Press release from the Labour Party website.
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A Labour government will fix the broken Emissions Trading Scheme as an urgent priority.
“New Zealand should be showing climate leadership; not going backwards as Christopher Luxon’s Government has done,” said Labour leader Chris Hipkins.
“The ETS is broken. The carbon price is too low to drive meaningful emissions reductions. Under National, climate pollution us the only thing that has got cheaper over the last three years.
“Current ETS rules also make it cheaper to plant exotic forests than to grow food. That doesn’t create jobs or help our economy.
“Labour will ensure the ETS Emissions Trading Scheme actually does what it is supposed to do and maintains a genuine price on emissions. We will restore credibility and certainty to the carbon market, generating revenues that can be invested in affordable energy and resilience.
“We will stop the short-term political tinkering that undermines business confidence and puts us all on the back foot.
“Labour is fully committed to the Paris Agreement and will put New Zealand on course to meet its targets. The Paris Agreement is essential for bringing countries together to address a problem affecting every country, every community and every generation. Walking away from it, as National and its mates are planning to do, would be giving up on our kids’ future and impose huge costs on our economy.
“We can’t afford another three years of National’s inaction on climate,” Chris Hipkins said.
“Labour will urgently review the ETS and move quickly to implement changes informed by this work,” Labour climate spokesperson Dr Deborah Russell said.
The review will:
· identify changes to incentivise genuine emissions reductions rather than relying on offsets,
· reconsider the role of forestry (as per PCE’s recommendation)
· ensure the ETS supports New Zealand’s Paris targets
· develop new rules to prevent whole-farm conversions.
· new forestry registrations in the ETS will be paused while this work is completed (as per PCE’s recommendation)
“New Zealanders deserve a government with a plan – one that understands climate action and economic growth go hand-in-hand.
“Climate change is one of the greatest challenges we face, but it is also one of the greatest opportunities available to New Zealand. We can deliver cleaner and more affordable energy, gives businesses the certainty to invest, and help our farmers to compete in global markets by building on New Zealand’s reputation for world class sustainability.
“Labour is committed to protecting our economy and growing our economy – creating good jobs, bringing down household costs and strengthening our energy security,” Dr Deborah Russell said.
That Emissions Trading System is sure a wreck that needs rescuing now.
Labour or whomever need to face up to the areas of New Zealand facing major insurance withdrawal due to climate change effects, because the whole of Westport, Woodend north of Christchurch, Lincoln and Rolleston, most of Blenheim, Haumoana Bay, Wairoa, chunks of Dargaville, most of Kaeo, coastal areas of Kaitaia and of coruse Rangiputa, most of Wellignton for seismic with Seddon, are seeing prices fall because it's much much harder to get a mortgage without insurance. Sometimes it means there's just 1 insurer to pick.
And then there's the river valleys in Auckland's Ranui and Clevedon, all of South Dunedin, large coastal and riverfront areas of Christchurch.
So the ETS is one thing. Managing the wreckage of insurance retreat and depopulating high risk neighbourhoods post-Gabrielle is another.
People are highly resistant to any discussion of depopulating neighborhoods – especially in anticipation of a disaster, rather than in the aftermath of one.
Whichever government tackles this – and I don't see any appetite from any party to put policy on the table – is going to have to be ruthless.
Take it or leave it deals. Land area swap (not land value). And removal of services from neighborhoods which have been 'relocated'. Sorry, no more maintenance on roads, water, or coastal erosion repairs. If you want to go on living there, you can – but society isnt going to subsidise your choice.
The gutsiest large scale planning I've seen is from Dunedin Council. Notably started under the Green Mayor Aaron Hawkins.
https://www.dunedin.govt.nz/council/council-projects/south-dunedin-future
The historical storymap showing how the entire area was pulled up out of coastal swamp shows the issue very neatly:
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6e9b6a3fc5d94375b34aea5ae869767b#n-WgD2cD
And as a result of voluminous consultation, there are three options narrowed down:
https://www.dunedin.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/1302084/Overview-Report.pdf
It can be done.
I'm if the opinion that if you've bought or built low lieing coastal in the last 15 years ,tough, you where warned about climate change.
That must not stop state, regional or local government working with communities to soften the damage and help people.
A Super El Niño may focus people’s minds on Climate Change.
https://niwa.co.nz/news/el-nino-2026-what-you-need-know
As usual, the focus will be on short-term losses rather than long-term mitigation & resilience.
Why do they have to wait to get elected to work out what's wrong, why haven't they done this in the last 3 years and be hitting the ground running,
Fucking review this review that , fucking review why your not up to speed and ready to govern ffs
Because data like that are expensive to gather and analyse reliably, and opposition parties don't usually have the money or the infrastructure behind them.
