Congratulations, New Zealand. You lost at the rugby and cricket World Cups again, but at least you finished ahead of Australia. Now you can also claim the dubious prize of out-virtue-signalling Australia on climate change.
The passage of the Zero Carbon Act has New Zealand head and shoulders above Australia’s action to prevent dangerous climate change, according to a new trans-Tasman analysis.
A score card published by climate action advocates 350.org has praised New Zealand’s “global leadership” on reducing emissions, while Australia’s policy inaction is described as “a source of great shame”.
350.org is, of course, the activist group led by alarmist flog Bill McKibben, who was last seen standing in an unseasonal snow-storm in Washington, shouting that it was “getting hot in here”. New Zealand is being damned by faint praise from the peanut gallery.
To get an idea of how unhinged McKibben’s little clown car activist group really are, they’re busily shouting the same, debunked (by actual climate scientists, no less) idiocy that Australia’s current bushfires were somehow “caused” by the Morrison government.
Linking policy paralysis on climate change to the bushfires ravaging many parts of Australia this month, 350 is urging local politicians to follow the lead set by their New Zealand counterparts.
“As we can see with these devastating fires, there are real consequences to the political games our politicians want to play,” 350 Australia deputy chief executive Glen Klatovsky said.
The fires are a consequence of the current drought, which is part of a long-term natural cycle afflicting Australia, and which climate scientist Andy Pitman explicitly ruled out being linked to climate change.
Jacinda Ardern’s government legislated not only their Paris Agreement target this month, but went further by committing to becoming a net zero carbon-emitting country by 2050.
Cross-party support for the law and the establishment of an independent climate commission has relegated debate on climate change from a top-line political issue.
New Zealand also boasts an emissions trading scheme, already operational for over a decade, an ambitious goal to plant one billion trees by 2028 and another to have its entire electricity needs met by renewable energy by 2035.
theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/kiwis-beating-australia-on-climate-action/
“Ambitious goals” and “Jacinda Ardern” are something of a running joke, of course. She spouts lots of “ambitious goals” – and then completely fails to deliver. Kiwibuild, anyone?
As for the Zero Carbon goal, that’s just more Ardern smoke and mirrors. By excluding biogenic methane from the “zero” goal, Ardern has deceitfully shifted the shell hiding the gigantic pea that is New Zealand’s single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. In any case, both countries’ emissions are minuscule. Reducing them or not will make nine-tenths of bugger-all difference to the climate.
But, hey, it’s climate activism. Deceitful virtue-signalling is almost mandatory.