The Zero Carbon Act Kicks NZ in the Guts

According to an opinion piece on Stuff, the Zero Carbon Act must set “tough targets” if New Zealand is to “help the world.” Well apart from the fact that it won’t do a bloody thing to “help the world” I expect the New Zealand government to put the needs of New Zealanders above the needs of the world.

This is New Zealand NOT the United Nations. Our government is tasked with governing New Zealand not decimating our primary industries in the totally misguided belief that it will somehow change the climate for other countries by point something, something of a percent…maybe.

This is like a girl giving away all the cash in her mum’s wallet (that was set aside to feed the family) to the meth addict down the road in the hope that he will use it to get a job and because she knew it would impress the girl she wants to be friends with who lives in the same street.

The Zero Carbon Act might look good on the outside to climate change extremists but it achieves NOTHING and it will hurt New Zealanders.

OPINION: The Zero Carbon Bill will go through its final votes this week […] its bigger purpose – providing a framework for New Zealand to help keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels – risks being lost in the process of political negotiation and compromise.

Its “purpose” is ludicrous. There is no evidence that mankind can control the climate. How anyone can spout this rubbish with a straight face is beyond me.

Every percentage point of emissions reductions and every tenth of a degree of warming matters. It matters for how much arable land northern African communities will have for growing food, how many extreme heatwaves hit Indian cities, how many cyclones devastate the Caribbean, or whether our Pacific neighbours have coral reefs from which to fish or are instead forced to retreat as sea levels rise.

No, it doesn’t matter. Even if it were possible it still would not be the responsibility of little old New Zealand to attempt to make growing food in Africa a tiny bit easier for Africans especially when just the attempt to do so will hurt New Zealanders’ food production.

[…] Both our prime minister and the climate change minister have made much of the fact that New Zealand could be the first in the world to put the 1.5C goal into law.

Woopdee doo! Do they also want New Zealand to be the first perfectly functional and wealthy small democracy to be tuned into the Venezuela of the South Pacific?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has laid out the science that, for a good chance of keeping warming within 1.5C, global emissions must halve by 2030 and reach net zero by about 2050. This task is inextricably tied to questions of justice, and who bears the burden of action. Some countries, sectors and corporations are clearly more responsible than others.

Stuff

Some countries put their own citizens first. Africa is not New Zealand’s responsibility and the rest of the world isn’t either. What arrogance to act as if New Zealand were some kind of a superpower capable of changing the climates of other countries.

This is real life not a Marvel comic. Humans cannot control the weather or the climate, not even if they are bitten by a radioactive spider!