The Green Party says the deliberate weakening of the Emissions Trading Scheme by the Government is dooming future generations of New Zealanders to a nightmarish existence.
Green Party climate change spokesperson Kennedy Graham says the latest climate change report shows net deforestation occurred this year for the first time since 2008.
He argues the ETS has become extraordinarily perverse, encouraging foresters to chop down their trees which releases more carbon into the atmosphere.
Dr Graham says the price of carbon was $20-22 when the scheme started in 2010 but the Government has allowed it to fall to as low as 20 cents in the course of this year.
He says that has happened because the Government has allowed the New Zealand economy to be vulnerable to the importation of very cheap credits from overseas.
"So what happens is the farmers who now can make more money on the land through an alternative use will simply purchase those very cheap units, deforest and switch to another land use that will earn them more than they would have, had the carbon price for forestry been higher," he says.
He says the decision is a commercial one that foresters will understandably make in their own interest.
"The result is that New Zealand's emissions are increasing and we are having a net deforestation for the first time since essentially 2008."
Dr Graham says the country needs a climate policy that reduces emissions, not a trading scheme which encourages them.
He says every New Zealander needs to be concerned because life in two generations time will be nightmarish.