Barry Brill: Climate Change Commission ”Fatally Undermined”

The potential credibility and standing of the Climate Change Commission announced by Minister James Shaw has been fatally undermined by the inclusion of four full-time climate change careerists and campaigners, according to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

“The statutory role of the Commission is to provide independent evidence-based advice on those long-term policies which will most effectively abate emissions and promote adaptation. Its key role is to budget emissions abatement to tolerable levels of economic pain,” said Coalition chairman Barry Brill.

“In recruiting candidates, the Ministry for the Environment declared it was ‘looking for exceptional governance leaders’ and needed ‘the best quality talent’. It noted that the Commission ‘will have a significant role in guiding Aotearoa New Zealand’s economic transition towards a low emissions economy.’

“These four activists, all of whom are very far from being ‘governance leaders’, know nothing at all  about economic transitions:

“Catherine Leining cannot possibly be seen as independent. An ex-employee of the Ministry who helped design the ETS, and acted as a UN climate negotiator, she proudly declares that she ‘has been trained as a Climate Leader under The Climate Reality Project launched by Al Gore’.

“Harry Clark is no less dependent. As the Government-appointed director of the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, he is at the centre of the many arguments dividing Minister Shaw’s position from that of the farming community.

“James Renwick is New Zealand’s most outspoken climate change activist – well known as the go-to guy when the media need a quote from a climate zealot.

“Judy Lawrence is an academic working under Renwick, who could scarcely be less independent of the Government. She is currently the Ministry’s appointee on the IPCC as well as being the co-author of Ministry guidebooks.         

“The rationale for having a Commission is that it could do what the Government’s existing resources cannot. It could make authoritative and acceptable decisions in difficult politicised areas. It could give fair hearings to competing experts and display the wisdom of Solomon. It could provide leadership when hard choices are made involving economic upheaval and financial distress.

“This Commission can deliver none of those benefits. It will be seen for what it is – the same old Ministry in a mask. Or the Green Party with an extended term,” said Mr Brill.

Barry Brill OBE JP LL.M(Hons) M.ComLaw is a former MP and Minister of Energy, Petrocorp director, and chair of the Gas Council, Power NZ, ESANZ, and EMCO. He is presently the Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.