It’s a general rule of politics that bad news is dumped out on a Friday, the assumption being that the MSM are off-work and won’t pay attention to it before Monday, by which time it’s already “old news” and hopefully buried by other events.

Whether this still works in the age of Social Media and alternative Internet news sites is another question, but National’s Climate Change Minister, the ironically named Simon Watts, clearly still believes in the media strategy, given what he unloaded last Friday:

At the very moment that President Trump has withdrawn the USA from the Paris Climate Accords, New Zealand has decided to double down on the insanity of Net Zero by 2030. The Taxpayers’ Union had this to say of the proposal.

The target, which locks unavoidable agricultural emissions into New Zealand’s international targets, are even more ‘ambitious’ than the 2030 targets made when Jacinda Ardern/James Shaw flew to Glasgow. They will cost future taxpayers literally tens of billions of dollars in penalties.

I’d already estimated $NZ 33 billion (Paying The Danegeld) to pay for carbon credits soon after 2030, and that was assuming a reduction in GHG emissions of 5% per year. We would have to cut our emissions by about 50% to hit our decade cap (to 2030) of  571 megatonnes, but that cut would have to be effective immediately and even the officials allow that it’s not going to happen, hence their estimates for carbon credit purchases.

The impossibility of hitting this old target is likely the driver of the new one; push it out by five years but claim you’ll still get a 50%+ reduction. No mention of the penalties we’ll have to pay before then and of course both Luxon and Watts will be long gone by 2035, which is also classic politics; just kick the can down the road.

Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, said “Ardern’s 50% emissions reduction by 2030 target was ludicrous. Treasury estimates that in just five years taxpayers will be on the hook for up to $24 billion – that’s $12,000 per New Zealand household. The Government has now signed us up for another bill for five years later.”

“To not only lock this cost in, but go even harder for 2035 is economic sabotage. Watts and his Cabinet colleagues are not going to be around in a decade to have to pay the bill, but are doubling down on Paris at the very time our trading partners are pulling back.”

“Half of New Zealand’s emissions are agricultural. To achieve the 51-55% reduction Simon Watts has put NZ on the hook for would mean we either must shut down parts of our agricultural sector, or just about everything else. To say this is fantasy does Mickey Mouse a disservice.”

“The only way New Zealand avoids paying tens of billions in international carbon credits is if every square inch of Otago and Southland is planted in pine.

A process already well underway as I wrote about here, a couple of years ago, quoting Dave Read, a sheep farmer in the North Island who had run the numbers back then on reducing agricultural GHG emissions and concluded it was folly, plus being self-destructive:

I am forced to watch sustainable food production (my life’s work) destroyed even though it is expected that 1.4 billion people will be protein-deficient by 2050. I lie awake in the early hours, composing yet another submission to be filed and ignored by group of professional listeners in Wellington

Something also noted as an aside by Karl du Fresne in his review of a recently published book about the old highway, Route 52, which passes through the back country of the northern Wairarapa into southern and central Hawke’s Bay, A journey into the hinterland:

He has captured a part of New Zealand that is slowly but irrevocably disappearing – in fact, sometimes almost literally disappearing under a relentlessly spreading cloak of pinus radiata, which is a recurring theme in his book and gives it a slightly elegiac tone.

At the time of my post I said that a change of government would not change this situation and so it is proving to be (co-blogger Lucia noted the same in 2023 with her article, A Vote for National is a Vote for Net Zero 2050). Back to Jordan Williams:

But even the Government’s own experts advise that pathway is not credible. So this decision will see New Zealanders having to stump up billions more to buy international credits in a decade’s time.

The Taxpayers’ Union has long supported sensible emissions reductions using our world leading Emissions Trading Scheme. But such a scheme can only operate with realistic targets and collective international action. Sacrificing our economic prosperity at the altar of good intentions when other countries are pulling back is nothing short of economic sabotage.

Minister Todd McClay was on radio this morning talking about how the Government want to ‘power up’ agricultural exports. He’s sure in for a shock.

Meanwhile, Simon Watts has just harpooned the Prime Minister’s ‘Going for Growth’ plan. Mr Luxon, Mr Peters, and Mr Seymour need to step in and overrule this decision.

I’ve been hearing about economic growth from Labour and National for decades now, along with “value added” and had some hope in 2008 that John Key’s new National government meant it. They even set up a Taskforce to figure out how to close the economic gap with Australia by 2025. But as Don Brash and Michael Reddell, who wrote much of the Taskforce’s subsequent report (Brash had led the team) wrote just the other day:

The report wasn’t well-received by the then government – in fact, the then Prime Minister openly dismissed it even before it was released publicly – but that didn’t alter the facts: New Zealand was lagging far behind Australia (and Australia itself wasn’t, and isn’t, a stellar economic performer).

It is now 2025 and over the intervening years – under successive governments, led by both main parties – no progress at all has been made in closing the gaps to Australia. If anything, and as measured by labour productivity (output per hour worked), the gaps have widened a bit further.

The new Net Zero is just going to make it worse. As my co-blogger PDM put it in his letter about this sent to Luxon and company the other day:

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

That productivity-per-person thing is obscure but compounds relentlessly, especially as other nations pass us by, lifting the incomes and wealth of their peoples. We still offer a better shot at improving lives for the Philippine nurses who keep our retirement homes and hospitals running, but at the rate we’re going that won’t be the case by 2050 or perhaps earlier. Will Kiwis get a clue then when there’s nobody to care for them in their old age. including supporting Superannuation and health care via taxes?

Cheap and plentiful energy is only one factor in this but it’s a big one. No developed or developing economy got where they are by making it more expensive and less reliable, which is what these emission targets are going to result in, despite the idiocies of those talking about solar panels and wind turbines are getting cheaper. If only that cost was the driver of power prices, but it’s not.

We’re not the only insane people of course. Over in Britain the rich and fanatical Labour Minister, Ed Miliband, is also doubling down on this:

The North Sea Transition Authority has ordered Cuadrilla to destroy the UK’s only viable shale gas wells, forcing the company to fill them with concrete and decommission the site by June 2025. Cuadrilla confirmed the process will begin next month. A reminder that Britain was on the verge of blackouts just this month… National Gas data shows UK gas stockpiles have collapsed by 36.7% compared to last year, and by 2030, Britain will be importing 70% of its gas.

Adding to the warnings was this piece of news out of Norway – already angered last month by massive increases in domestic power prices (despite having cheap hydro-power as extensive as ours and deeper in reserves) due to German purchases because their wind energy system died away – as Norwegians also see their gas prices rising because of demand from Britain:

The only viable solution to renewable intermittency today is putting gas turbines on standby, then firing them up at vast cost when needed using imported gas, over half of which is typically from Norway via a pipe.

The Norwegian coalition government just collapsed because of the rising anger of voters as they get screwed on energy prices – despite having plenty of hydro-electricity and gas – because of the insanity of German and British renewable energy policies. There has been much talk of cutting the power connectors to Germany (“It’s an absolutely shit situation,” said Norway’s energy minister Terje Aasland cited by FT), so the gas pipelines to Britain might not be far behind.

It’s tempting to look around the world, see these other insane people and be comforted that we’re still part of the crowd, but insane asylums are not actually very nice places, and aside from Trump breaking out of the Paris one even those who remain are starting to hit the brick wall of reality:

I see that the infamous kook, Monbiot, was on the panel, and he won’t change his mind even when Britain ends up locked into the Cuba/North Korea path. But then he and many like him likely desire that as well, despite pro-forma denials.