I got a little bored for a minute, so fired off this letter to the editor to the Dominion Post. Hopefully it gets published.
With the release of the latest report from the IPCC, Climate Change Minister David Parker is doing his best to reassure us that the Labour Government is taking climate change seriously, and working hard to lower New Zealand’s emissions. This rhetoric around “carbon neutrality” could not be further from the truth. While some of the Crown fleet is moving towards lower emission vehicles, state-owned coal miner Solid Energy is responsible for extracting coal which, when burnt, will produce emissions roughly equivalent to ALL the cars, buses and trucks on New Zealand’s roads each year. The Labour Government, meanwhile, encourages Solid Energy to extract even more coal! What we need is a swift transition away from the extraction and use of coal, and to create new areas of employment for Solid Energy employees, such as rehabilitation of the vast areas destroyed by the most polluting SOE.
Labour has shown time and time again that it is not really interested in tackling climate change in any meaningful way. Its “greenwash” is nothing but cover for more environmental destruction, for species extinction and for making hundreds of millions of people worldwide into climate refugees.