate denying CoC? They have cancelled 35 climate policies without consulting the public first – as is required by law! How can decent New Zealanders accept that? How come our media aren’t ‘raising the roof’ over this and many other contentious issues? How come this CoC is still there? I don’t get it!!! Why have so many of our people rolled onto their backs with their feet in the air? Where’s your backbone; where’s your integrity; where’s your sense of fairness? Doing nothing is the same as condoning it. However you will care when climate visits your home! Time for everyone, who is interested in fairness and justice for all, to man up and make the very necessary changes so we all have a fighting chance backed by a government that cares and is prepared to protect its people.