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- Date published:
8:46 am, August 30th, 2026 - 24 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, climate change, Culture wars, Environment, science, uncategorized -
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Some drawdropping news emerged last week.
The Government wants to review the country’s climate change response to improve our ability to meet our Paris accord obligations.
From Kate Newton at Radio New Zealand:
The government has quietly told officials to look into new climate policies to help with a future shortfall in the country’s carbon budgets.
The directive is included in a tranche of documents about settings for the emissions trading scheme, which the government proactively released on Thursday.
The documents also confirm that transport, industry and other sectors will have to pick up the slack from removing agriculture from the emissions trading scheme (ETS) for good.
…
The decision was prompted by earlier warnings from the commission in 2025 that the country was off-track to meet its 2031-2035 emissions budget – the maximum amount of emissions the country can produce over that period and still stay on track for its 2050 climate targets.
Officials said the gap had grown further, after the government weakened policies targeting agricultural emissions, including cancelling a planned methane tax.
“Recent government decisions on the 2050 methane target and the removal of agricultural pricing have increased reliance on [other] sectors to meet [the emissions budget] and increased the size of the gap.”
In addition, officials wrote, higher-than-expected agricultural emissions meant the current emissions budget for 2026 to 2030 was also at risk, unless other sectors reduced their emissions even further.
This makes you wonder if Christopher Luxon’s continuous claims that everything is fine are actually correct.
The Climate Change Commission reported a month ago that the country may just meet emission budgets one and two but is not on track to meet its 2050 targets. Progress stalled in 2024, and the rate of emissions reduction will need to more than double over the next few years to get the country back on track.
But Luxon was having none of this.
From Emma Ricketts at Stuff:
Christopher Luxon told Stuff on Wednesday that his Government would respond to the Commission’s latest emissions monitoring report, but “our position is really clear … we’re on track to deliver [Emissions Budget] 1 [and] [Emissions Budget] 2. There’ll be more work for EB budget 3, but we’re on track to deliver net zero and we might even deliver it a little earlier”.
The budgets Luxon was referring to lay out how much can be emitted across New Zealand’s economy within a five-year period.
How on track is the Government?
The tranche of Cabinet documents suggests that we are not.
If they do change course this will be a radical change from what they have been doing during this term.
I have been following their actions with a great deal of interest and have listed 71 discrete policy decisions that made the country’s climate response worse.
Everything from cancelling the big battery project and light rail and the replacement Cook Strait ferries to abolishing the Decarbonising Industry Fund, a raft of Resource Management Law changes, attacks on environmental protection, protecting oil companies from legal responsibility, investing in oil and gas exploration, cutting funding of programmes designed to reduce emissions including the Green Investment Fund, delaying the introduction of Agriculture into the ETS and scrapping plans to price emissions from agriculture, disestablishing He Waka Eke Noa, weakening carbon efficiency standards for imported cars, cutting MFE and the Climate Change Commission’s funding, fast tracking coal mines, appointing various climate change deniers to positions of authority, planning for roads of national significance, planning to gut the Zero Carbon Act, winding back the clean car standard, changing the target for Methane emission under urgency, planning urgently to construct a LNG Terminal and passing under urgency law changes that retrospectively stop Mike Smith from being able to sue large emission producers even though the Supreme Court said the case could proceed.
Read the whole list. And weep for your family’s future.
This recent backdown suggests that they realise they have gone too far. And they cannot avoid having to pay for excess emissions.
Expect something of a greenwash of announcements closer to the election. National has already started with its solar panel subsidy policy although the cost was a paltry $7 million.
But don’t believe their hype. They have sent back the Country’s climate response through a combination of scientific illiteracy, the wish to stoke culture wars and the need to save money so they can afford tax cuts for their mates.
They may now realise that they will cost the country a lot of money because of their sabotaging of our climate response. But do not forget this is all their fault.
Transport and other industries to pick up the slack from farming?
No chance.
If those transport and industry costs affect farmers, they'll not have it!!
The Feds will be into those Government MPs' offices like rats to a dead hole.
8 billion people need to eat, they don't need to fly or drive ice cars,
Tell that to the grieving survivors of the Nepalese river tsunami.
As always it's going to be the poorest of humanity that will bear the brunt of us with carbon dense lifestyles.
There are plenty of alternatives to the greedy intensive habits of too many farmers in this country.
Can you prove climate change caused it, mount aspiring occasionally wipes out the waitoto river in the same fashion?
Cows arnt the problem I promise you , it's hydro carbons
Cows definitely are part of the problem for many different reasons.
They aren't profitable without hydrocarbons. Plenty of diesel is burnt getting raw milk to the drying plants.
Cows don't walk to the works.
Then there is the energy intensive Haber-Bosch process that is used to make modern fertilizers.
Farming has to get in to the 21st century. Our trading partners desire quality produce that is carbon neutral if not guilt free.
I agree carbon trading jiggery pokery isn't the solution either.
There is a direct correlation between nitrate levels in the Water Supply in the Canterbury Region.
