Yay – carbon neutral by 2050 – wow, aren’t we great! Pity the polar ice caps will be melted by 2030

Politicians debating climate change while they sink beneath the water

Farmers on zero carbon: let’s do this
New Zealand’s farming sector appears to have quietly signed up to the Government’s aspirational plan to be carbon neutral by 2050.

In a symbolic show of unity, the Farming Leaders Group has published to joint editorial statement with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, published today by Stuff.

While the piece is described the zero carbon initiative as “a very ambitious and challenging target” and said questions remained about what it meant for food production, it makes commits to working to achieving the goal.

“Today, farming leaders with the support of the Government are stating their support for this goal and the agri-food sector playing its part in achieving it,” it reads.

The Greens will make NZ carbon neutral in 2050, unfortunately the North Pole will be ice free by 2030 – so does Big Oil have James Shaw’s family held hostage somewhere?

Is that why we are getting policy that won’t come close to addressing climate change?

There’s no surprise whatsoever that the Farming Community have jumped on board, once they realised that Jacinda’s ‘climate change nuclear moment’ meant some ill defined bullshit thing that might happen 30 years from now, they would have gone skipping down to the local vegan shop and bought a life supply of tofu.

Remember the good old days when climate deniers like David Farrar and Cameron Slater would point to Antarctica not melting to prove all talk of climate change must be a great big lie?

Yeah, well Antarctica is melting far faster than we thought…

Antarctica’s ice is melting three times faster than we thought
Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting far faster than previously thought, with more than 200 billion tonnes of ice flooding into oceans annually, according to new research published in Nature this week.

About three trillion tonnes of ice has disappeared since 1992. The rate of melting has accelerated threefold in the last five years, and may – a separate study suggests – lead to sea rises of 25cm by the year 2070, which would have a disastrous impact around the world.

“We can see where the ice melting is happening, and it’s in West Antarctica – and that tells us why it’s happening, because we know that the ocean in West Antarctica is too warm,” says professor Andrew Shepherd from Leeds University, who led the latest research. “This is too much for the ice to resist, and the ice is melting away and causing this sea level rise… It tells us that the ice sheet isn’t impervious to the effects of climate change as we once thought it might be, and that’s a wake-up call.”

…climate change is here, it is now, we have run out of time. We need to be focused on becoming an adaptation culture and economy, proclaiming carbon neutral by 2050 is meaningless sophistry. It will be far too fucking late by 2050.