Odour of fossils

Policy reversals threaten the progress we're making to reduce emissions.

- BY ANDREA GRAVES

There's a scent around the Beehive. Could it be the odour of ever-increasing carbon dioxide? The level of that gas continues to break records, according to measurement stations at Baring Head off the Wainuiomata coast and in Hawai'i. But carbon dioxide is odourless. The whiff, it seems, is of decay in the government's enthusiasm to limit climate change.

Perhaps physics is too woke, particularly the physical reality that carbon dioxide emissions directly increase the amount of energy trapped in Earth's atmosphere. New Zealand First's Shane Jones wrote on Facebook in November that, “We're not going to be guilt-tripped by these fanciful accounts that the planet is boiling.” In March, he posted: “Of course I'm not a climate denier.”