So much for carbon neutrality

Now do we all remember Helen Clark promising a goal of carbon neutrality?  It was a wonderful uplifting speech.  Despite the fact that New Zealand had a higher rate of increase of greenhouse gases than both the US and Australia, Clark promised we would not just stabilise emissions, not just reduce them a bit but abolish them all together (in a net emissions sense).

Now admittedly she said this was an aspiration, with no fixed date.  But you would think that at the very least they would be supportive of some firm targets as progress points.

But as No Right Turn points out, in Vienna a target of 25% to 40% reductions by 2020 was proposed.  Naturally one would expect Helen Clark’s Government to support this.  But no they didn’t.  So did they just abstain?  No they didn’t.  They were one of a minority of countries  objecting to the target as too demanding.

NRT calls a spade a spade:

Two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards. Having deliberately dragged our feet for fifteen years and repeatedly failed to implement policy, we’re now using that failure as an excuse to further lower the bar.

Hypocrisy just doesn’t sell, and we can expect European companies to make full use of our government’s cowardly and morally indefensible position in advertising against us. That is, if the EU just doesn’t stick a carbon tax on our exports for being so dirty.

And Green co-leader Russel Norman is slightly more diplomatic:

So on the one hand we have all the rhetoric about climate change and on the other, when we are in a position at an international meeting to push for stronger action on climate change, instead we try to stop others pushing for stronger action.

I bet you deep down he wants to call them “Two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards” as No Right Turn did 🙂