A defining moment with some caveats
Climate change, we’ve been told this year, is ‘‘this generation’s nuclear-free moment’’.
Told by none other than our new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, though at the time she wasn’t yet our leader. She was Labour’s, and we were five weeks out from an election that has fundamentally altered our political landscape.
As such dramatic moments go, though, this one is taking on a slightly less definitive air than the nuclear-free one 30-odd years ago. It’s become a sort of ‘‘nuclear moment with caveats’’, which seems to reflect the fact that New Zealand has a coalition government, which was not the case in the 1980s, when Labour, in opposition, proposed nuclear-free zone legislation, and Robert Muldoon, unsure of having the numbers to see it off, called an illfated snap election.
Under David Lange’s resultant Labour Government, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 was passed.
On Monday, Ardern and Green Party co-leader James Shaw, the Climate Change Minister, announced that the Government will go to the people from May next year to consult on what targets should form the basis of a Zero Carbon Act, with a bill reflecting that consultation to be introduced in October.
The aim is to make New Zealand carbon-neutral by 2050.
It’s clear, though, that it’s not going to be as simple as making a decision that no new activities – such as coal mining and oil drilling – which could potentially fly in the face of an intention to be carbon-neutral in just over three decades, will be allowed, and cracking on with it.
In an interview with Radio New Zealand yesterday, Shaw, presumably wearing both his ministerial and party hats, said he would advise the Government against issuing any new permits for such activity, but effectively acknowledged that that was all he could do.
Ardern has made it clear no mining on conservation land will be allowed, but that the Government’s position on other permits is that they will be made on a case-by-case basis. The entirely reasonable thinking behind that appears to be that there will have to be a gradual transition away from the use of fossil fuels, with the fate of communities potentially affected by decisions on mining, oil drilling and even fracking to be considered.
The call looming largest relates to the proposed Te Kuha open cast coal mine, near Westport, which has been granted consent. The decision rests with Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, but plainly it will be a decision for the Government, led by Labour but including NZ First and the Greens. Depending on the perspectives of the latter parties, some horsetrading seems inevitable.
Which illustrates that it’s nigh on impossible for a coalition government to be a government of absolutes. In most cases, a coalition is founded on compromises, and the journey towards a carbon-neutral New Zealand will certainly feature a few of those. Our climate change moment may take a while.