We are too small to make any difference to climate change, and the major offenders (assuming that climate change is caused by humans and not some natural change that has been going on for millions of years) aren’t going to do anything that isn’t in their interests. Their interests are ensuring their countries develop and their populations can continue to meet their material aspirations.

We should be looking at how we can mitigate and take advantage of any climatic changes that affect NZ. It may be that we place a very small tax on everyone that contributes to global warming and start a fund that can be used to look into ways of exploiting climate change for export markets – i.e. horticulture and agriculture, and providing a fund to mitigate effects such as sea levels rising, when and if, they do.

Does anyone think for a second that the average Chinese factory workers gives two shits about what we are up to, and even thinks about climate change? By extension Chinese leaders are worried about ensuring that the citizenry have a steady improvement in living standards otherwise they will have revolt on their hands, and that’s just China, then you have India, South America, Russia etc. None of those countries will put their development behind some un-proven ideology about climate change.

But we are.

We are going to place yet another barrier and cost on every business in NZ. Those businesses maintain the pretty modest life styles we have (level now with Greece and dropping). Our competitors in the global market place have subsidies, import tarrifs, rising freight costs, etc etc in our way, and yet we think it’s going to somehow help our exporters to have another tax on top of everything else?

If we canned Kyoto and forgot about carbon trading and worried about our own interests it is unlikely anyone else in the world would notice or care.

We have nothing to gain by being ideologically driven, but everything to loose.

If climate change is inevitable, and as long as the major players worry about their own interests (assuming it is caused by humans) it will be, then we need to worry about dealing with the changes and less about satisfying Green Party policy.

Name supression is entirely reasonable where we are talking about people who are ony _accused_ of a crime. People are found not guilty of the crimes they are charged with reasonably regularly and they need to be able to get on with their lives without the stigma of the accusation hanging over them. Otherwise you are actually punshing the innocent based on suspicion. Trial by mob or trial by media, which is often the result of a person’s name being in the public domain can also be pretty unhelpful in terms of delivering justice (which is what this should be about). In some cases the effect of having your name published is actually worse than the punishment for the crime (I’m thinking celebrities / public figures here) and that is just unfair.

Once someone is actually _convicted_ then they should pretty much be fair game unless there are compelling reasons to continue supression (e.g. identification of victims).

In fact we are rolling on the floor in laughter at you Judge Harvey

We have the toxic combination of the LEFT who want to raise more taxes and the RIGHT in the form of big business who see marketing and increased profit opportunities.

It is also notable that the NZX are rubbing hands looking at clipping the ticket on any trading scheme.

As always the taxpayers and consumers are going to pay big time for the failed policies and agendas of the few.

If you voted for ACT on their carbon tax policy PaulL, the thing is you probably wouldn’t get one, at least for a few years. Not high on their list of priorities i’d imagine.

I daresay the ‘little guy’ got hammered when their bosses got hammered, but that’s another story.

Hmmmmm- Don’t think so!

I have considered it but the Greens have been so unprincipled in the past -look at the EFA that I can’t see them thinking or doing anything different this time .

THEY ARE NOT THE GREEN PARTY – THEY ARE THE GREEN SECTION OF THE LABOUR PARTY.

They are a sham.

LOOK AR THEIR TRACK RECORD ON TAX CUTS–

They should be the staunchest supporters of tax cuts and they are the weakest!!

A VOTE FOR THE GREENS IS A VOTE FOR LABOUR !!

Someone may point out that, ironically for the Right, this is now a Bad Thing. Possibly because we do not receive any goods or services at the end of it. Bit of ‘trickle down’ maybe?

That this is a sham consultation but going the other way?

The Greens must know that the current ETS thing is bad, but don’t want to be seen as “pulling down the government” unnecessarily.

Thus go to the people, who hopefully say NO don’t vote for Labour’s ETS…

Then they can say look are we principled, we are following what our members want…

Could be interesting tho. If National after the election need ACT plus one other to form a government, and both ACT and the Greens support a carbon tax……hmm.

The thing most people fail to talk about is the impact on imports and exports. Carbon taxes can be levied/refunded at the border in a similar way to that in which GST is today. So it doesn’t drive our industry offshore like an ETS will, and it won’t affect our export farming industries. It is a massively better policy, as Owen points out the reason that all the large corporates have suddenly stopped complaining about global warming policy isn’t because they’ve worked out it is real and want to help the world – it is because they’ve worked out they can make a fortune. Whether it is real or not is irrelevant to most of the punters, ourselves included. The only interesting thing is whether we’re going to have a government policy, and if so, who is going to win from it.

It is not fair on the average New Zealander to be asked to accept a cut in their standard of living so New Zealand can simply say we were first to do it.

IF a party wanted to appeal to both groups it would introduce a tax neutral tax on fossil fuel. ie collect taxes from those who burn fossil fuels and reduce income and company tax to make the final tax take neutral.

this would provide an incentive to swing from fossil fuels to others (including nuclear -which the Greens won’t wear of course.0
Then you could broaden the appeal my tying the fossil fuel tax to global temperature. If temps rise they pay a higher tax and if temps go down they get a refund on last year’s tax.

I do not know of any economist who favours an ETS over a simple tax.
The ETS is a guaranteed generator of unexpected outcomes and probably some very expensive one.
So why does the ETS have so much support?
Follow the money. The traders are lining up to participate in the trillions of dollars to be traded. I have received this promotion for a Green conference – green being the colour of money. Every mini Enron in town will be there.

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Although I expect their carbon tax to be something like $1/ton of CO2-equivalient to be phased in by 2030 or something, unless they decide to take into account the possibility of the “environmental trade barriers” that DPF mentioned.