If there is something that I can abide less than a Tory politician it is someone who starts off being radical for the kicks, tacks to the middle as career prospects beckon, becomes a Labour politician because people were impressed with his verbal dexterity, embarrasses the party because not only he is really lazy but he also is that stupid that he uses his Ministerial Credit Card to watch porn, leaves Parliament to take up a doozy of a Diplomatic post offered to him by Murray McCully and the National Party, then joins a total waste space of a party because it was again good for his career opportunities, as part of NZ First supports his former party because there was no other way he would be a Minister, gets voted out of office and then joins a retrograde Government that wants to trash Te Reo for political advantage even though he is a self professed Te Reo expert and then he chooses to join in the sacrificing of the future of the human race because the supporters of his party that operates near the margin of error expect it.
But that is Shane Jones.
Not only is he a member of a Government attacking Te Reo for clicks and kicks. But he has also become a climate change denier.
From Lloyd Burr at Stuff:
The new Resources Minister and Associate Energy Minister has launched a blistering attack on the “hysteria surrounding climate change”.
Shane Jones used his Address in Reply speech in Parliament to launch an attack on policies enacted by previous Governments to address climate change.
It includes an astonishing revelation to disregard targets agreed to under the Paris Agreement, which aims to reduce our 2030 net emissions to 50 percent below gross 2005 levels.
“We are not going to meet the 2030 dreamy fairytale aspirational figures that will be freeing ourselves of fossil fuels as generating energy,” Minister Jones said.
That 2030 target is part of New Zealand’s trade agreement with the EU and if it’s not reached, there’s a $24 billion reparation bill.
“We’re going to bring rigour and commonsense to the hysteria surrounding climate change,” he said.
“Whatever work has been happening at the Ministry for the Environment – not unlike Thomas Becket the meddlesome priest – that is now stopped.”
Lifting the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration is part of the Coalition Government’s policy manifesto – and Jones spoke of that happening at pace.
“I look forward to leading the debate, changing the law and enabling gas and oil exploration, wealth development to take place yet again in New Zealand.”
Mining on Department of Conservation (DoC) and Stewardship land is also in the pipeline, Jones said.
“We are going to extract the dividend from Mother Nature’s legacy on the DoC estate and those areas previously known as Stewardship land.
“There’ll be a fast track for mining, fast track for energy, that’s the thing coming in your direction,” said Jones.
Here is the video if you have the stomach to watch it.
The hysteria that Jones refers to I presume is the increasing desperate urging from people who actually know what they are talking about telling us that the planet will be irreversibly changed for the worse. Just this week UN leader António Guterres has stated that “now is the time for maximum ambition and maximum flexibility. Ministers and negotiators must move beyond arbitrary red lines, entrenched positions and blocking tactics”. Jones should listen to someone who knows what they are talking about.
And yesterday perhaps coincidentally the Government released the Climate Change Commission’s latest report. As stated by Marc Daalder in Newsroom:
The first batch of advice from the Climate Change Commission that the new Government has received makes for awkward reading.
Not because it calls out the coalition’s plans for the climate response, but because it doesn’t mention them at all. The commission’s report on the second Emissions Reduction Plan covering decarbonisation in the second half of this decade reflects government policy as of October 2023.
The awkwardness arises when one realises many of the successes the report discusses (such as electric vehicle uptake due to the Clean Car Discount) will be rolled back by the new Government. Moreover, several of the most urgent recommendations for future action will be scrapped (the review of the Emissions Trading Scheme) or delayed (pricing of agricultural emissions).
As Massey University Professor Robert McLachlan, a computational scientist and climate policy researcher, wrote on social media, reading the report “is like visiting dreamland, or travelling back in time to, say, September 2023”.
Perhaps that’s why the Government withheld the report from media until 5pm on Tuesday evening, when past releases have been provided in advance to allow for better coverage and more detailed reading of the documents. This latest report is 384 pages long.
Letting Shane have his anti science rant on the same day as the commission’s latest report is somewhat jarring. It cannot be accidental.
I wonder if National knew Jones’ speech was coming. And if it will allow mining on pristine DOC land. And the disregarding of the country’s obligations under the Paris Accord.
If the subject matter was not so important this would be quite funny. Jones’ performance would more appropriately occur in a circus. Not in the People’s House of Representatives.
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