So much for carbon neutrality
Now do we all remember Helen Clark promising a goal of carbon neutrality? It was a wonderful uplifting speech. Despite the fact that New Zealand had a higher rate of increase of greenhouse gases than both the US and Australia, Clark promised we would not just stabilise emissions, not just reduce them a bit but abolish them all together (in a net emissions sense).
Now admittedly she said this was an aspiration, with no fixed date. But you would think that at the very least they would be supportive of some firm targets as progress points.
But as No Right Turn points out, in Vienna a target of 25% to 40% reductions by 2020 was proposed. Naturally one would expect Helen Clark’s Government to support this. But no they didn’t. So did they just abstain? No they didn’t. They were one of a minority of countries objecting to the target as too demanding.
NRT calls a spade a spade:
Two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards. Having deliberately dragged our feet for fifteen years and repeatedly failed to implement policy, we’re now using that failure as an excuse to further lower the bar.
Hypocrisy just doesn’t sell, and we can expect European companies to make full use of our government’s cowardly and morally indefensible position in advertising against us. That is, if the EU just doesn’t stick a carbon tax on our exports for being so dirty.
And Green co-leader Russel Norman is slightly more diplomatic:
So on the one hand we have all the rhetoric about climate change and on the other, when we are in a position at an international meeting to push for stronger action on climate change, instead we try to stop others pushing for stronger action.
I bet you deep down he wants to call them “Two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards” as No Right Turn did 
September 1st, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Why oh why doesn’t the MSM put the blowtorch on the Green MP’s about issues like this?
Instead we get Sue Bradford trotted out onto our telly every time there’s a consumer affairs matter that’s ripe for some inane patsy comment
September 1st, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Helen Clark is a pathological liar. It was obvious she wasn’t serious about reducing carbon emissions when she appointed that halfwit David Parker as her Climate Change Minister.
September 1st, 2007 at 5:47 pm
kk the msm is here for infotainment, please dont forget that in the future
September 1st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Oh no, now it probably still won’t be any hotter in 2020 than in 1934
September 1st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
“Helen Clark is a pathological liar. It was obvious she wasn’t serious about reducing carbon emissions”
Good. One of the few occasions she might have got it right.
Survey: Less than half of all published scientists endorse global warming theory.
September 1st, 2007 at 6:05 pm
I bet you deep down he wants to call them “Two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards” as No Right Turn did
The problem with being a politician is that occasionally you have to be politic. Wheras the joy of being an independent actor (or “loose cannon” as I prefer) is that you can call a spade a spade and give people the bollocking they deserve.
Fortunately, as Russel pointed out, we lost, and the Vienna process has recognised the need for serious cuts in emissions.
September 1st, 2007 at 6:32 pm
In which case, Redbaiter, she shouldn’t have said she wanted to cut emissions. This thread is not about the reality or otherwise of climate change – it is about a dishonest and evil government telling its own voters that it wants “carbon neutrality”, because a few polls said that’s what most NZ voters wanted, and then doing the exact opposite offshore.
[DPF: Indeed. I have my own view on the practicality and desirability of such a target. But I haven't promised to cut emissions by 100%]
September 1st, 2007 at 7:10 pm
NZ emissions of greenhouse gases will drop right off the radar when this sorry lot join the dole qeues. The windbags in the government and it’s assorted arse licking partys poduce more greenhouse gases then my cows.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Good riddance to carbon neutrality!
Perhaps Helen has seen the light?
Carbon lovers of the world unite.
http://www.climatepolice.com
September 1st, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Climate Change? If we really want to do something about what we have just learnt, it would seem there has to be a complete political change. To whom do we turn?
It certainly wouldn’t be to the “Two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards” (to borrow a phrase on this thread) which is probably applicable to the people responsible for the Electoral Finance Bill. If you agree with me then bear with me and at least read the following:
When the course of justice is perverted once, it means that the course of justice must by its nature, lead to further and further perversion. It is a slippery downhill path that always winds up in complete disorder and political and economic instability. How many examples have we seen of this behaviour in other parts of the world in our life times and historically?
The pattern is always the same. New Zealand has already taken the first big step down the path of chaos and now is undertaking it’s second. It is appropriate for decent and strong willed politicians from all sides of parliament to stand up and be counted and put the wrongs right. Politicians must look to the future generations as much as to the present generations of people they are responsible for representing.
It is difficult to change the course of behaviour back to normal when short sighted irresponsible politicians put power before people and go to any lengths to keep that control. With the support of well positioned public service sympathisers generally, positioned not for their ability, but for their ability to bark “yes” at the beck and call of their masters, This does not constitute a free democratic process in fact it constitutes the total opposite.
Conspiracy to deceive the people they represent, by politicians and public servants through bribes, propaganda and the like is the road to anarchy. Continue this path, with no checks and balances, and New Zealand in 20 years will one of the fallen countries.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Should this become a scandal, I am sure Helen will claim that MFAT did not tell the Government
September 1st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
This is a fascinating case of the effect of power over time. I don’t think Helen Clark sees herself as a lying, two faced, ratfink bastard. Rather, it’s a kind or post-modern thing. She has spent so long seeing truth as a politically constructed entity that she wouldn’t know an honest statement if it bit her on the arse.
