He is playing to the middle voter. The one who likes to think they care for the environment and the sound of the ETS appeals to their sense of being Green.

John Key is a pragmatist who knows that the majority of the right will still vote for him if he says he will intro it, but he is also hoping international affairs or conditions change enough for him to pull out of it. He knows long term it is a loser.

Every day that the Earth doesn’t warm up (which it isn’t-it’s actually getting slightly colder) and the ice tonnage increases in the antartic region to make up for the arctic, he knows the credibility of the doomsayers will fall over. The Greens are pooing themselves the longer away the day comes when the sky falls in.

http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/HeresiesFinal.pdf

Presume this debate has moved to the newer thread now. But I must comment on the folly of the Greens “Renewables” policy. It is all very well for Toad to talk about the Nats policy fighting yesterday’s battles, but the Greens want to bring back the “day before yesterday’s” battles: lack of economic growth, and an unhealthy, poverty-stricken subsistence economy.

EECA already did this as at 1 July this year – it was announced by Jeanette Fitzsimons earlier in the year. Admittedly that’s a restricted grant scheme only available for “packaged and tested” systems that are assessed as being cost-effective if installed below a specified threshold price (with the price based on a cost-benefit calculation derived from the energy-savings assessed out of the system testing);

Is JK proposing something different or did he miss that this is already current practise?

[DPF: The Greens stole the policy from National in this case. It was announced over a year ago, and just included in the overall energy policy this week]

An interesting document for the alarmists and the apathetic alike (ignore the website if you want):
http://www.stoprodneypowerstation.org/documents/Planned_Generation_Projects.pdf

Consents granted to:

Hydro: 17, 16 = 33MW
Geothermal 220 (‘called in’), 23, 90, 132, 15 = 480MW
Gas: 200
Wind: 225, 30, 46, 1.8, 240, 102 (‘called in’), 48, 20, 84 = 796MW!

Total 1509MW consented or called in, which I think is just as good (?). There are a lot more ‘under appeal’ etc..

1300+MW are planned, according to Transpower…
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/transpower-chief-new-projects-will-outpace-electricity-demand-33153

With only(?) 150MW to 200MW of new generation a year required, how can National improve this?

Mattyroo/burt

Why the hell would you risk taxpayer money building a domestic oil company when Exxon will come in and do the work for free and you can clip the ticket with zero risk. It will cost billions to develop any decent offshore find. Likely hundreds of millions just to find something. It’s unlikely we would be able to compete technologically or commercially for similar reasons as above if anything was found. Leave the hard work to the experts. Shit we can’t even run a decent railway…

What’s stopping the debate here is irrational witch-huntery arising from the public’s pavlovian emotional response which is deliberately and carefully designed, generated and maintained by hysterical scaremongering from those with vested interests in keeping NZ nuclear-free whether or not it actually makes logical sense.

It’s rather ironic that it’s taken a bigger bogeyman in the form of AGW to prompt some of those Luddite zealots to reconsider their nuclear position. You’ll never convince the truly insane, since their minds are set in concrete, however AGW might yet bring NZ into the nuclear age and hooray for that and about freakin time too.

I might add that I’d really prefer we leap straight into scalar electromagnetics (which some refer to as zero-point energy), but one step at a time.

I don’t personally see an ETS as an end-game. I think it is a mistake. If we’re going to do something, I’d rather a carbon tax. Having said that, funnily enough it looks to me like the market is sorting it out on its own. By the time we get around to doing something the prices will have taken care of themselves. Oil consumption is falling in all western countries, and rising only in those countries that subsidise the cost (i.e. “protect” their citizens from the market). The reality is that, at present, government intervention is driving consumption, not the market.

“It is, however, way more expensive than fossil fuel thermal at current prices. If we had a carbon tax or ETS, however, it would suddenly be economic.”

Is that a leap straight to the end game of introducing an ETS?

You are on the money with the hydrogen. How can we have too much electricity? Imagine it’s being given away… wow that’s a problem…

Accountability in govt… You would think it would be very popular wouldn’t you? WTF is the polling doing at sub 5% – go figure?

If we are serious about reducing oil dependency, one real option is hydrogen (burns in an internal combustion engine, main question is how to get the hydrogen). Nuclear and hydrogen go well together – when the plant isn’t servicing peak demand, you just electrolyse water into hydrogen. If we got serious about this, then we could go out to 4 or 6 of them. It is a myth that we could not sustain a nuclear power plant, it is also a myth that it is way more expensive than renewable alternatives. It is, however, way more expensive than fossil fuel thermal at current prices. If we had a carbon tax or ETS, however, it would suddenly be economic.

It seems likely there are oil reserves to be had, it’s incredibly sensible that the govt fund the exploration and extraction. I find it interesting that socialists have no problem claiming airports and railways but not oil exploration. Perhaps it’s the risk thing, they have no experience in dealing with risk, their only answer is to increase taxes to pay for everything from current tax revenue.