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12:36 pm, February 18th, 2026 - 14 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, climate change, Environment, ETS, mark mitchell, science, the praiseworthy and the pitiful -
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Earlier this week Emergency management and recovery Minister Mark Mitchell was interviewed about the damage caused by the latest midsummer storm. These used to be exceedingly rare. Recently parts of the North Island have been drenched by huge cloud bursts. And the South Island is now being hit.
After the country experiencing eight declared states of emergency in the past four weeks it is, or hould be, hard to argue against the proposition that the climate has been significantly destabilised.
And Mitchell has started talking about perpetual cycles of response and recovery.
Near the end of what was a fairly tame interview Mitchell was asked this:
Does it worry you that we are seeing more of this, that this is with climate change, what the new norm [is]?
His response was:
Well it’s just weather and we’ve so there’s only one country that’s more likely to to be hit … with weather events and that’s Bangladesh so we’re right up the top there. And weather changes. We have to be able to adapt and we have to be able to make sure that primarily we can keep everyone safe when these events do come along and that we get good at recovery.”
It appears that Mitchell is unable to say the words “climate change”. He also trotted out well established Oil Industry talking points that what is happening is “just weather” and that “weather changes”. And he only talked about adaption when we still have a chance to prevent the worst of what will happen although that opportunity is getting smaller.
Then later that day Christopher Lxon was asked if the country was dealing with a climate crisis. His weasly response was:
There’s no doubt about it we’ve been in some real climate challenges – across the world it’s been an issue for a long period of time”.
Again the language used is consistent with the suggestion that “weather changes” and suggests that he thinks that climate change may be a natural phenonenon and not human induced.
Then in Question Time Luxon dodged answering a Green Party Question about whether the Government should deal with climate-charged weather events.
This complete indifference to climate change has not always been present. Last election National’s election manifesto said this:
National is absolutely committed to New Zealand’s climate change targets, including:
• Net zero greenhouse gas emissions excluding biogenic methane by 2050;
• Biogenic methane reduced by 10 per cent by 2030 and 24–47 per cent by 2050 compared to 2017 levels; and
• New Zealand’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below gross 2005 levels by 2030.
Labour have talked a big game on climate but failed to deliver meaningful reductions in emissions. Their oil and gas exploration ban led to record coal imports, with double the emissions of gas. Labour has pursued a series of highcost pet projects, for example by gifting subsidises to wealthy owners of new Teslas while taxing farmers and tradies who have no alternative to petrol or diesel vehicles. The Government Investment in Decarbonisation (GIDI) Fund has given taxpayers’ money to corporates who should be reducing their emissions anyway.
Labour have wasted six years and now New Zealand is off track for its 2030 climate change goals. With time running out, New Zealand needs effective action on emissions.
The policy then lists three areas they will work in. These include implementing farm level emissions measurement by 2025 which has not happened, and a split gas approach to keep agriculture out of the ETS. They have weakened considerably the country’s methane targets.
They promised to turbo charge investment in clean renewable energy. The recently announced LNG terminal will suck up valuable resources that could have been used to achieve its goal. They also promised to enable rapid investment in offshore wind generation. The Taranaki seabed project effectively has killed offshore wind generation in the area.
Then also promised lower transport emissions but then did everything concievable to increase transport emissions. From promising lots and lots of new roads to cancelling the clean car discount emissions scheme to increasing public transport charges no policy reversal was too retrograde.
They also promised stronger emissions pricing. The ETS price has since they were elected crashed by 45%.
National does not want to deal with climate change. Just go through the list of 59 policy decisions they have made which have worsened the country’s Climate Change response.
There are two possibilities. Luxon and Mitchell may actually doubt the science of climate change in which case they are too stupid to hold public office. Or they may believe it it but want to use language that questions its existence because it plays to their base in which case they are too cynicial to hold public office.
This is a Trumpian culture war approach to a very serious issue. Shame on them.
Time they get voted out and we get a govt who has a plan to mitigate global warming as well as adapt to its effects. Times long gone for a government who onfusticates or panders to the tin foil hat deniers
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/586891/weather-heavy-rain-and-damaging-gales-set-to-lash-eastern-and-southern-north-island
You can take Mark Mitchell to a storm-ravished area or a flooded river, but you can’t make him think.
