Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We need to think critically about the future of the Paris Agreement

Finally, we have a serious party who has spent time thinking about it - and is now seriously suggesting that New Zealand should pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Now, that was what came from that ACT Party announcement that I told you would be coming today that you needed to keep an eye out for.

ACT says Paris isn't working for New Zealand and it says we should push for the agreement to be reformed - and if it isn't reformed, then we should pull out of it.

It isn't working, ACT says, because it's pushing up our food prices and it's pushing up our power prices and it's forcing the farmers off the land to make way for trees.

And you can add to that list something that we've seen a lot of this winter and last winter - it is shutting down industry because of those high power prices.

Now, there will be a lot of people who hear this from ACT and write it off as nutty climate change denier stuff. It is not.

Think about the Paris Agreement critically, right? Set aside, you know, your vibes, whether you want to help the climate, set all of that stuff aside.

Just think about this critically as to whether it works or not. 

And you can see it doesn't work. I mean, I stand to be corrected, but I cannot see any country that is meeting the targets.

We will not meet the targets. The US, one of the world's biggest polluters, has pulled out. China, the world's biggest polluter, is still building coal-powered plants.

I mean, we are fretting about the one coal-powered plant that we've got and they're building heaps of them.

India, another one of the biggest polluters, is also doing the same with coal-powered plants.

In which case, why would a country responsible for 0.17 percent of the world's emissions - or something like that - continue to persist with the Paris Agreement?

Because we're not saving the planet, we're just making Kiwis poorer.

And power is so expensive that we now have people who cannot turn on the heater every time Huntley burns expensive coal.

Coal, by the way, which is not expensive, but which we have decided to artificially make expensive in order to save the planet.

Now, the Nats have shot this down already and say it's not happening.

That's smart politics for them, because they've got to hold on to the swing voters who might react badly, you know, without thinking things through to anything that looks like climate change denial.

The Nats might want to be careful about what they rule in or out hard before the election, because they might need flexibility afterwards, given both of their coalition partners want out of Paris.

ACT officially wants out unless things change, New Zealand First keeps hinting at it.

And if National is honest with itself, they should want to get out of it too, because Paris is making us poorer, but not doing anything to save the planet.

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