👍🏻
This is a distraction from the issues that affect working peoples lives, NZ produces a statistically insignificant amount of climate emissions. Care for the environment, yes but unless there is a systemic change to our economic model this is window dressing. Most people are woefully uninformed about how the sausage is made, no amount of fiddling about the edges is going to alter the trajectory of anthropomorphic climate change while we also demand our current lifestyle. Moreover due to developing countries going through industrialisation there is going to be more not less climate emissions, how do you address that?
Do you not think…. that Climate Change is having a greatly impactful effect on working people (in fact ALL people) now ?
And the old it wuz a bigger
boycountry……NZ has in the past (ie pre NACT1 Govt ) Labour and Green been a well respected, and messaged voice.
Are you suggesting we should just….shut up?
In Cyclone Gabrielle 469 houses were red stickered, 2,500 were yellow stickered, 10,000 people were emergency relocated, and yup those are all working peope not billionaires.
And from your own ass the state from taxpayers about $2.9 billion.
Working peoples' lives damaged by climate change.
What a ridiculous argument, one based on fashionable dogma. Bola was climate change too, I suppose?
And confirmed. IMO Climate troll.
"Bola was climate change too, I suppose?
That comment suggests you don't fully understand the term. It isn't a weather system in itself. It is basically a change in the normal atmospheric temperature patterns across the globe spurred on by increasing CO2 in the atmosphere caused by human behaviour. This in turn is changing the characteristics of those weather systems and the effect is to exacerbate them. Two very good recent examples are the extreme heatwaves experienced this Northern summer and the catastrophic flooding in Nepal.
So yes. Cyclone Bola was a response to Climate Change. It marked the noticeable beginning of the change in cyclonic (and anti-cyclonic) weather systems being affected by CC in this part of the world. And we know now they are going to increase in frequency and intensity.
I guess that you can't help being a ignorant idiot. But really, why don't you just give it a bit more effort. Then you might be interesting.
Do try to treat all ideas with the same level of commitment and imagination that you may use while watching pornography and playing with yourself. Then you might learn enough to make make a coherent argument. That would be the bloke thing to do…. It's like learning what all of those weirdly names that female genital parts are, and what effects they have. Of course that is harder to do if you've only ever seen them on the internet. But I digress with speculation about the limits of a bloke's knowledge… Of course that does seem to be what you're doing about climate.
Back in 1979 and 1980, when I was doing climate courses in BSc in earth sciences, climate change was known about. It was pretty obvious in the geological record. Just like magnetic field reversals are frozen in the iron of cooled volcanic magma, the sediments showed large scale climate change in the past with the types of sediment and especially with fossilized flora and fauna. It has some very strong correlations with changes in atmospheric composition, some of which had implications based on the known physics. Like CO2, CH4, and other gases in retaining or losing heat.
Then there was was a theory about what humans were doing with burning fossil fuels, changing vegetation patterns. What there wasn't was much proof that it was actually happening. Satellites monitoring weather and climate had only just been launched in the preceding decade, and they were pretty primitive. There was very limited long-term weather monitoring data worldwide which made it hard to distinguish regional variations from global ones. The best computers like Crays weren't capable of doing anything more complicated than a decent watch could do now in terms of teraflops of computation.
That all changed over time. By the mid-90s it was pretty clear to anyone with even minimal knowledge of climate science that humans were changing the climate extremely rapidly compared to the previous time spans of geological climate changes, and that was it was rapidly increasing in pace. The evidence has been getting more conclusive since along with satellites, networks of buoys in the oceans, a lot of research that I occasionally spend time reading, and above all the computer systems capable of handling the data and estimating probable outcomes.
The implications for things like farming, food supply, flooding, and rapid shifts in the frequency and energy of weather events were obvious, and have been increasingly showing up in the last 20 years.
So if you can't handle trying to understand, then I suggest that you return to playing with something you also probably don't understand the implications of, and certainly can't raise a decent argument about – why a simple lack of knowledge probably keeps you wanking in public. At least that is something you can raise – but do it in private please….
I really don't like trolls. So lazy, so stupid, and invariably so fucking thin-skinned. I'd bet that this pathetic lazy dickhead doesn't read down past the second paragraph before they respond.
Pretty sure anthropomorphic climate change is overwhelmingly the view of most climate scientists worldwide and its mine- how about you? The issue being discussed is how to effect change, in my opinion (if I am allowed one on this site) is that for the most part our climate policies are performative and classist. Dont like that opinion, fair enough, but hey its your site and you can be as rude as you like.
