One of the big problems with climate change policy is that the government has refused to let local authorities use our major piece of environmental regulation to reduce emissions. Since 2003, local bodies have been explicitly forbidden from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in their planning documents, and in consent decisions. But now, those restrictions have been repealed:
Coal mines and fossil fuel power plants could be a thing of the past in New Zealand after the Government passed a law which allows environmentally-damaging projects to be refused.
The amendment to the Resource Management Act closes a loophole which allowed consent for new builds without consideration for the environment.
Sadly, this part of the law won’t come into effect until 2022, so there’s far too much time for dirty polluting infrastructure to be consented and its emissions locked in before then. Also, the parallel provision in the EEZ Act is still in place, so we’ll still have the ludicrous situation of the EPA being forbidden to consider climate change impacts when deciding whether to consent new gas wells. But hopefully that will now become a priority for repeal.
The government will supposedly be developing a National Policy Statement on climate change to guide local authorities and their plans. They’ve been promising that since at least the mid-1990’s and the Stratford Power Station decision, and again in 2003 when they passed the ban on considering climate change in the first place. But if they don’t, then the courts will effectively do it for them.
Step by step, close it off. Good work Greens, well done James!
Yes, a strategic goal achieved. Definitely a big win for our parliamentarians! And it disposes of a major component of Helen Clark's toxic legacy, right?
So precisely who enacted that into our law? Let's see a list of the guilty parties. How else does the learning from mistakes get done?? According to the govt webpage, the dirty deed actually got done in 2004.
More to the point: Who voted against this change to fix the problem?
Celebrating and supporting this win and those who achieved it could be the most effective thing minor players like us can do An encouraging reaction by the public might mean further progress on the issue. Do we have so much energy that we can constantly embroil ourselves in bagging the "others"? It's challenging enough whipping-up enthusiasm for the good guys.
Exactly what's needed. A good publicist.
The usual suspects.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/combined/HansDeb_20200624_20200625_32
Very happy with this result.
Fantastic.
Now onto the next battles. One of which should be further explicit consideration of climate change in planning and building regulations beyond stuff like insulation and double-glazing, which seemed to only make it into the regs because of the direct benefits to occupants.
I'm thinking of stupid shit like Auckland Council regs requiring dark-coloured roofs on new houses. From a climate change viewpoint, that's just dumb. Last time I had a crack at the numbers, going from a dark gray roof to a light green roof on about 150 sq m of roof has a similar climate impact as taking one car off the road or one cow off the paddock.
Andre I believe Councils should have to audit their regulations and timetable a series of changes to cover situations similar to the one you have raised. If every council changed 3 or 4 things a year the impact would be huge.
Well done the Greens and Shaw, that is a great example of system change.
Just need Ad to come in here and moan and carp about how the Greens haven't achieved anything and they should deserve to be under 5% in the polls and it's only their core of hard-core supporters left that are even getting them those numbers, etc.
Nope it's a good win.
Learn the skill of advanced baiting.
Just pointing out how hollow your claims are.
If you want to get more than 5%, you need to get your "wins" turned into stories that people care about.
The "win" trumpeted in this post, so far as I can tell, hasn't been reported in the NZHerald, or RNZ, or stuff, or scoop, or TVNZ, or TV3, or even the Federated Farmers website, or Forest and Bird, or anything else other than the deep green pearlclutchers on The Standard.
If a media release falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it really release at all?
Note of course that the one Green Party story that got any airtime this weekend was nothing to do with the environment, but was precisely in the same field that got them so fucked up last election: social welfare:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/outdated-unfair-and-unliveable-greens-announce-sweeping-new-policy-targeting-poverty-reduction
Not that I need to give the Greens any advice, but fucking up like last time would seem to be not the path to be on. Still, as the post says, it's a win.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/121952729/greens-claim-victory-after-climate-change-rules-added-to-rma
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2006/S00251/rma-law-promotes-healthy-waterways.htm
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/419940/green-party-celebrates-changes-in-rma-that-consider-climate-change