Climate policy experts are accusing the two major political parties of looting the Climate Emergency Response Fund for short-term political gain.
National's diverting $2 billion from the fund to help pay for its tax cuts while Labour's siphoning hundreds of millions to boost the government coffers.
It's meant to be a pot of money dedicated to helping New Zealand adapt to the impacts of a warming world and to cut our emissions as per our international commitment.
But the election campaign is calling and the climate change kitty is ripe for the robbing - by both National and Labour.
"The Labour Party pulling back some of that money is concerning because it is a slippery slope. But the National Party announcement is essentially to disestablish the fund entirely and put the money into other things," said carbon market expert Christina Hood.
The Climate Emergency Response Fund is funded by the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which charges polluters to help fund reducing greenhouse gas pollution.
So far it's helped pay for more bus drivers and support industries to switch to cleaner heat.
"This is a really hard, gnarly, long-term problem we have that's going to require a lot of investment, and that tends to get derailed by the priorities of the day," Hood said.
Cue the derailing - National declared this week it wants to divert $2 billion of ETS revenue to pay for its tax cuts, calling it a "climate dividend". But experts say that's disingenuous.
"Because of the negative effects for climate policy I regard it as effectively climate change denial," said climate policy expert Dr Geoff Bertram.
Dr Bertram views it as robbing future generations for short-term political gain instead of implementing a real climate dividend.
"A climate change dividend would be paid to stakeholders. Now ordinary New Zealanders are stakeholders, future generations are stakeholders, kids are stakeholders as well," he said.
An example overseas is Canada's carbon or climate dividend which returns all carbon tax revenue directly back to households - which makes it easier for politicians to sell a rising carbon price to the public. For example, the pain of paying more at the petrol pump is offset by the fact you're getting a bigger dividend payment back.
Labour meanwhile wants to dig into the fund they themselves labelled "dedicated funding for climate" - and chuck hundreds of millions back into the general government coffers.
"I think it's just nonsense. It's exactly the same problem we have with National, the major parties simply are not focussed on climate change as an issue," Dr Bertram said.
The fund is also supposed to pay for New Zealand's adaptation to the impacts of climate change.
"We've seen the dire need for that after Cyclone Gabrielle in particular and I'm quite worried about where that adaptation funding is going to come from now," Hood said.
Climate change - only an emergency it would seem until it's time to chase votes.
