Ben Cowles
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ENVIRONMENTALISTS lambasted a Bill which passed through New Zealand’s parliament today aimed at lowering the country’s carbon emissions to zero as “all bark and no bite.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Zero Carbon Amendment Bill “makes a start on tackling climate change because the alternative is the catastrophic cost of doing nothing.”
But Greenpeace New Zealand executive director Dr Russel Norman said the “reasonably ambitious piece of legislation” had had its teeth ripped out.
“There’s bark, but there’s no bite,” Norman said.
“The Bill sends some good signals until you get to the section at the end that negates everything else you’ve just read. This section states there is no remedy or relief for failure to meet the 2050 target, meaning there’s no legal compulsion for anyone to take any notice.
“We’d hope that the rest of this year would not be spent passing this framework into legislation at the expense of passing meaningful laws to back solar and wind energy, stop the importation of polluting vehicles, reduce cow numbers, end all new oil exploration and ban synthetic nitrogen.”
