{"id":74267,"date":"2025-10-12T12:20:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T23:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/aotearoa\/?p=74267"},"modified":"2025-10-12T12:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T23:22:48","slug":"luxon-goes-full-trump-with-climate-denying-methane-backdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/aotearoa\/press-release\/luxon-goes-full-trump-with-climate-denying-methane-backdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxon \u201cgoes full Trump\u201d with climate-denying methane backdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Government has confirmed it will rewrite New Zealand\u2019s once bipartisan climate change law to water down methane targets and permanently exclude agriculture from the Emissions Trading Scheme &#8211; a move Greenpeace says amounts to full-blown climate denial.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cThis is truly astounding,\u201d says Greenpeace Aotearoa climate campaigner, Amanda Larsson. \u201cLuxon has gone full-on Trump. He\u2019s choosing climate denial and corporate profits over our kids\u2019 future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>The decision will weaken targets for biogenic methane &#8211; mostly from livestock &#8211; despite strong warnings from climate scientists that doing so could derail the global fight against climate change.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cNew Zealand is the world\u2019s biggest dairy exporter. If we back down on cutting emissions from our most polluting industry, you can bet other big livestock-producing countries will jump on the bandwagon. That could be game over for the climate,\u201d says Larsson.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cAs if it wasn\u2019t bad enough that people can\u2019t afford butter while Fonterra banks huge profits &#8211; now Luxon\u2019s handing big dairy a free pass to keep polluting, at the expense of a liveable future for our kids.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cThis is about profits for a few, at the expense of climate catastrophe for millions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>At the heart of the move to reduce methane targets is a controversial accounting trick called \u201cno additional warming\u201d, designed to justify continued high levels of agricultural methane emissions &#8211; even as science shows they must fall fast.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a political trick dressed up as science,\u201d says Larsson. \u201cIt pretends current methane emissions are fine &#8211; when in reality, they\u2019re fuelling the climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>The decision comes after heavy lobbying from the meat and dairy industries &#8211; sectors now directly represented in government, with former Federated Farmers lobbyist Andrew Hoggard holding key ministerial roles. Even today, Federated Farmers\u2019 response to the new methane targets was released before the Government decision was publicly available, highlighting close links between industry lobbyists and Government.<\/p>\n\n<p>Larsson says, \u201cLuxon might think he\u2019s doing the livestock industry a solid but, really, he is throwing farmers under the bus. Today\u2019s announcement is a signal to our climate-concerned trading partners to start looking elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>Earlier this year,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/aotearoa\/press-release\/international-climate-scientists-rubbish-luxons-methane-review-over-gwp-star\/\"> dozens of climate scientists wrote an open letter<\/a>, featured on the front page of the Financial Times, urging Prime Minister Christopher Luxon not to weaken New Zealand\u2019s methane target. They called instead for stronger ambition, in line with advice from the independent Climate Change Commission.<\/p>\n\n<p>Today\u2019s announcement follows other major climate U-turns &#8211; including lifting the offshore oil and gas exploration ban and pledging $200 million in fossil fuel subsidies.<\/p>\n\n<p>Both moves conflict with international climate law and trade agreements, and could carry legal consequences under the recent International Court of Justice advisory opinion and clauses in New Zealand\u2019s trade deals with the EU and UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NZ Government will rewrite NZ&#8217;s once bipartisan climate change law to weaken methane targets and exclude agriculture from the ETS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":69818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,19],"p4-page-type":[7],"class_list":["post-74267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greenpeace","tag-climate","tag-food-and-farming","p4-page-type-press-release"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.8 (Yoast SEO v26.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Luxon \u201cgoes full Trump\u201d with 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