Environment should come before profit - Alliance

Alliance Party Media Release – For Immediate Release – Monday November 3, 2008

Hardly anyone now doubts that humanity is facing an enormous environmental crisis. Last week the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) rated New Zealand sixth in the world for our consumption footprint but the Alliance Party has the policies that will help reverse this trend, according to environment spokesperson, Greg Kleis.

The Alliance is the only political party which represents an alternative political programme to counter the for-profit based environmental policies of other political parties, including the Greens who choose to collaborate with big business rather than oppose their agenda of pollution and despoliation, according to Mr Kleis.

The Alliance’s key environmental and climate change policies include:

• Take into account the full impact of new projects and services to ensure sustainable development.
• Strengthen the Resource Management Act and open up public debate on all developments of significance.
• Reduce pollution caused by too many cars, by investing in buses, trains and ferries, which will be under public ownership and control.
• Regulate the provision of water, electricity and gas to domestic consumers to ensure that no one is denied these basic necessities because they cannot afford to pay.
• Minimise waste by encouraging recycling, the reduction of packaging, and ensuring that products are made to be reused, repaired, recycled or composted.
• The Alliance in Government introduced legislation to require the mandatory labelling of genetically modified food. We support a cautious approach to genetic modification to protect people’s health and New Zealand’s ‘clean, green image.’
• New Zealand should be a world leader in finding solutions for climate change. We aim for carbon neutrality by 2030. The fight against climate change cannot be successful without international solidarity.

“We believe that a clean, green, future is preferable to a dirty, polluted one that seeks to put profit ahead of planet. The Alliance will begin leading the charge in that direction,” he said.

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