John McLean: Dame Patsy, forever on commission

Reddy, Set, Go. Please, please...just GO

In May 2024, Dame Patricia Lee Reddy turned 70 years of age. That’s the biblical threescore years and ten. Psalm 90/10 in the King James Version of the Bible goes like this:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 9/12/24

Climate Change Commission: it’s the end of the road for Carr (without sending four knights to nobble him)

King Henry II is popularly believed to have signalled his exasperation after repeated disagreements with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by blurting: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 24/5/24

Shane Jones has the zeal, sure enough, but is too busy with his mining duties (we suspect) to be available for climate change job

The hacks of the Parliamentary Press Gallery have been able to chip into a rich vein of material on the government’s official website over the past 24 hours.

Among the nuggets is the speech by Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and a press statement to announce the Government’s vision for the future of minerals and the mining industry.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 12/3/24

Govt will consider advice to cut the numbers of ETS units being traded – it has already decided to cut red tape for builders

The settings for New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme – a tool intended to help meet the country’s climate goals – need adjusting and the number of ETS units reduced, Climate Change Commission Chair Rod Carr says in a report released today.

Josie Pagani: Who pays for our climate policies?

No, thank YOU Tesla buyers for saving us.

The EV subsidies going to brand-new Teslas alone total $80 million. Every dollar subsidising the world’s richest toddler, Bubba Musk, is a dollar that hasn’t been spent on, say, hiring more bus drivers and paying them well. Or buying a train track inspection.

Reporters this week established that the recipients of EV subsidies live almost exclusively in leafy suburbs. People who live in struggle street do not buy brand new $80,000 motors, or even relatively affordable brand new Toyotas.

And it is not just an $8000 handout to buy a new Tesla. They also get an ongoing $2000 a year top-up bonus of unpaid road user taxes. EVs still use the roads, don’t they?

Point of Order: Climate Change Commission sounds caution about forestry.....

......while Peeni pumps $57m into a fund for wood processing

There’s much to absorb in the 205-page report from the Climate Change Commission headed 2023 Draft advice to inform the strategic direction of the Government’s second emissions reduction plan.

If media headlines fairly sum up what the commission is saying, the government should be smarting.

Here’s a sample –

Point of Order: Government claims to be moving NZ ahead.....

.....but is it one step forward, and one back?

The government has welcomed a High Court ruling, with a group of activist lawyers losing a bid to have New Zealand set deeper and steeper cuts in its carbon emissions for the rest of this decade.

The group, Lawyers for Climate Action NZ, went to the High Court challenging advice given to the government by the Climate Change Commission.

Point of Order: Ministers tackle various issues overseas....

.....while Kiri Allan extends the Human Rights Act to combat religious bigots in NZ

Two ministers are overseas, combating climate change (in the case of James Shaw) and Russian invaders (in the case of Defence Minister Peeni Henare).

Another minister is bound for Paris, to combat mental ill-health among other things, according to his press statement.

And back home, Justice Minister Kiri Allan is combating religious discrimination.

Robin Grieve: Government’s climate plans for livestock emissions in tatters

James Shaw has been given much credit for setting the foundations for enduring climate policy. An independent expert Climate Commission would steer the ship and the Government legally bound by the revised Climate Change Response act, would enact the policies required to transform New Zealand painlessly and effortlessly into a carbon neutral happy prosperous green society.

The weakness of Shaw’s foundations and the nativity of the concept on which they are based, have just been exposed by a Climate Commission report which has torpedoed the Government’s plans to price livestock biological emissions.

Professor Michael Kelly: Open Letter to PM on Climate Commission

12 July 2021

The Prime Minister, New Zealand. 
j.ardern@ministers.govt.nz

Dear Prime Minister

The Climate Change Commission’s Advice Needs an Engineering Review

I am writing this letter with the support of a group of experienced engineers who have all brought multi-million-dollar projects to successful conclusions. I have determined that the advice of the Climate Change Commission requires that three key engineering projects must be completed well before 2050:

1. Electrifying ground transportation.;
2. Electrifying industrial, commercial and residential heat.
3. Constructing a major increase (~75%) in the capacity of our electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems to provide the power needed for projects 1 and 2.

Derek Mackie: Climate Change - natural phenomenon or man-made "threat"

So, the Climate Change Commission has produced their final report after careful consideration of the public submissions, and it's essentially the same as the draft report. The Treaty is mentioned 193 times and the report recommends “a Māori-led approach to ensure an equitable transition” - remind anyone of He Puapua? Barring a miracle, the government will adopt the report in its entirety. 

 Of course, the writing was always on the wall, with a woke panel who sang from the same left-wing song sheet, led by a chairman who sports his greenstone pendant at every public appearance. I can’t say I’m surprised but I am disappointed. I wrote a submission against the proposals so I have more than a passing interest. This is another example of our government appointing supposed “independent experts” who embrace the same ideological agenda and guarantee the desired end result. No matter that it flies in the face of a large body of scientific evidence and research. Let’s take a trip back in time and have a look, shall we? 