Climate change is exacerbating these horrific events, causing them to be more frequent and intense. In the case of this tragedy, mountain ice cover which is normally present all year round, is splintering and breaking away in the same way as icebergs in the polar regions and for the same reason. Together with the current intense rain event, it created a massive avalanche and flooding which destroyed everything in its path.
This type of scenario is going to occur more and more often in mountainous regions across the globe. NZ will not be immune, especially around the Southern Alps.
And don't forget, ACT are promising to extinguish the Climate Commission.
"The sand" isn't where those ostriches have their heads buried.
Who is Seymore ACT's Climate Change Advisors ?
"They have sent back the Country’s climate response through a combination of scientific illiteracy, the wish to stoke culture wars and the need to save money so they can afford tax cuts for their mates. They may now realise that they will cost the country a lot of money because of their sabotaging of our climate response."
The Nats may now realise that they are about to lose the election because of their Climate Change response. Here comes the greenwashing.
Meanwhile the National-friendly MSM will ask no tough climate-change questions and will emphasise that both Labour and National support solar power (without going into policy details) and say "so no difference there then".
It must truly be that New Zealanders just don't believe or care that the climate is roughing-up because of human industry.
Sad situation.
Luxon os on track to deliver because he's getting turfed out in November and yet again labour will have to do the structural stuff, although I reckon carbon trading is stupid and won't work , and as someone who's spent 38 years out in the weather we're to late now.
I would have thought the logical place that their inaction leads to is reneging on our Paris Agreement commitments precisely to avoid making those payments and effectively withdrawing from the agreement – like Trump.
Of course, there might be consequences for doing that in terms of existing trade agreements, but more important to them is their plan to shrink the state and throw gifts to business while chanting "growth growth" round the campfire.
Who would these payments go to and would they actually make a difference, ?
As far as I know, the payments go to offshore providers of carbon credits who do things like plant trees to sequester carbon emissions. How credible these providers are and whether they really achieve what they claim to, who knows? It would be far better to spend such money domestically trying to get our own emissions down.
Thanks yip i hate carbon trading
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/1193765/pm-christopher-luxon-says-staying-in-paris-climate-deal-non-negotiable-in-coalition-negotiations
It doesn't appear to be because of climate change, it's because our products will "get kicked off the shelves "
It's part of the coalition agreement. Under no circumstances acknowledge climate change.
That's too woke for Winston and against the business interests of those that Gordon Brittas serves.
ACT & NZF are in true Climate Change Denial and believe the science is Woke.
National are not too far behinf.
I noticed that bwag. Luxon never mentions anything to do with reducing CO2 emissions. He only complies for business purposes.
He also argues that Paris isn't working and should be changed because many countries aren't complying with their commitments, rather than saying that Paris is right if we are to save the planet and the countries that aren't complying need to up their game.
I think we are seeing National-as-Government vs National-as-Campaigner.
It seems to me that the cause of the past abandonment of the climate stuff might have been strong-armed onto Luxon by Seymour during the coalition talks.
Now, what we are seeing is National in campaign mode, championing what it always knew people give priority to (not to mention the moral obligation).
If so, it says two things to me:
1. Whatever National might say on the campaign trail, soft-soap Luxon will kowtow to another party's view of climate change, which adds risk for people voting National thinking they will actually get climate change attention for 2026-29; and
2. Along similar lines, National knows how important climate change is, but sold our country's reputation down the river, just to be in power. That's how climate change came to be an issue in the first place.
The good news is, again in my opinon, pretending climate change is imaginary seems to be a baby-boomer trend. National, long the party of the baby boomers, had better wake up and see what kind of policies are becoming more relevant now that the boomers are falling off the perch. To appease GenX and beyond, it might have to embrace the environment, or be the party that is mostly out of office and now and again governs for a term.
Personally, I think this government is the first shining example of what happens as the baby boomer numbers start to implode.
National/ACT/NZF denial on Climate Change is abhorrent as they appear to be Right Wing Nut Jobs, not even willing to partially understand any aspects of the Environmental Challenges the World Faces. It is almost Trump-Like Behaviour. Extreme Arrogance from Luxton/Seymore & Winston.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/a-colombian-man-struggling-to-build-his-own-home-helped-create-lego-like-bricks-from-recycled-plastic-by-2015-the-system-was-sheltering-42-displaced-families-and-could-build-a-40-sq-m-home-in-5-days/articleshow/133624073.cms
Let National find out how to create houses from plastic from Colombia. Great idea but too big for National's small brain. (This was picked up in Fawlty Towers by John Cleese helping an awfully superior woman – he found a pea and asked 'Is this a piece of your brain'?).
There you have it; the whole answer as to why National et Al cannot get their shit together. Blame Monty Python – NZFineacts should be able to do a sell-out world tour with their similar clever Kiwi antics.
The climate change talk from Luxon is utter bollocks as is the social media ban for under 16s. How is the ban going to be regulated, no law has been passed to enforce it, and our PMs track record is not good and that is putting it mildly.