The ‘transformational’ government of the coalition has taken some heavy, self-inflicted hits including the inability to institute a capital gains tax, dropping the Kermadec Island sanctuary, walking back Kiwibuild housing numbers, ousting Curran and Whaitiri and loss of business confidence to name a few.

The most consequential back-down, however, has gone almost unnoticed.  Maybe the MSM just didn’t want to give it any focus as they were obviously big supporters.  It involves a commitment to 100% renewable electricity in New Zealand by 2035,agreed shortly after the 2017 general election between the Labour and Green parties. The policy is in their agreement on confidence and supply.

Late in 2017, Cabinet agreed to set up an interim committee to plan the policy of delivering 100% renewables also establishing a permanent Climate Change Commission, another item in the Coalition agreement.

Shock, horror, the committee came back with a recommendation to drop the 100% renewables policy by 2035.  The Coalition had little option but to agree.  In one fell swoop, a huge hole had been blown in the Coalition’s plans.  James Shaw had a mouthful of dead rats, yet again.  The Greens took a sucker punch.  One of their dearest goals just went ‘poof’ in a haze of CO2.

The “for the public” explanation was that the policy would have increased power prices but done little to reduce emissions.

The reality is that it was a green, wet dream. It would have seriously hurt those on low incomes by sending power prices through the roof and wrecked the viability and competitiveness of our export industries who rely heavily on our relatively low-cost hydroelectric power generation to market their goods offshore. It would have created endless blackouts causing havoc for homes, businesses, urban motorists etc and filled the skyline with more obscene wind machines that kill birds and produce damaging low-frequency sounds. Ironically it would have also had us opening new coal mines to fill the gaps when it is dark, cold and the wind stops.

The country has dodged a bullet.  Beware though as there are others in the gun’s chamber like the Emissions Bill going through the house now.

The hit on the coalition demands more scrutiny.  Of course, we are unable to have a discussion in the MSM – a draconian and sinister misuse of editorial power – so few in the public will see it for what it is – a significant back-down and damage to the extreme green policies of the red, left-leaning Greens and Labour.

The scrutiny would show that much of the environmental policy of the coalition is wishful thinking.  It’s ideology. It’s trumped-up, airy-fairy nonsense that has no basis in sound reputable science or logic.  Nor does it have a place in policymaking.

It’s based on manipulated graphs that turned cooling temperatures into warming temperatures using hidden or distorted data.  It’s based on models produced by geeks that cannot agree between themselves and that in 20 years or so have plotted temperatures so far above actual it’s laughable.

It’s based on a ‘hockey stick’ graph that emerged from one scientist studying the growth rings in half a dozen spruce trees in Siberia and ignoring decades of research into ice cores from multiple international sites that show a medieval warm period hotter than it is now.  (Note: It is Greenland, not Whiteland)

It’s based on fictitious claims of hot days, record temperatures, hottest months, warmest years when in many countries temperatures in the 1930s were several degrees hotter. It’s based on a politician’s movie that contained 35 proven factual errors but won him a handsome bank balance and a share of a Nobel Peace Prize.

It’s based on striking terror into people’s lives, especially the young and vulnerable with wild stories of sea-level rise swamping islands and cities, horror tales of increasing storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, rain events when all the factual data shows the weather improving over 100 years of records.

It’s also based on the work of pseudo-scientists, who do no original, on the ground research but feed off the most recent outlandish claim and try and better it. It is Ponzi-science.

When you have few facts to back your claims you show an emaciated, scraggy polar bear perched on a melting blob of ice and claim that proves the end of those sweet, cuddly species – a symbol of a doomed civilisation.  No matter that their numbers are increasing to a point where a controlled reduction is discussed because the bears are over-running some areas.

You cannot build a house on the sand and expect it to last.  You cannot build policy on corrupt ideology and falsified science and expect it to perform.

Fortunately the appointed committee told it the way it was – they really didn’t have an option.  The goal of all renewables by 2035 according to the PM is now ‘aspirational’.  Hopefully, it will become ‘expirational’.