Labour

The scientific yardstick for political policy

by Bryan Walker November 14, 2011

I was pleased to see the Labour Party’s announcement that it is opposed to the Southland lignite development planned by Solid Energy, and went looking for more detail in the party’s climate change policy.  The opening paragraph of the policy statement struck me as more direct than I expected: Climate change poses an enormous global [...]

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Oxfam NZ Election Debate: Climate change

by Gareth November 9, 2011

Environment minister Nick Smith, Labour’s David Parker and the Green Party’s Kennedy Graham debate climate policy in these edited highlights from the first of Oxfam NZ’s election debates, held last week in Auckland. Debate ranged from whether New Zealand can become carbon-free to the likelihood of a cross-party agreement on long-term issues that last more [...]

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National snub to Labour on ETS: part 2 – the fallout

by Gareth September 14, 2009

Carbon News has a special update tonight with the gory details of the government’s snub to the Labour opposition on negotiations to amend the emissions trading scheme. CN has also made available the full text of Labour’s proposed memorandum of understanding with the government (PDF) — which reveals that substantial incentives for agriculture were on [...]

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National snubs Labour, buys Maori support for watered-down ETS

by Gareth September 14, 2009

Nick Smith announcedthis afternoon that National has cut a deal with the Maori Party to support an amended, watered-down emissions trading scheme. Key features (from the press release): Revised entry dates of 1 July 2010 for transport, energy and industrial sectors and 1 January 2015 for agriculture A transitional phase until 1 January 2013 with [...]

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Goff balks at the task

by Bryan Walker September 11, 2009

It doesn’t look as if we can expect transformational leadership from Labour leader Phil Goff so far as climate change is concerned.  Readers of my review of  David Orr’s Down to the Wire, may recall that Orr stated that one of the challenges of such leadership in the time ahead is to help us understand the [...]

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10:10 trumps 50:50

by Gareth September 6, 2009

Imagine this: the prime minister and his entire cabinet, the opposition front bench and the largest other party in Parliament all sign up to make personal emissions cuts of 10% in 2010. Not 10% in 10 years, — 10% next year. Not in NZ, sadly, but that’s what has just happened in Britain. The 10:10 [...]

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ETS report: wishy-washy and a waste of time

by Gareth August 31, 2009

The ETS review committee has published its report [PDF here], and recommends that an all sectors, all gases emissions trading scheme should be the “primary economic mechanism” in the government’s response to climate change. However the report makes very little in the way of substantive recommendations about how the current ETS legislation should be amended. [...]

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Why did Nick Smith hide the facts on forestry?

by Gareth August 21, 2009

Government ministers have deliberately played down the role of forestry in meeting emissions targets, documents released under the Official Information Act suggest. Diligent digging at No Right Turn has uncovered a Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry paper [PDF] titled New forest planting and harvesting intentions under high carbon prices, which makes clear that forest planting [...]

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A good thing

by Gareth March 29, 2009

There are signs that sanity might be emerging from the nitty gritty of the ETS review. On Friday Carbon News reported that Labour and the Greens had approached National to offer their support for an amended ETS, undercutting any influence ACT may have sought. Charles Chauvel, Labour’s climate spokesman, told Carbon News that it was [...]

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Woodman, spare that tree (foresters attitudes to the ETS)

by Piers November 25, 2008

As one would expect from a rurally based sector, foresters are a conservative lot. I don’t say that disrespectfully, because societies – for the sake of stability – need a balanced mixture of change-makers and change-resisters. But it did mean that, when in 1989 I started work on Climate Change and forestry, I met with [...]

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