New Zealand cannot afford to double down on Paris climate targets

Dear Prime Minister Luxon, Deputy Prime Minister Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Elect Seymour, Climate Change Minister Watts and Tukituki MP Catherine Wedd,

I am emailing to ask you to reverse Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ recent decision to double down on the Ardern/Shaw Paris Climate targets, on the very obvious grounds that it will undermine the Government’s ability to grow our economy and expand our exports. Therefore it will have a detrimental financial impact on every New Zealander

With the United States recently pulling out of the Paris Agreement and even the United Kingdom (under a Labour Government no less) now wavering on its ‘Net Zero’ commitments, why should New Zealand commit now to go it alone?

Our economy is already struggling. 

We are in the longest per-capita GDP recession since records began. 

Government spending is at its highest ever levels – even higher than under Grant Robertson and Labour – and your Government is facing an ongoing structural deficit. To put it bluntly, New Zealand does not have tens of billions of dollars spare to send overseas to buy the carbon credits to meet the unnecessary 2030 targets, let alone a more aggressive 2035 target.

This is the first real test of your Government’s commitment to ‘going for growth.’  Every cent that your Government is committing to send overseas comes from the pockets of New Zealand’s Taxpayers – people like me and it will hit ordinary New Zealanders the hardest, as always.

Let us also not forget that The Paris Agreement says – that food production should not be inhibited by Climate Change Actions – at least that is my understanding. Your latest targets will surely be at great cost to our agricultural production – an area in which it is acknowledged that we lead the World!! 

How stupid is that?

Therefore I would much rather see my money going where it can make a real difference to New Zealanders’ lives. Treasury forecasts that the Ardern/Shaw 2030 targets could cost up to $12,000 for every household. That’s enough to build 10 or 12 Dunedin Hospitals or invest in our own climate change initiatives so keeping it in house.

The $12,000 is not even counting the cost of lost economic growth, higher energy costs, and lost exports. The simple fact is that New Zealand is a small country so even if we spent every cent we had reducing emissions (or buying overseas credits) it would not matter at all so long as countries like the USA, China, and Russia don’t follow suit and keep doing their own thing. New Zealand should be a follower in (so called) Climate Change and not a pace setter as seems to be the aim of the current agenda.

With the United States pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and China still producing 60% of its electricity by burning coal, this decision puts New Zealand on a very expensive path with little or no benefit to the environment and at a high cost to every Taxpaying New Zealander.  

As an almost 79 year old (my birthday is in April) I have seen Climate Change throughout my life. It has always been dictated by the four seasons – Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring and so is controlled by NATURE. No New Zealand Government or individual New Zealander can do anything that will over ride the effects and impacts of NATURE.  

You may call that Climate Denial – I call it Climate realism.

Accordingly I/we can’t allow our country to sacrifice itself on the altar of good intentions and fill the pockets of those driving the climate agenda at the cost of all New Zealanders..

Therefore I am asking, no make that demanding, that you avoid leaving New Zealand a much poorer country, and I respectfully urge you to collectively overrule the recently set 2035 Paris target because it is a dream not an acceptable or realistic decision.

I have also just read an excellent similar letter by Gary Moller over at The Good Oil Blog so go and have a look at that too and use it, along with mine as the basis for your response to Messrs Luxon, Peters, Seymour and Watts. I always include my Electorate MP in such submissions.