All she can perceive is a political discourse, to be dominated by whatever means available. That is the ‘game’ she is involved in, and she must be puzzled by people who criticise her for it. The only criticism she would see as legitimate is the loss of public support. I had thought that Labour was a party that now believed the ends justified the means. But that is unfair. They don’t have any ends. They are political heroin addicts, so absorbed in getting the next fix that they’ve completely forgotten the point of it all.
And that, I/S, is why we desperately need a change of government. Regularly.
Milo
(previously posting under another name, until the registration process made an ass of that pseudonym)
September 1st, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Redbaiter says: “talking points, talking points, talking points…”
Captain Unoriginal.
Have you are are you ever going to have an independent thought?
September 1st, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Well I think we all knew ‘neutrality’ was bullshit when they prosecuted those Save Happy Valley protesters.
September 1st, 2007 at 10:09 pm
DPF: “Indeed. I have my own view on the practicality and desirability of such a target.”
TV3 this evening showed a remarkable technology that can well assist towards carbon neutrality. By the end of the year there will other technologies revealed that will also utilise the natural energy forces emanating from the sun. The solution will be sooner than later.
It means the world will overcome these difficulties and there will be huge advantages for disadvantaged people.
Greenies will have little platform left to justify their existence.
September 1st, 2007 at 10:34 pm
The present government pretend interest in the environment for two reasons: firstly to attract the votes of those who like to think they are ‘Green’ but are frightened to be radical enough to vote for the Green Party. Secondly, to keep the Green Party in its pocket either by spouting vaguely ‘right-on’ green ideology, or by guarding enough of the green vote to keep the Green Party on the periphery of political influence. The Green Party (Bless them!) like to feel they are movers and shakers so they support this rather shonky affair (a bit like a mistress who justifies ‘putting out’ because she has fooled herself that her lover will, one day, leave his wife and kids).
Newsflash for the Green Party. You are taking it up the ass for nothing.
Interestingly enough, there are sound economic reasons why New Zealand should capitalise on its ‘Clean-Green Image”. But the Labour Government is frightened of capitalism – it causes people to think heretical thoughts about choice, individualism, and the freedom of expression. [Damage-limitation alert!!] – Over to you zombies with their labour-parroty justifications, or in the absence of that, some diversionary accusation about how evil their enelkies are. (‘enelkies’ was a typo, but I rather like the word, so I’m leaving it in.)
By the by, I recently read ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond (A ‘green intellectual’ who has some fascinating insights about how some champions of capitalism is contributing more to safeguarding the environment than many in the green movement and many in governent, are.
Know your enelkie!
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:03 am
“Newsflash for the Green Party. You are taking it up the ass for nothing.”
- LOL
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:04 am
“So did they just abstain? No they didn’t. They were one of a minority of countries objecting to the target as too demanding.”
Good. It’s to much to hope that they’ve seen sense, but at least they made some protest against the throttling of western industry in the name of a feelgood fiction.
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 am
Yeah, what PC said. I don’t give a toss about my “footprint” either. If I must have one I plan to make it even bigger. Having just removed my catayltic converter from my bike I get another 15kw at the expense of the planet. Do I care? No, I enjoy, I go faster and spew more CO2. Weep and wail Greenies.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:05 am
The green party never cease toamaze me. They have yet to learn (it seems) that some people say things they dont mean and they say these things knowing them to be wrong or unattainable (otherwise its called lying). The greens must be a product of our modern primary education system where nothing wrong is ever done and everyone is a nice person and your ego is pumped up and all that sort of crap.
I keep asking myself why they keep doing it and I am beginning to think that they are just plain stupid. Frankly I think they are too stupid to be in politics. I think Rod Donald was the only one with any brains.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:17 am
Put all this carbon neutrality in context: we heard nothing on global warming from Labour until an annual conference when lots of bad shit was happening, like Phillip Field, and suddenly there is an ‘out of the blue’ key speech from Helen on weather change policy. It was a new tangent, a diversion, and fortuitously at the time a sop to the general public who are continually bombarded with scare horror stories from the weather change industry, but more importantly for Helen it was a sop to the Greens, whose support she would suddenly need again after her post Election treatment of them as crap.
This discovery of weather change by Labour should be considered in measuring their sincerity or honesty now.
The two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards . . . but what’s new?
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:04 am
The question is – are these industrialized countries —-> China/India (and to a slightly leser extent all the other fast growing economies.)
If not then is the actual proposal a long term massive increase in emssions, just a redistribution of in which countries those emisions are burnt via suplying cheaper fossil fuels to certain countries?
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
I don’t think the Greens can complain to much, every hydro scheme that come up in the last 7 years they have been against it.
We also have the RMA that makes even wind farms uneconomic to build.
Therefore, we have to rely on buring coal.
But I can’t understand why the EEC would slap a food miles tax on NZ. It would just make it harder for them to meet thier reductions under Kyoto.
