Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Lisa McLaren: 350 Aotearoa Co-Director on the Government's new climate change plan

Transcript

Lisa McLaren: 350 Aotearoa Co-Director on the Government's new climate change plan · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's been a vicious backlash from the government's climate change
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: strategy release that was put out last night. Opposition MP's
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: have slammed it, arguing that Simon wants the minister has
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: essentially published a pamphlet to disguise the fact that government
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: has done little to reduce emissions. It sets out five
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: key priorities to focus on when it comes to climate
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  Speaker 1: efforts on the government's behalf. Lisa McLaren is from the
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  Speaker 1: Climate Activist Group three point fifty alt Heed Oranges with
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: me this morning. Lisa, good morning, Thank you for being
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: with me. Can I start with good morning? Good morning?
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  Speaker 1: Five quick fire questions for you this morning? Do you
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  Speaker 1: generally agree with these sentiments of what the statements I'm
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: about to make. We should have infrastructure that's resilient and
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  Speaker 1: communities well prepared for climate change. Do you think that's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a good objective?
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  Speaker 2: Definitely, though you can do that many different ways.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: All right, What about do you think we should have
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: pricing emissions and pricing them fairly and effectively to incentive
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  Speaker 1: and missions reductions?
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  Speaker 2: Again, there's like a wide range of different sortive carbon
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: markets and pricing mechanisms out there, so.
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  Speaker 1: But generally generally you agree with that.
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  Speaker 2: If it's done well, Okay, do.
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  Speaker 1: We need abundant and affordable clean energy?
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  Speaker 2: We do?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, Do we need to be world leading climate innovators.
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  Speaker 2: I think the ship might have sailed with that. We're
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  Speaker 2: already quite behind the rest of the world and a
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  Speaker 2: whole lot of stuff around climate innovation. So it's great
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  Speaker 2: to pang.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So it's a good But in terms of high
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  Speaker 1: level aims, you're on board with that and nature based
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  Speaker 1: solutions to address climate change. I'm going to say yes
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: for you because I'm in and that's a given, isn't it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: So what what what? What this means is you've just
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: agreed with all five of the points the government's made.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So what exactly are you upset about?
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  Speaker 2: So? I think you can put a nice little plan
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  Speaker 2: down on a couple of pieces of paper and it
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  Speaker 2: can look fine if it's high level. There's a few
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  Speaker 2: nice sentences that actually, this plan, well if you can
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  Speaker 2: call it a plan, is fundamentally inconsistent with the government's
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  Speaker 2: other policies that have been releasing since they've got into
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  Speaker 2: office that impact climate change. So expects tellers that to
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  Speaker 2: meet our Paris Taggarts we need to keep sixty five
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  Speaker 2: percent of oil and gas reserve and ninety percent of
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  Speaker 2: all coal reserves there must be left in the ground.
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  Speaker 2: It's just that simple. And this government wants to do
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  Speaker 2: the opposite, or they've been talking about it seems in
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  Speaker 2: the media since they got into powers oil and gas inspiration,
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  Speaker 2: maybe reversing that van looking at mining on conservation land,
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  Speaker 2: things that we thought were left in the past, that
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  Speaker 2: they're not consistent with climate action, okay, and that makes
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  Speaker 2: this new plan really meaningless.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: All right, So it's the other things that they're doing.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about that oil and gas ban. What do
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  Speaker 1: you think is happening? Because the government is saying, you know,
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  Speaker 1: we don't want to go and get the oil and out,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: but if we don't, then we're going to be importing
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  Speaker 1: dirty Indonesian coal. So what do you think is better
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand gas or dirty Indonesian coal?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I don't think either. If we get a good
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  Speaker 2: infrastructure plan happening now, we need that investment in our
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  Speaker 2: renewable energy infrastructure now. And also the governments are sending
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  Speaker 2: these signals out to overseas companies, so they are just
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: going to come and instruct it take the profits overseas,
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  Speaker 2: whereas actually, if we look at things like proper energy
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: storage here, we can make the power cheap of the
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: households improve their energy security as a company.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to read things like I'm just sorry
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  Speaker 1: to interrupt you, but I'm just going to quickly read
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  Speaker 1: your Lisa. This is just a headline from Radio and
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand from the eighth of May of this year,
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  Speaker 1: Genesis Energy to fire up coal imports citing increased demand
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  Speaker 1: and dwindling gas supply. So this is after the last
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: government band oil and gas. You've now got sitting at
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  Speaker 1: Genesis Energy, sitting at the Huntley Power State half a
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: million tons of coal that they've imported, and they're about
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  Speaker 1: to pull trigger on importing another three hundred and fifty
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: thousand tons. So you're saying that we've got enough to transition,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: but clearly we don't. I mean, otherwise we wouldn't be
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: importing all this coal, right.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I think if you look overseas, there's some great examples
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  Speaker 2: where some of this new renewable and clean energy infrastructure
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  Speaker 2: is helping with some of those like peaks and troughs
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: of the energy market. So things like we saw recently
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  Speaker 2: Australia electric vehicles. We're helping keep the power grids like rebalanced,
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  Speaker 2: if that national grid losers supply really quickly, so they
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  Speaker 2: can be used as a back up and emergencies. Other
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  Speaker 2: technology out there. Why do we want to come back
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  Speaker 2: to the stuff that actually is climate harming.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, but Lissa, do you see the problem that it's
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  Speaker 1: the lesser of two evils. It's not like it's not
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  Speaker 1: like the government is out there saying we want to
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  Speaker 1: be getting all this out and doing all these nasty things.
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  Speaker 2: I think they are so like if he's looking, you
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  Speaker 2: see fresh reck and no, if you look at Shane Jones'
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  Speaker 2: reshrick in the news, these talking about drill, baby, drill.
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  Speaker 2: We're open for business. These climate hippies have got nothing
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  Speaker 2: on us. We can just do this. This is the
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  Speaker 2: right thing to do. They unicorns like, that's not a
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  Speaker 2: government that's going out there and saying this is the
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  Speaker 2: like last case like solution we need. This is something
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  Speaker 2: they're actively promoting.
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  Speaker 1: Lisa, thank you very much for your time this morning.
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  Speaker 1: That's Lisa McLaren. She's the three point fifty ALTI Dour
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  Speaker 1: spokesperson for more from News Talks there'd be listen live
• 5:34
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• 5:37
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