Today marks two years since the 2023 election. The environmental cost of the Luxon Government’s war on nature since then has been staggering and is growing by the week.
“From overturning the oil and gas exploration ban to fast-tracking seabed mining and attacking freshwater protections, this government has been the most hostile to nature in living memory,” says Greenpeace Aotearoa Executive Director Dr Russel Norman.
To mark the two-year anniversary of the election, Greenpeace has released a comprehensive timeline documenting the environmental actions of the Luxon Government.
The very first entry on the timeline came just weeks after the election. On 3 December 2023, the Government scrapped the New Zealand Battery Project, which aimed to deliver long-term security to the electricity network.
“The Luxon Government has systematically undermined New Zealand’s transition away from unreliable, expensive fossil fuels to cheaper more reliable renewables. It scrapped the NZ Battery project, the Gas Transition Plan, Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund, and blocked new offshore wind. The result is a wave of business failures and families living in energy poverty due to crippling power prices,” says Dr Norman.
“Wave after wave of Resource Management Act amendments have weakened environmental protection laws. Much of it has been done to allow agribusiness free reign to add more pollution to waterways and people’s drinking water. The regional council in the dairy sacrifice zone of Canterbury has now declared a nitrate emergency.
“And now the Government decided to permanently exclude agriculture from the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“The Luxon government is ruining Aotearoa’s environmental reputation. New Zealand was on the front page of the Financial TImes for its efforts to undermine methane science. It is probably the only government in the world to weaken a climate reduction target entrenched in law – the methane target. The government left the international Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance after it decided to subsidise fossil fuel exploration. It’s shameful.
“In the face of this war on the environment, all over Aotearoa we have seen communities rise up to defend nature, marching in the streets, blockading mines, and demanding change.
“We will continue to stand with New Zealanders to defend nature, just as we stood together to kick out the oil companies, stop native forest logging, and become a nuclear-free nation,” says Dr Norman.