After all it takes 4 times the amount of energy in Europe, than it does in NZ.
Unless your ultimate goal is to fuck the planet which seems to be strange when you keep saying you are trying to save the planet.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Yvette: Put all this carbon neutrality in context: we heard nothing on global warming from Labour until an annual conference when lots of bad shit was happening, like Phillip Field, and suddenly there is an ‘out of the blue’ key speech from Helen on weather change policy.
Um, no. To point out the obvious, there was that whole carbon tax thing between 2002 and 2005. Or have you forgotten that?
This time round, they’d had a very strong policy development process underway since they ditched the carbon tax in December 2005. At one stage this saw over 30 papers before Cabinet (a stunningly large number, BTW). Given the way the policy development process works, the first discussion papers weren’t released until December 2006, but there was a massive amount of work going on, and the broad shape of the policy was clear enough from their public statements for Nick Smith to lift it for his BlueGreen discussion document and so steal a march on the government.
I know that most people neither know nor care how the internal process of government policy formation works. But its patently false to claim they pulled the whole thing out of their arse, and given that the process was strongly covered by the media, it requires more than the usual level of ignorance to do so.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
The problem is no one knows how to calculate carbon footprints or greenhouse gas emissions for any given product for the same reason (only multiplied) that no single person knows how to make a pencil.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:38 pm
“I don’t think the Greens can complain to much, every hydro scheme that come up in the last 7 years they have been against it.”
80% of our electricity is generated using renewable sources. So what’s with the hysteria?
Also, because it’s dirt cheep (nearly the cheapest in the OECD), and because there are so little in the way regulation, the commercial sector (70% of consumption) is very wasteful with its electricity. So we need to be using our electricity more efficiently before we think about producing more of it.
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Lee C:
“a bit like a mistress…You are taking it up the ass for nothing. ”
Maybe a bit like a toyboy, rather than a mistress?
I hear recently that the NASA have found an error in the US temperature record since 2000, and that they have posted a correction. And that 1934 is now the hottest year on record, and that only 3 of the last 10 years were in the top 10 recorded. V’s 4 in the 1930s. Natural cycle anyone?
Which of course, as DPF points out, doesn’t change the hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another.
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I/S says: “But its patently false to claim they pulled the whole thing out of their arse, and given that the process was strongly covered by the media, it requires more than the usual level of ignorance to do so.” He also talks about previously failed proposals, which were developed by that mastermind Pete Hodgson.
What was “pulled out of their arse” was “carbon neutrality”. Prior to the Phillip Field conference, they were talking about reductions in greenhouse gases and so forth – but it took the risk of Field ruining their conference to make them go the whole hog and launch the stunningly ambitious goal.
Now Parker has proven to be as useless as Hodgson, they again look like fools.
And now with Vienna, they look like liars.
They are both.
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:14 pm
George: Carbon neutrality indeed seems to have been pulled out of their arse. Yvette however went rather further than that.
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
There was hypocrisy in the original aspirational statement of carbon neutrality with the ongoing mining of coal and the benign investment environment towards prospecting for oil in the great southern basin and the continued extraction from existing oil fields. I think the greens mentioned this but didn’t push the point too hard. Money speaks louder than principles here.
pdq – removing your catalytic converter wont change the amount of CO2 emitted by your bike per se, depends on what you do with the extra 15kw, in fact you may find that you go further on your tank full
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
PaulL
Here is the blog of the guy who discovered the NASA errors
http://www.climateaudit.org/
Very interesting
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:27 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews
“China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest producer of carbon”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jul/06/china.climatechange
“China will not agree any form of binding target to reduce its soaring greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new international deal on climate change, a senior official confirmed yesterday.”
It looks like we are trying to plug the small leak in the bath while the plug is still out.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
krazykiwi: Why oh why doesn’t the MSM put the blowtorch on the Green MP’s about issues like this?
Because whenever somebody puts the blowtorch on the Greens they are by definition “Against Labour and supportive of National”. After all, didn’t the Exclusive Brethren’s campaign against the Greens land us with this Electoral Finance Bill?
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
re the NASA error and 1934:
1934 is now the hottest year on record for the USA only. For the rest of the globe 1998 is still the hottest year ever. Obviously there are regional variations in global trends – that’s why we have global means. (Similarly a single year should not be seen as that important – that’s why we have 5-year means.)
In addition, 1934 and 1998 are really close to one another – they are within the margin of error of each other. Before the re-calculation it was not possible to say with statistical certainty that 1998 was hotter than 1934 and after the re-calculation it is not possible to say with statistical certainty that 1934 was hotter than 1998.
But anyway, the main thing is – this is just for the US, not the globe.
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
The colour and movement continues, but their hearts aren’t in it.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010529
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Absolutely true Tina, the denialists have had to retreat steadily over the last few years, from initially denying that there had been any global warming – anthropogenic or otherwise, to now accepting that much of the warming is indeed anthropogenic, but arguing that adaptation is preferable to mitigation.
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Climate Deniers aren’t retreating, Andrew, they’re melting and breaking up!
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:17 pm