The recently-published draft Climate Change Act is timely indeed. Not only does it coincide with the UN’s effort to bring climate change back to the international agenda and also in the wake of the Lima UNFCCC COP, it also coincides with the Prime Minister’s first genuine admission that the much-awaited decrease in greenhouse gases from LNG will be delayed.
The Nationalist Party will be participating fully in this consultation exercise. My intention is to have the PN prepare a position paper which can then be submitted to the government for further consideration.
The visible scope of the Climate Change Act seems to be mainly to help Malta entrench international and European legal requirements in Maltese law. While, from a legal aspect, Malta is already obliged at international and European level to prepare annual greenhouse gas inventories and low carbon development strategies emanating from this law (the law will formalise and rationalise this), in terms of concrete tangible action associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation it may be nothing but a smokescreen to delay and masking the inability to act behind subjective, bureaucratic and administratively burdensome processes that may lead to a blind end.
For example, it is good to point out that the national adaptation strategy already exists and was adopted under the previous administration. Climate Change Minister Leo Brincat should recall that he himself voted in favour of this national adaptation plan in Parliament when he was in Opposition. Now, instead of addressing the capacity building issues that the existing adaptation strategy demands, an easy feat considering that, in the last 15 months or so, just under 3,000 employees were recruited by the public service, he published a draft law to tell us that a national adaptation strategy will be prepared (again). Consequently, one cannot blame those who argue that this government will continue to fall flat on its face when it comes to tangible climate action.
Furthermore, while this consultation exercise is unfolding, the news headline is that the government will fail on its primary pre-election promise. According to Labour in Opposition, the LNG power station was the means to Malta reducing utility bills. The LNG debacle was also portrayed as Malta’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gases. This project, fully owned and managed by the Labour Party, has circumvented planning, environmental and procurement regulations to gain time but failed the test nonetheless.
Brincat made this LNG power station a bit of his own too. He heralded HFO as a cancer source on national television. He got environmentalists together before the election and explained how LNG will deliver us from all evil. On a Dissett programme debating the power station during the last election campaign one environmental specialist claimed he was impressed by what Brincat showed him.
Brincat repeatedly mentioned that LNG had no associated risks and if Malta were to embrace climate change mitigation than LNG was the beginning and the end despite the 140,000 cubic metres of public hazard in Marsaxlokk.
Climate action under Labour is thin and frail
Not only were EIA studies trimmed to speed up the process but all efforts on renewables were quickly smothered to pave the way for the surplus electricity that the new power station was to produce. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, this means the government is pulling the handbrake and live up to a mediocre greenhouse gas reduction ambition instead of driving full steam ahead towards renewables and ambitious reduction of emissions.
Despite all this, Brincat made no reference in the press conference he held on October 10 that his party plans for cleaner energy in two years are set to fizzle out. It was a pity that no journalist could see the link between the consultation exercise that he was launching and the promise that started to deflate with the Prime Minister’s admission that LNG will be delayed.
Climate action under Labour is thin and frail as the results of the last 15 months have clearly demonstrated.
Labour in government is looking ill-prepared, incompetent and naïve. Climate change action requires stamina to be able to bring about change as the previous administration did with its various reforms.
Brincat sings alone from his hymn sheet. His fellow colleagues forget to consult him or forget to mention him in their pre-Budget consultations. The interministerial Climate Action Board, as proposed under the Climate Change Act, amid its positive facets also provides evidence that Brincat cannot make himself heard at Cabinet. Nothing and no one will suffer more than the environment we live in from this utter ineffectiveness.
Charlo Bonnici is shadow minister for sustainable development, the environment and climate change.