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11:59 am, November 8th, 2025 - 18 comments
Categories: act, Christopher Luxon, climate change, Deep stuff, Environment, farming, global warming, national, national/act government, nz first, Politics, same old national, science, Simon Watts, sustainability, transport -
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If you thought that your contempt for the current administration had peaked let me disappoint you.
There is an especially shitty policy change they have recently announced which is conclusive proof that they are fuckwits, idiots, have no comprehension of science or sense and should be immediately relegated to jobs more suited to them like collecting road cones or wiping tables in their local Starbucks cafe.
Remember when Christopher Luxon wrote to Chris Hipkins and urged him to adopt a credible bipartisan approach to off sea oil drilling? And then completely undermined the effort to seek consensus by leaking the letter to the media?
There is a historical example of consensus being reached for the common good. It resulted in the changes to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 made in 2019. This set up the Climate Change Commission with the intent that an authoritave organisation would make evidence based recommendations on what the country should do to reduce emissions.
National voted for the changes. It reserved its position on methane and said that some changes woud be made when it regained power. But it committed generally to the idea that the country’s climate change response should be forged by a political consensus informed by expert advice.
It also set out five principles that it claimed it was bound by.
These included that the system must be science based, technology driven, the country’s response must be in keeping with its global trading partners, there must be long-term incentives to businesses and consumers to reduce emissions, and the economic impact needs to be minimised.
Last election National said this about its climate policy:
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.
But it seems that all of this has essentially been hot air. In policy area after policy area since it gained power National and its mates have undermined the country’s climate change response.
This week National effectively walked away from the bipartisan approach that had existed at least in theory in relation to climate change.
In a very strange press release Minister Simon Watts announced the release of the Government’s Assessment Framework for Carbon Removals, designed to provide support to people and organisations who want their activities that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere recognised and rewarded.
Of itself this is a good idea. Think Labour’s deal with New Zealand Steel that not only removed the equivalent of 300,000 cars from New Zealand’s roads and saved the Country the cost of buying a significant number of credits. This is the sort of project that should be funded and there should be an assessment framework to decide on these sorts of proposals. National went to town however at the time and Christopher Luxon called the deal outrageous. So much for providing incentives to businesses to reduce emissions.
But tacked onto the announcement was a further announcement that the Government was effectively gutting the country’s climate change response. The claim was that the changes would ensure the legislation was working efficiently and as intended. But the work of the Climate Change Commission was going to be undermined and the Government would have the power to unilaterally change emissions reduction plans without even consulting on it.
Marc Daalder at Newsroom has the following comments on the change:
Under the proposal, the independent Climate Change Commission will no longer advise the Government on how to meet carbon budgets as it prepares its five-yearly emissions reduction plan. The Government, meanwhile, will be able to amend or even wholly replace its emissions plan without any consultation.
The targets themselves will also be subjected to less public scrutiny. The Climate Change Commission will no longer be required to consult the public on its recommendation on what level the emissions budgets should be set at, nor will the Government have to consult on its final decision when setting the budgets.
…
In addition, Watts also said the Government would move to disconnect the Emissions Trading Scheme and New Zealand’s carbon budgets from the commitment to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement. Currently, the scheme’s price settings and unit volumes must accord with the Paris target and emissions budgets must be set in a way that contributes to the Paris Agreement.
The Paris accord allows for targets to be met through domestic emissions reductions and so-called offshore mitigation – purchasing carbon credits from overseas or paying other countries to reduce their emissions. New Zealand’s first Paris target (covering 2021 to 2030) was set with the intention that two thirds of the required reductions would be met through offshore mitigation.
Since the coalition came to power, however, Watts and other ministers have signalled that they will not purchase offshore mitigation, but have failed to explain how they plan to meet the target.
They have refused to do so because as soon as the liability crystallises sufficiently it will have to be added to the country’s financial books and blow a rather large hole in them. The choices are stark. Reduce emissions, buy credits or default on our international obligations.
And the changes to the Climate Change Commission’s role are bizarre. The whole idea of the Commission was to have an expert body attempting to form a political consensus over proposals that were created by an expert independent panel. Leaving it to politicians, particularly those on the right is a recipie for failure.
It has been reported that the Beehive press release was not sent out to all media. This is bizarre given the importance of the changes. Clearly the Government wanted this to not attract attention.
The excellent Marc Daalder has said this about the Government’s policies:
[A]t every turn, the Government has opted for the available option that would actually lead to more pollution and a warmer world – even if it costs more, even if it jeopardises New Zealand’s reputation, even if it overturns a campaign promise or clashes with the Government’s priorities in other portfolios.
The recent examples include these:
- Released a new energy policy that doubles down on expensive fossil fuels. In fact, we’ll import Liquefied Natural Gas which will literally double the price of gas. (Meanwhile, Australia has announced three free hours of power every single day for millions of households because of the influx of cheap solar.)
- Weakened the climate-related financial disclosure regime, exempting more than half of the companies currently subject to the requirements just months after bragging about the policy on the world stage.
