Less than a week after he was a party to a Pacific Islands Forum Declaration committing Forum nations to the Paris Accord and greenhouse gas targets, Winston Peters is saying he wants New Zealand to pull out of the agreement.
Only one country has pulled out of the Accord: the United States.
Peters was at the Forum as Foreign Minister, and its key outcome was the Belau Declaration, which commits Forum members, including New Zealand, to “an unwavering commitment to keep a temperature increase to 1.5°C within reach “in accordance with the Paris Agreement.
The Forum communique, which was issued last week after the leaders’ summit, said climate change remained the single greatest threat to the security, livelihoods and wellbeing of Pacific peoples and underscored the urgency of ambitious global action consistent with the best available science.
And the Forum separately agreed to a special statement on climate change called “the Belau Declaration”.
The Declaration said it underscored “our strong concern that current global actions and the aggregate ambition and implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions are insufficient to halt a 1.5°C overshoot.
The Declaration adds on to the 2018 Boe Declaration which Forum leaders signed at their Forum in Naoero and which deals with regional security.
That too began by stating that Forum members reaffirmed that climate change remained the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific and their commitment to progress the implementation of the Paris Agreement. But as New Zealand First leader, he obviously does not support the Declaration that the Government he serves as Foreign Minister agreed to.
“The world is catching on, and we are going to get left behind in crippling debt and a swamp of regulations on our productive sector if we remain signed up to the Paris Agreement,” he told a Hamilton audience yesterday.
“We are in the heartland of agriculture today, the Waikato, and we need to stop this nonsense.
“New Zealand First is saying we need to get out of the Paris Accord altogether.”
Just as his opposition to the India Free Trade Agreement and his attack on Green MP Xu Nan have raised questions about how he draws the line between being Foreign Minister and New Zealand First leader, so does yesterday’s statement on pulling out of the Paris Accord.
The Prime Minister has made it very clear that New Zealand will not pull out.
He says it is a non-negotiable bottom line for National that we stay in.
“We need to stay in the Paris Agreement because it only makes New Zealand poorer if we come out of it,” he told RNZ Morning Report a week ago.
“Now, are there problems with Paris? Absolutely. We’ve got a big target to try and hit by 2030; we’ll do everything we can, but equally I’m not going to go send billions of dollars offshore. I’m going to do everything we can to try to hit that target.
“We’ve a target that comes five years later; we’ve obviously got our net zero 2050 targets, which we’re making good progress on and are on track to deliver.
“But there are real problems with the Paris Agreement ultimately.
“In a few years, people are going to have to come together because of those top 25 economies; I think about 75, 80% of them are way off track on their Paris commitments.
“So there’s going to be a reckoning at some point because most countries are going to be off track on delivering.”
ACT released its climate change policy yesterday, and although it doesn’t say it would pull out of the Paris Accord, the net effect of its policy would be to place New Zealand at odds with the Paris goals.
Act would scrap the Net Zero by 2050 goals and repeal the Zero Carbon Act, instead benchmarking New Zealand’s emissions cap against our major trading partners.
Of our four top trading partners, one, the United States, has withdrawn from the Paris Accord and does not have an emissions cap.
China, another of our top 4, also does not have a cap, but instead its 15th Five-Year Plan sets a goal to reduce carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) by 17% between 2026 and 2030.
Australia has a net zero by 2050 target, the same as ours; so does our fourth-largest trading partner, the European Union.
But the New Zealand – European Free Trade Agreement treats climate targets as binding obligations, meaning failure to meet Paris Agreement goals could lead to trade sanctions.
The fact that National’s two coalition partners both oppose the 20250 Net Zero goals means that if National wants to change any part of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019, it would need Labour’s support.
That would be unlikely to be forthcoming for any further withdrawal from the 2050 goals.
Labour is in a different position. Were it to form a Government, it would be under pressure from the Greens and Opportunity to tighten the Act’s targets.
But it has both its support parties on its side; National does not.
Instead, the question would be, if National formed the next Government, how much policy rope it would give Winston Peters were he to remain as Foreign Minister.
