For all Jacinda Ardern’s posturing as the Climate Queen of the South Pacific, the hard reality of New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions is far from matching up to its virtue-signalling prime minister’s rhetoric.
Hypocritically, given that the representatives of the world’s single biggest — and growing — greenhouse gas emitter were standing by, Ardern chose to lash Australia at the last Pacific Islands Forum. Oddly, despite her promise to “talk frankly” about climate change at the meeting, she notably failed to take the Chinese to task over their gargantuan carbon footprint.
No, indeed. Like all two-faced bullies, Ardern picked a much smaller target, wittering that “Australia has to answer to the Pacific”.
Yet, for all Ardern’s self-serving posturing, it’s Australia that’s reducing its emissions — certainly not China, and, as it turns out, not New Zealand, either.
New Zealand wants to “sneer” at Australia over climate while its emissions are going up and Australia’s are going down, according to Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“Australia has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent since 2005, 20 per cent, and hasn’t it caused us plenty of economic pain,” Mr Kenny said.
“What about New Zealand? Well, the authoritative climate tracker website give the Kiwis a bad rating, just as they do to Australia.
“But they find that under present Nationally Determined Contributions, New Zealand’s net emissions could be four per cent above 2005 levels by 2030.”
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Sure, New Zealand is a small fish in the global economic and geopolitical pond – and its total greenhouse gas emissions are commensurately small. But, as Kenny points out, “the claim is that we all have to do our bit. And woke New Zealand certainly wants to claim that it’s doing its bit on climate action”.
Except, it’s not. Jacinda Ardern is not even going to Glasgow – something Scott Morrison was endlessly harried to do, by the woke-elite.
“So woke is the land of the long white cloud,” says Kenny, that even its Reserve Bank has jumped on the bandwagon. Consider this from its Climate Changed 2021 and Beyond booklet:
“It notes that the country’s foreign bond holdings ‘have a greater weight towards higher-emitting countries (e.g. Australia and Canada’) and a smaller weight towards lower emitting countries.”
(It might be pointed out that both the UK and Japan’s emissions actually exceed Australia’s, but, hey: since when have facts mattered in a climate debate?).
Let the virtue-signalling begin!
The RBNZ claims that in the future it will “cut its holdings of bonds issued by big carbon emitters”.
Yet, Ardern is inching closer and closer to signing on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative — and she’s avoiding the supposed “last chance for humanity” climate change alarmism international gabfest. Then again, she does have a tendency to avoid situations where she might be asked tough questions.
Still, as Chris Kenny rightly says: “Can you believe the nerve and hypocrisy of these people?”
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