June 02, 2017
New Zealand shirking over Paris deal
A Maori climate change campaigner says New Zealand can’t take the high moral ground over the United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement because of its own poor record.
President Donald Trump today announced the US was abandoning the commitments it made in the 2105 agreement.
Dr Rhys Jones from OraTaiao: The NZ Climate & Health Council, says as the world’s largest economy and the second largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, the US is critical to efforts to keep global warming below 2C.
He says the Paris emission reduction commitments were voluntary, which was something the New Zealand Government took advantage of by setting relatively weak targets.
"What the Paris agreement is intended to do is for each country to ramp up their commitments to accelerate their reduction in emissions, and we need to be doing that and we need to be looking at ways to move away from a fossil fuel-based economy, looking at how we can reduce our emissions in really important sectors like transport and also in agriculture we which is the big one for us," Dr Jones says.
He says President Trump is wrong to say his withdrawal is about saving jobs, because it puts the US out of step with the economic opportunities involved in shifting to renewable energy sources.
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