CC requires global consensus, we enjoy a standard of living based on fossil fuels, the question is what policies can a labour govt enact that dont contribute to the financial precariousness of the working classes. I have not seen a coherent short term and long term plan that addresses the fundamental issues that lie at the heart of our economic system.
you can make that argument, but if you want to be taken seriously and not taken as a climate denier, then you have to make the argument for that position. That way people know what you mean instead of you just throwing out RW talking points.
In fact I banned you from this post the other day on tbe basis of climate denial, and the only reason it hasn't been enforced was because of technical issues on the site. You are free to comment here, but you have to make arguments and support them with evidence when asked.
I specifically stayed off the Standard after bloke ignored the moderation, and replied to me personally in this very Post thread. That comment from bloke was then shifted to yet another Open Mike.
yeah sorry about that. There was quite a bit of chaos on Sat because some of the mod functions broke and it was very hard to see exactly what was going on.
Ok cheers for reply, and Info on same, as it did make me wonder…No visible Bloke reply comments from Ad,Bearded Git, Tony Veitch,Incognito.?
Then I read lprents response.
I think we might have lost some of the replies, some at least ended up as stand alone comments. There were major time lags in all that happening, was crazy.
Read Green Party policy instead. They're the ones doing the work on Just Transition, that makes sure everyone is ok. Working class vs climate action is utter bullshit.
But climate change doesn't give a fuck about economies and NZ won't survive climate collapse any more than any where else. At some point we lose our choices. At the moment we still have some, despite them not being great.
People who argue that NZ is a special case and we shouldn't have to change, are wasting those remaining choices. It's a reprehensible position.
IMO just seems obvious that these : Workers,Climate Change Consequence,Vulnerable Communities,Economies,Sustainability,NZ speaking up and leading by example, Future generations,et al, are all absolutely interwoven.? How could it be otherwise? Possibly not to some? I am mindful of how Fast Track is being used by the present NACT1 Environment destroyers to dogwhistle the Jerbs (Santana Gold Mining in Otago !, Coal mining on the West Coast! etc, etc;)
When, as you say, both the Greens (in particular) and Labour have plans for Sustainable Work that doesnt involve our Environments trashing.
My thoughts anyway.
btw, the Replies list is important to check, to see who has replied to you. If it's a mod, you really need to pay attention. Lprent, Incognito, myself atm. Sometimes Micky.
Good on you Bloke for advising Labour how they can win the election. By having a well-thought-through climate/resources policy that enables us to pull our weight (which is small in world terms); but also enables us to cope with the results of ignoring the whole thing for our mounting decades and history's past centuries.
Some prescient people were warning long before we could even force ourselves to read the risible words and start thinking of it. You feel strongly about it and recognise it as a world problem. How about putting up some bullet points of how we can make change, adapt etc. Could you look up what work has been done on the subject of cloud seeding, which was being explored in the USA and others? last century. Then how to stop the trawling of fishing companies here which is known to be scraping up protected corals etc (I put up Scoop link to recent report.) I do like to see some firm and reliable and forward-looking information when I come to this blog. So give us some links, but also the explanation of what they will inform on, so we know how useful they are. Help us Bloke.
I am fairly sure Labour can contribute more to the well-being of the working class and do more on GW mitigation than the current government.
It has done so in the past and its policy for 2026-2029 would continue that.
All merely because they would make an effort – and these are both areas where the alternative NACT-NZF is not making any at all.
You get what you dish out. You suggested that 'fashionable dogma' was an explanation for someones opinion. So I used an equally valid position that being a incompetent wanker was the reason for yours. A reasonable supposition based on your attitude to others.
Personally, I think that we're already too far down the path of having climate change to reverse to 'normal' conditions. What has been abnormal has been the last 9-10k years during the interglacial in the middle of a ice age. It is rare to see such a settled climate for so long in the geological record in 30-40 million years of this current ice age as we have had since just after the start of this interglacial.
Which is probably just as well. We were well down the path towards another glacial period within a relatively few millennia because of orbital mechanics anyway.
The difference is that we can be pretty sure that because it is proceeding so fast with anthropomorphic climate change is that it is going to be chaotic and unpredictable at the detail and short-term level (ie decades). It will also be rather overwhelming because our civilisations have never had this level of variability – our technology, especially agriculture, roading, and possibly even housing is going to have real issues.
What you can be sure of that is that it will be expensive.
