Even with a pandemic, we cannot afford to press 'pause' on climate action

Photo by Jan Kaluza on Unsplash

Catherine Leining is a Policy Fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research and a New Zealand Climate Change Commissioner.

On 4 May 2020, as Parliament was emerging from lock down, so too did the Environment Committee’s report on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill. This Bill deserves close attention, as the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has a critical role to play in post-pandemic recovery.

The most crucial features of the Bill remain the same: to add a cap to our cap-and-trade system; to guard against extreme emission prices; to improve incentives for new forests; and to prepare the way for pricing agricultural emissions.