It’s the award no country wants to receive. New Zealand has been presented with the ‘Fossil of the Day’ at COP30 in Brazil over recent backtracking on methane targets.
The award, presented each day of the UN climate conference by Climate Action Network International, is awarded to the country that is “doing the most to achieve the least” on climate change.
Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Amanda Larsson says, “It’s embarrassing but it’s sadly not surprising. New Zealand has had a reputation for being clean and green but that image is being sullied by the Luxon government’s bonfire of climate policies.
“Fossil of the Day is the award no country wants to receive, and today, the shame of receiving it is on Christopher Luxon’s Government, who are weakening the requirements for our most polluting industry to take action on climate change.”
The New Zealand Government recently announced that it will weaken the target for reducing methane emissions. The vast majority of methane emissions come from the livestock industry, which is New Zealand’s biggest contributor to climate change.
This decision was made after heavy lobbying from groups like Federated Farmers and Groundswell and directly contradicts the advice of the Government’s independent Climate Change Commission, which called for a strengthening of the methane target.
At the heart of the move to reduce methane targets is a controversial accounting trick called “no additional warming”, designed to justify continued high levels of agricultural methane emissions – even as science shows they must fall fast.
Climate Action Network International, who gave out the “award”, said in a press release that, “This is not leadership. It is not science-based. And it is certainly not consistent with the Paris Agreement or with the UNFCCC principles of equity and responsibility.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by international climate scientists, who made headlines in June for writing to the New Zealand Government in an open letter urging Christopher Luxon not to adopt ‘no additional warming’.
Larsson says this is just the tip of the iceberg. “New Zealand is the world’s biggest dairy exporter. Other major livestock producers will be looking to us to see whether this approach is worthwhile. Our Government has just lit the fuse on a global methane race to the bottom – once one domino falls, others will follow.”
“We are in the middle of a climate crisis. Cutting methane emissions now is our emergency brake. And we don’t have time to waste.”
More information on the Fossil of the Day award can be found here.