There are plenty of references to climate change in the National Infrastructure Plan that has just been released [to the public].
https://media.umbraco.io/te-waihanga-30-year-strategy/zsunnlry/national-infrastructure-plan.pdf
Wilful blindness by CoC is costing us dearly already and much more in future.
https://theconversation.com/4-lessons-nz-should-take-from-another-summer-of-weather-disasters-275437
”Ultimately, the latest weather disasters leave us with a simple conclusion: if New Zealanders want things to stay the same as much as they can in a warming world – to protect safety, wellbeing and prosperity – then things will have to change.”
And given our current political discourse, we have no chance.
The current OECD depth to gpd ratio is around 70%. Ours is 30%.
Room for an infrastructure spend there.
They don't say "climate change" because to do so might imply that the state needs to respond in some way, or cause people to demand that the state needs to respond in some way. They can't stand the state doing anything other than enforcing their private property rights and driving the commodification of everything by the creation of markets in every sphere of human existence.
If all we are experiencing is 'bad weather', then we can look to the market for solutions – like higher insurance premiums and collapsing property values in high-risk areas compared to low-risk areas. If it runs deeper than that and is indeed caused by atmospheric CO2, the market will provide technology for air-capture and removal of CO2. If it's cow-burps, the market will provide biologically modified cattle through gene editing, etc. The market will eventually deliver economic growth that is entirely free of carbon emissions. Not leaving it to the market will be a failure. I'm old enough to remember some dude back in the 1980's called Owen McShane. I recall that for some unfathomable reason he was given a regular space to comment in the NZ Herald. The drift of his gibberish was to say that state planning was intrinsically bad. His stuff was all based on the (almost) entirely nonsense idea of 'crowding out'. (i.e. economists making fallacious deductions from a priori assumptions and then mathematising them so that they appear to be scientific). With the CoC, we are back in just this same lala land – refusing to act and waiting, waiting, waiting for the alchemy of the market.
The fuck!!!
It's about 8 people dead in 4 weeks by my rough guess
did you mean to add "wit" after your expletive?
Well said, Mickey, well said.
Just for fun, and because I was curious, I searched the Beehive website on “climate change” (https://www.beehive.govt.nz/search?query=%22climate+change%22).
Of course, this a super-crude ‘analysis’ and it doesn’t tell us anything about context, but at least we know that the CoC knows how to spell it in their news releases, assuming they write (and read) their own releases.
I don’t think this is about ignorance. National has historically been very disciplined about political fundamentals. Keeping the centre-right coalition intact and the left out of power is more or less their organising principle. They’re not gormless. They’re focused.
But that focus shapes what they are willing to say out loud. Explicitly centring climate change carries fiscal and regulatory implications. It narrows your policy room and unsettles parts of your base. So the safer path is to talk about “resilience” and “infrastructure pressures” without foregrounding the systemic cause.
If you want to be blunt, that’s not a failure of intelligence. It’s a failure of moral courage. It’s choosing political manageability over candour about the scale of the problem.
You can acknowledge the strategic logic while still arguing that the country needs something more honest and forward-leaning than what short-term incentives reward.
Its a failure of both, intelligence and moral courage. Says Mark Mitchell:
That is gibberish from start to finish. It indicates he hasn't a clue what he's talking about. Luxon is no better. How can you "keep everyone safe and get good recovery" when you don't understand the science underlying man-made CC, and make the necessary changes to mitigate the catastrophic consequences.
What chance does NZ have with an outfit so unfit to govern as this band of ignorant morons. It's beyond pitiful.
I suspect that they very much understand the science but are too chickenshit to wear the political consequences of doing anything about it.
Besides, a significant chunk of their voters either think it's a hoax, or believe they are too special and important to have to adapt. If a few countries full of poor, brown people drown as a result that's their problem.
They can't say "climate change" because their political masters told them not to.
You are right about the Nats and climate change but much too negative about Labour. You list quite a few things Labour did that National reversed. The "record imports of coal" were used for only a very small percentage of power generation….about 6-7%….dry years aren't common. Sometimes you have to give a carrot to private enterprise to do something.
Labour should have done more and I'm sure the Greens will push them to do more if the Left wins in November. In particular dumping the LNG proposal should be signalled NOW in favour of solar plus battery storage. If the usual economies we copy, the UK and Australia. have made this work why can't sunny NZ.
Incidentally I saw someone say the other day that shutting down the aluminium plant would sort out power needs for years. Labour could say there will be no more subsidies for this. Rio Tinto make huge profits-in the current climate this really makes no sense.