The first thing that I'd decide is what not to try to save. So that mean I'd preemptively abandon supporting as a society anything too close to seashores with unprotected coastlines. Same for clifftop residences. Same for cities on floodplains. And a number of different types of agriculture that are too dependent on stable climate conditions to make a profit – steep hillsides. Floodplain farming that doesn't like frequent inundations. Livestock farming that doesn't have good shelter in extreme weather.
Effectively that action is happening already with insurance company premiums and steadily with market assessments of the risk profitability of farming. Pretty rapid as well.
But I think it needs to move on to public assets like not supporting rural roading systems where they are susceptible to flood damage (ie bridge destruction). They're going to be too expensive to maintain and farming is unlikely to profitable to maintain them under more extreme climate conditions. Most of them were placed for convenience rather than for long-term suitability under rapid climate change.
Same with sewerage, fresh water, and storm water systems. Relying on water systems designed for NZ's climate a century ago isn't going to work. They need to be upgraded to what we will have in a few decades.
Better to either fix them now or abandon them rather than wasting resources trying to maintain them for people expecting the same lifestyle support that was previously used to support them. We're better off revamping systems than we will want to retain rather than trying to save ones that are doomed. That is especially the case in NZ where a small population of 5 million is feeding more than 40 million with pretty limited profitability (as measured by the tax take).
More a case of 'enjoyed' rather than enjoy. You appear to have missed a few events worldwide over the last 50 years. Fortunately with the exception of some heavy machinery and (so far) concrete manufacture and (so far) agricultural farting and (so far) long distance air-travel – most of the other needs for fossil fuels have technological solutions. Most of which are turning out to be cheaper than their fossil fuel equivalents, even if you don't cost in the shit weather and climate that fossil fuels and farmers addiction to methane gives us.
For instance our electricity system is getting close to fossil fuel free, and will be within a decade even in the dry years. Alternatives abound. I can drive from Auckland to Invercargill on 80 litres in my 12yo hybrid second hand Honda Fit with about a 500kg load. That is a tank of diesel for a new Ford Ranger with a cargo of 2 small children that can barely make it from ChCh to Invers. Next time I get a second hand car, it will be able to do it without fossil fuels –
Admitted that progress is slow on some heavy machinery, but it is improving as rapidly a battery technology is – and that is astonishingly fast.
We have been doing it for more than a century. Most of the profit in our economy and virtually all of the employment comes from the people working in it and exporting skills. The skills may be from servicing tourists or it could be from exporting IT or even farming technology. It all contributes to the GDP and GNP in a way that farming cannot, because it requires less land costs and capital investment.
Most of the export revenue but little profit comes from shipping commodity products offshore. It also employs very few people. It requires a lot of expensive equipment. Margins are low because any profitability translated directly into purchasing land prices.
But above all it requires an enormously expensive infrastructure that is largely paid for from the public purse effectively by a subsidy from urban to rural. It is also really really risky – even more risky than tourism with its periodic stoppages in aircraft.
That is why the transformation has been taking place for over a century of reducing export profits from agriculture and its disinvestment in a rural economy as the profit from urban populations and tourism keeps the tax system afloat. Which leads to your next point..
That is obvious. A capital gains tax. That will provide the missing leg for the tax system. It'd reduce the incentive to run a pyramid scheme based on land-prices and tend to funnel investment into productive investments.
That will also reduce the major cost in most working classes, middle classes, aspiring farmers (like I was once), and just about everyone apart from a very few.
Thanks lprent. We would not have got any good from Bloke – just a lot more throwaway pronouncements. We could utilise people like him to stand at the sea shoreline and demonstrate his prowess at what King Canute couldn't do – turn back the sea.
A lot of what you say is correct, that doesn't mean there isn't room for global leadership on this issue.
A Green party vote will help with a shift from, as you point out, this obviously flawed economic model.
There are other ways to farm that aren't the industrial model. Organics, permaculture, bio-dynamics are three examples and then there is regenerative farming for a little less woo.
Ironically, shifting to any of those models, creates jobs and great lifestyles for the working class that you claim concern for.
Environmental and resource matter:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2609/S00081/trawl-industry-spin-exposed-as-latest-data-reveals-35-tonne-coral-bycatch.htm
New fisheries data has reinforced the disastrous impact of commercial trawling, showing New Zealand trawlers reported hauling up more than 35,000kg of protected coral and sponges over a six and a half year period – despite the fishing industry claiming they avoid coral habitats….
ACT, one of the hardcore core drivers of NACT1's Climate Denial/Dismantling, unrolls their Planet killing wish list. Which we must prevent happening !
Hmm, I read something similar here earlier in this Post…
And from ACT Climate Change Denier Spokesperson Ol' Simon Court
More on ACT earlier…. as the denier denies denying ?