- Announced the halving of the ambition of New Zealand’s methane target, in defiance of the independent Climate Change Commission which had advised strengthening it instead. Climate Change Minister Simon Watts conceded the new target is not consistent with the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5C – a legal requirement in New Zealand and under international law.
- Scrapped plans to price emissions from agriculture, despite the National Party campaigning on the policy in 2023 and promising to implement it by 2030.
- Abstained on a critical vote in the International Maritime Organisation on a price on international shipping emissions, against Pacific and European allies who were blindsided by New Zealand’s backtracking.
- Announced plans to unilaterally gut key provisions of the Zero Carbon Act without consulting the Opposition. Although National was intimately involved in the creation of the legislation, Watts said there was no need to follow that consensus-based approach going forward.
- Delayed the 2025 deadline for a carbon neutral public service by 25 years, out to 2050.”
And this is just over the past six weeks.
Russell Norman at Greenpeace has an earlier and more exhaustive list up to June 2025. And reading it will make you cry.
My brief summary of the Government’s wrecking of every emissions reduction police it can get its hands on includes these:
Get the picture?
This is a bunch of climate vandals. They have shredded any pretence they had of wanting to do something meaningful about climate change. They have sacrificed their emissions reduction credibility to the wishes of farmers and industry and their donors. They have used climate change policies to engage in meaningless culture wars.
Luxon is especially guilty of this. He has failed to lead the Government and has let Act and NZ First’s thirst for culture wars undermine the Government’s emission reduction policies at a time when efforts should be accelerated, not stalled.
We are no more than 12 months away from the next election. If you care about the world your kids or grandkids live in then get active.
We have to vote them out. Otherwise they will wreck the place and make New Zealand a laughing stock among nations that respect the science and know the enormity of the problem we are facing.
On behalf of my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren if the habitable world lasts that long – BASTARDS!
+100000000000000
I agree that they have definitely managed to out-perform Labour when it comes to competitive underwhelming. Their performance has been comprehensively poor, as your thorough analysis verifies, whereas Labour last time was merely poor. It's likely to be a difference lost on most voters though, due to whatever election bribes show up.
That last RM poll seemed to suggest Labour's tax plan had no real impact on the status quo parity, huh? Well, the good news is that voters failed to freak out. The Hipkins genial banality stance is working better than the Luxon eager-beaver airhead stance currently, so we now await the chimera of economic recovery, in which the media will trot out various hacks to pretend that it's just around the corner…
False comparison. Labour Greens did a great deal of good and emissions were coming down. Should they have done more and quicker? Yes.
But at least they were making progress and were not malicious in undermining the collective response.
Yes, your second point is valid. The comparison happens in the mind of most voters (not me) on the basis of a mix of impressions (so I wasn't just referring to climate change) hinging on their collective sense of well-being. I can't see how your comprehensive documentation will affect that – even if Labour were suddenly become sufficiently audacious that they decide to use it during the campaign!
It has seemed the paramount issue to me politically for more than half a century yet Labour still doesn't message the public as thought it has figured it out as a priority.
The right assumes lack of relevance since most of them will be dead when the chickens come home to roost, and I suspect most folk in Labour agree. Yet if you read evolutionary psychology you find that altruism got accounted for back in the '90s, so it is now seen as natural. So common interest has joined self-interest on the basis of complementarity in science, and it can no longer be credibly dismissed.
The polling period was before the Labour policy was made known.
OMG.
That sure is a depressing list. Makes me realise how it has all been drip fed in tiny portions, and now seeing the whole in this stark way is actually shocking. And it is all intentional, bought and paid for by their donors.
I thought health should bring this government down, but their actions to kill planet earth…… surely, surely, surely people will vote them out.
Oh. Wait…
Those same donors will buy the election campaign.
MS not sure if that was an intentional phrase? But it is a terribly apt summation of NACT1's Climate Change response…..to what is a plainly evident Planet Earth existential crisis.
Very intentional. Hot air is the last thing we need right now.
Ah, did think so, and of course. We can, and must, spike the NACT1 hot air balloon. Hopefully its like one of those cartoons where it spins frantically,farting, till it disappears. forever.
Environmental and economic vandalism at a breathtaking level when you combine them.
Then there's the smashing of health, education/ECE etc on top of that.
The Young speak…as its their World soon.
It's interesting to see what major international banks are predicting: "We now expect a 3°C world," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote…. citing "recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts."
"The stunning conclusion indicates that the bank believes the planet is hurtling toward a future in which severe droughts and harvest failures become widespread, sea-level rise is measured in feet rather than inches and tropical regions experience episodes of extreme heat and humidity for weeks at a time that would bring deadly risks to people who work outdoors."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-banks-quietly-prepare-for-catastrophic-climate-change/
And here is just one of many recent economic analyses:
“2.2°C of warming by 2050 has the potential to reduce global GDP levels by up to 20%. Warming of up to 5°C by 2100 would lead to economic annihilation.”
https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/the-global-economic-costs-of-climate-inaction/
There's a vital missing element in the fight for a viable future climate: public information and outreach. Currently the media are under-reporting the link between emissions and adverse weather events, and politicians vie with each other to downplay the consequences or proffer delusional 'solutions'.
