Coronavirus pushed climate change off the NZ budget

How times change. Last November Jacinda Ardern announced a zero carbon plan for New Zealand.

Six months later, after Coronavirus, saving the planet barely gets a mention.

Once the luxury money is gone, the golden gravy train will dry up. Crazy ideas about changing the global weather are a boom time activity.

NZ Budget 2020: trading coronavirus for the climate crisis

Analysis: In responding to the Covid-19 crisis, the Government appears to have completely forgotten about the climate crisis.

In announcing the 2020 Budget, which creates a $50 billion Covid-19 recovery and relief fund and pumps billions into health, infrastructure and wage subsidy extensions, Jacinda Ardern said.

The climate is hardly mentioned in the Budget – the word itself is used just four times in the entire document and not at all in Ardern’s speech to Parliament.

h/t  RicDre,  Eric Worrall at WUWT who found the gentlest spin:

 

 

9.5 out of 10 based on 41 ratings

22 comments to Coronavirus pushed climate change off the NZ budget

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    “The climate is hardly mentioned in the Budget – the word itself is used just four times in the entire document and not at all in Ardern’s speech to Parliament.”

    I think I said “disastrous global warming is here now” once, but I got away with it …

    2009: “THE planet has just five years to avoid disastrous global warming, says the Federal Government’s chief scientist.” (Penny Sackett)
    https://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/weve-got-5-years-to-save-world-says-australias-chief-scientist-professor-penny-sackett/news-story/614a7441983b090314f05f7f705a1d5a

    2020, abc Four Corners: Australia’s most senior former public servants and scientists reveal their anger ignorance about climate policy failure

    “Former chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett, who served between 2008 and 2011, labelled the failures of climate policy akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion.”
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-18/four-corners-climate-change-public-servants-reveal-anger/12235180

    >> It appears the policy reflects the garbage science.

    90

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Excellent…we have what appears to be one man made disaster pushing an imaginary man made disaster into the bin.

    Irony++

    180

  • #
    Ross

    Do not hold your breath on this. This was a fairly rushed budget (we in NZ should have done the same as Australia and delayed the Budget). In a way it is meaningless because no one could be reasonably expected to provide a useful budget at this time. But it is election year, so I suppose they thought they had to produce something.

    Climate change as an issue has not gone away in NZ. The left love it.

    110

    • #
      joseph

      I agree Ross, even if it’s in the bin for a moment or two, it’s going to find it’s way out again.
      Four Corners last night made it clear climate change isn’t even anywhere near a bin in Australia.

      40

  • #

    As for ‘Climate Change’ action, manana is soon enough for me!

    50

  • #
    reformed warmist of logan

    Good morning Jo,
    Check out California.
    Pre-Corona >> $12 billion green funding over 5 years.
    Post-Corona >> zip/nada/zilch/zero/nill.
    To use a phrase from Apocolypse Now >> I love the smell of Napalm in the morning!
    Also, check out the German whispers of 180 degree turns in the last week or so.
    Can’t wait to see what other areas of the world see the light in the coming weeks.
    Warm regards, Reformed Warmist of Logan

    80

  • #
    MudCrab

    I would hazard a guess that it actually has less to do with Wuhan response and, considering it is an election year, has more to do with what the Earl of Warwick has had to say in people’s ears.

    10

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      Who pray tell, is the earl of Warwick ?

      01

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Earl of Warwick, is one of the oldest titles in the peerage of the United Kingdom. Warwick refers to Warwick Castle.

        Please do try to keep up …

        41

  • #
    Peter B

    Old Chinese Proverb:
    When there is food on the table you have many problems.
    When there is no food on the table you only have one problem.

    80

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      No food shortages in anywhere in Tasmania, ( or the rest of Oz ) or New Zealand.
      Many many people elsehere in the world would love to have that ‘problem’ Peter.

      13

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    Note to Jo and/or art department:

    Not sure if many Mainlanders (South Islanders) will be happy with the way you’ve draped the Union Jack flag all over their fair and rugged landscape.

    Apart from Christchurch’s very English beginnings – cathedrals, gardens, punts on the Avon River – most folk trace their ancestry back to Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and numerous European countries, thanks to the 1860 goldrushes and post-WWII immigration.

    Me mother’s Northern Irish Catholic working class great-grandparents (both sides) sure had no time for Limey and THAT flag of oppression when they stepped off their (respective) ships in Dunedin and Oamaru on the east coast of the South Island. Funnily enough, each succeeding generation gradually shifted north, dare I say in search of a change in climate, ie. less snowy, icy, frosty, brutal, to one a little warmer and more benign.

    Can’t fathom out why James Shaw and his fellow Green-necks want to take us back to those cold, dark, brutal days: sad to say it’s not the last we’ve heard of him and his kind. Beware the ‘kind’ Jacinda smile.

    30

    • #

      How odd that the Irish made such a mess in their own patch that they often ended up in other places with the English flag… my ancestor’s mess was worth 14 years. convicted .transported. Britain was the best thing that ever happened to her. Under the British flag with a mixed multitude the family prospered… and forgot they were Irish at all..

      11

  • #
    Serge Wright

    I’m sure China will be happy to lend NZ a few hundred billion dollars as part of their belts and roads debt trap initiative to help them stop emitting a fraction of their 0.2% contribution to global GHG. Meanwhile, China will continue adding to their giant 30% contribution without a protester in sight or a word of criticism from the loony left.

    30

  • #
    Gordon

    How is this even possible? We are all going to die from climate change, the planet is on fire. Greta says so. What happened?

    00