 Man-made climate change, or anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW), became the World’s obsession in the late 90’s and we were subjected to apocalyptic accounts of what would happen if we didn’t massively reduce our carbon footprints in the next 12 years. Humans, being a bit slow on the uptake and conservative by nature, decided to test the theory by waiting to see what happened. Lo-and-behold, everything was pretty much the same 12 years later. 

NZCPR: Submission on the Climate Change Commission’s Draft Emissions Budget

 

Climate Change Commission
PO Box 24448
Wellington 6142
hello@climatecommission.govt.nz

New Zealand Centre for Political Research Submission on the Climate Change Commission’s Draft Emissions Budget

Dear Sir,

Thank you for providing the opportunity to submit on the Climate Change Commission’s draft emissions budget.

This submission is on behalf of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, a public policy think tank established in 2005 by former Member of Parliament Dr Muriel Newman.

We propose to address three issues of major concern.

1. The emissions budgets are not evidence-based

Bryce Wilkinson: More false arguments against our Emissions Trading Scheme

The Climate Change Response Act 2000, the Climate Change response (Zero carbon) Amendment Act and the Climate Change Commission’s draft advice have two things in common.

First, their purported primary goal is to reduce global net greenhouse gas emissions.

Second, their proposed means depart from that goal.

The Paris Accord permits international trade in carbon credits. The amended Climate Change Response Act largely prevents it. The Commission’s draft advice necessarily aligns with the Act.

Preventing New Zealanders from trading in overseas credits prevents them from maximising their contribution to reducing net global emissions. Doing that is inconsistent with the primary goal.

Peter Morgan: An Open Letter to Chairman NZ Climate Change Commission

2 February 2021

An Open Letter to Dr Rod Carr, Chair, New Zealand Climate Change Commission

For the personal attention of
Dr Rod Carr
Chair
New Zealand Climate Change Commission
Email: Rod.Carr@climatecommission.govt.nz

Dear Dr Carr

The third-to-last paragraph of your “Letter from the Chair” in the Commission’s Report dated 31 January 2021 is:

“We are seeking feedback on our draft advice before it is finalised. There are matters of fact, assumptions and value judgments we invite you to review. We are committed to true consultation. We will consider all evidence we receive through consultation and are prepared to change any part of our work in light of this.”

NZCPR Weekly: The Climate Commission's Radical Plan

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

In this week’s NZCPR newsletter, we explain why the Climate Commission’s radical plan to transform New Zealand into a bureaucratically controlled and centrally planned economy is unnecessary – as well as recommending that anyone who is concerned send in a submission before March 14; our NZCPR Guest Commentator Barry Brill outlines why the Commission’s report is such a disappointment – and he provides two further articles, one with suggestions for submissions and the other with options for the future; and our poll asks whether you support the recommendations of the Climate Commission..

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

Barry Brill: The Five Ws of Climate Policy

Despite its glossy 188 pages, the Climate Commission’s 2021 Draft Advice For Consultation provides precious few answers to the vexed questions that have bedevilled climate change policymakers, both here and around the world, for the last three decades.

The ancient Greeks held that a report can only be considered complete if it answers five questions (5W) – what, why, who, where and when?. Nowadays, we add H2 – how and how much?

Climate policy gives rise to endless sub-questions under most of these headings and I touch upon just a smattering of the questions that should be raised during the ‘consultation’ period which expires on 14 March 2021:

Barry Brill: What the Climate Commission Didn’t Tell Us

The Commission’s first report looks just like every report that ever comes out of the Ministry for the Environment.

It is firmly aligned with the loudest climate change activists. It never deviates from the ‘party line’ that 12.25°C was the perfect global average temperature and that changes in climate are all terrifying. It knows we can control future weather if only we are prepared to make sacrifices now.

Above all, the report assumes that there will be no significant changes in energy-related technologies[1] during our lifetimes. If they are wrong about that, then they are wrong about everything.

Bryan Leyland: “Things you know that ain't so” - Climate Commission ‘advice’

As the American humorist Will Rogers said: “It’s not what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

“Advice from the NZ Climate Commission is evidence-based”

They make this claim on their website and in their 2021 “Draft Advice for Consultation”.

It follows that any recommendations they make should be backed up by the evidence, technically and economically achievable and supported by a cost benefit analysis.

Mike Hosking: Climate Commission's recommendations is just another report

 

The good news is you’re not losing your BBQ.

There has been quite a lot of coverage on the Climate Commission’s interim report on what it is we need to do to get our climate act together.

I mean, it’s not like we haven’t had reports before, and lots of them. And it’s not like we haven’t signed deals before making a lot of promises that were never going to come true.

That’s the great failing of big issues like climate change: we are fully on board with the furrowed brow and deep concern, just not so much when it comes to the doing.

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.