Those of us who 'get' what's happening are deeply concerned, but most people are shrugging it off. And the affluent are of course busily booking their next flying holiday or luxury cruise.
The reality is harsh and deeply confronting. Our average annual per capita GHG footprint is around 7 tonnes CO2e (excluding agricultural emissions); if we want a viable future climate that needs to drop to around 2 tonnes. Each of us needs to look our kids in the eye and tell them out loud, whether we are up for that – or not.
The priorities and short-term thinking of our political 'leaders' will be the end of us.
I've come to the opinion that we largely will not make the needed changes to move to a footprint of 2 tonnes to avert CC. It's politically unelectable and we are accustomed to convenience.
But, I think we could make steps in that direction if it were to save something else, eg stopping the rise of micro-plastics.
Plastic use is intimately tied to a carbon dense lifestyle. If it can be framed more along the lines of saving fish, birds and the environment, we can make a meaningful start.
getting serious about reducing emissions requires a change of government, pretty clear. Labour led with the Greens having a big say in CC. this was pretty apparent last election, if anything clearer still now.
A finance minister took green investment funds tagged for business to reduce green house emissions and used them for tax cuts, myopic narrow minded woman
And that favourite of any prick you challenge- well China is the big economy what are they doing? We shouldn’t do anything if they aren’t.
Pumping out masses of renewables and reducing the cost of solar power dramatically, their carbon output from energy is steady or dropping despite increased demand for electricity. So well f-ng done them.
This is a submission I made today. It is not long and the language is not what I would like to use. for example, how narrow minded and dumb it is to scrap climate change funds to pay for tax cuts.
I quote renowned New Zealand conservationist Sir Alan Mark “When we exploit the environment beyond its ability to recover we’re looking at serious problems, and politicians have shown they’re willing to do this,” Mark says. “If we don’t look after that [the environment], we are doomed.”
Mark said action on climate change was a typical example of where humans were letting the environment down, and at this stage he did not see “any hope” of reversing the difficult situation.
He says he was disappointed in the Government’s approach to environmental issues, and he feared for future consequences, as increasing storms and cyclones would soon become unaffordable for the country to repair.
“For them, economic development is the only thing that matters, if they can get that, the environment doesn’t really count.”
Conservationist Sir Alan Mark fears politics is failing the environment, New Zealand Herald, 14 November 2025.
If we use farming as an example, it requires a benign mix of rainfall and sunshine to be profitable. It will not be sustainable nor profitable in a scenario of regular drought and/or flood events which will becoming increasingly intense, frequent and unpredictable. Doing nothing or as little as possible to reduce climate change leads us to a future where increasingly intense, frequent and unpredictable become the norm, not the exception.
In effect taking little or no action on reducing farming greenhouse emissions now, in the name of economic development, creates a future where profitable farming becomes challenging, if not impossible, in parts of the country.
Therefore I do not support the Proposed amendment to New Zealand's Second Emissions Reduction Plan (2026 to 2030).
I wish the following to occur.
1. Consultation on Emissions Reduction Plans
The Climate Change Commission continues to advise the government as it prepares its five yearly emissions reduction plan.
The Climate Change Commission is required to consult the public on its recommendations
The Government must consult widely before it amends or replaces its emissions plan
2. The Government meets its international climate change obligations
If carbon credits are not to be purchased offshore (offshore mitigation) then an equivalent amount of money is spent domestically to reduce greenhouse gases – projects such as a dramatic increase in renewal energy including solar, subsidies to move our vehicle fleet away from fossil fuels, assistance to business to move to low/no carbon alternatives, housing insulation, increasing public transport, changes to farming and agriculture including regenerative farming. Please note, tax cuts is NOT a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Glucina Alloys in Auckland is the sole aluminium recycling foundry in New Zealand. Due to increasing costs of gas supplies it is facing closure in 2026. It is possible to switch to electricity however the $800,000 cost of doing this is prohibitive the company has stated. This seems a good example of an industry that would have benefitted from the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) Fund has the National Government not scrapped it to help fund their tax cuts. If a GIDI type scheme were available we could keep this business open we could preserve jobs, recycle aluminium domestically, free up some of the dwindling gas supply and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
NZ’s sole aluminium recycling foundry may close because of gas shortage, New Zealand Herald, 15 May 2025.
3. Greenhouse gases are priced at a Level that drives real reductions
The price of carbon via our ETS to rise to a level where they provide an economic incentive to promote change. Failure to take necessary steps to reduce domestic greenhouse gases, a failure to purchase offshore mitigation and a failure to properly price carbon through our ETS shows no intention to seriously reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
4. A price placed on agricultural emissions by 2030 or earlier
The National Government fulfill its 2023 election promise, rather than breaks it