The Government deserves to be congratulated for its preferred policy package on climate change released for public comment today, according to the Ecologic Foundation.

“The policy makes a very good job of reconciling economic and environmental objectives, and it provides a reassuring foundation on which the government can now proceed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol,” said Ecologic president Richard Thompson today.

“Some real substance has been put around the partnership arrangements with business, and there are no longer reasonable grounds to fear that New Zealand businesses will be disadvantaged in relation to their competitors in Australia and other countries.

“If anything, the policy leans rather too far toward boosting business, in that it will encourage another generation of new investments in emission-intensive activities such as wood processing and dairy farm conversions, which have the potential to greatly increase New Zealand’s emissions by 2012.

“While the treatment of new investment deserves closer scrutiny, the package overall can be welcomed as a big step toward responsible national action in the face of the global threat of destabilization of the climate.”

…ends

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