Dom Post on ETS
A very useful editorial from the Dominion Post on the ETS:
There is one certainty in the global warming debate: the problem of climate change is not one that will be solved by an overnight fix, writes The Dominion Post. That’s why it is absurd that Labour believed it needed to stitch together a series of backroom deals and then pull out all the stops to rush through an emissions trading scheme in the final few days of Parliament before the election.
Especially as Labour had delayed the entrance into the scheme of major sectors anyway.
That comes at a cost. Labour is proposing 785 amendments to the scheme – which will not begin to be implemented till 2010 – as it completes its gallop through Parliament. Those amendments are a symptom of the complexity of the scheme. It is ridiculous to believe that they will receive the careful consideration they should before they are written into law, and in a scheme where the devil will be in the detail, that is dangerous.
Fonterra have already identified one mistake that will cost it $13 million a year. The Government has agreed they are mistakes, but those clauses of the ETS Bill have already been agreed to and can not now be amended without special leave.
There is no question that Labour is well-intentioned. Despite that, the legislation is part of a strategy that remains deeply flawed. It risks concentrating on the accountancy of who ends up picking up the bill for carbon emissions, rather than on reducing those emissions.
Guess how much emissions will be reduced by 2012 under the ETS? Anyone care to guess?
The reality is that the scheme, designed to meet New Zealand’s Kyoto protocol commitment, will end up increasing the prices that consumers pay for all manner of things, and damage the economy, without necessarily doing anything about reducing the amount of carbon emitted in New Zealand.
The impact on emissions by the end of the Kyoto 1st commitment period will be minimal.
The New Zealand scheme needs to be seen in that context. New Zealand is responsible for about 0.2 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile Chinese emissions are growing at a prodigious rate – according to some projections, by 2.3 billion tonnes in the next five years, far in excess of what the West is supposed to save under the Kyoto protocol.
The world will gain little fron New Zealand’s rush, but New Zealand risks losing a lot through a flawed scheme.
Unless China and India join in, the impact of the rest of the world reducing emissions will be nil.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Those good intentions will ruin our economy with consequent social problems and do nothing for the environment.
As Eric Roy said duirng the debate (quoted in yesterday’s SST) – it’s like the world has joined a nudist club but NZ is the only one to take off its clothes.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Wrong.
The impact of the rest of the world reducing emissions (but not consumption) will be to increase global emissions. This has already been the case in under the EU model ETS, carbon footprint of Western Europe has increased due to product miles and lower efficiency production in China/India. India and China have stated on numerous occasions they will not join the under the conditions of Annex I or Annex II Kyoto. Therefore each and every time some country adopts an EU model ETS the world becomes a little warmer.
The ETS is a way of fulfilling the Kyoto Protocols – it really only makes sense in feelgood, something must be done, raising awareness kind of ways – and has no enviromental positives.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
It is truly disturbing how the left supports the continued incompetence of this Labour Government. Every Bill they draft seems flawed and full of unintended (or is that deliberately unrevealed) and unconsidered consequences.
I question whether its reached the point where they put ideology ahead of what is actually good for our country. When will the msm start to point these flaws out?
September 8th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
It is seldom that any media in the USA like the Wall Street Journal even notices that NZ exists, but even they devoted an editorial headed “Kiwi Climatology” to us a few weeks ago, and it ended:
“……..give the Kiwis credit for honesty. Having signed up for Kyoto, they’re actually talking about shouldering the costs of meeting their commitments. Whether or not they end up regretting it, other countries will now have a chance to see what the anticarbon crusade does to an economy.”
Read it all:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121062809435686285.html
September 8th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I’m afaird I must disagree with the Dominion post, “There is no question that Liarbore is well-intentioned”, what utter dribble. There are no “well-intentions” in this grubby little bill and to claim this is about the enviroment is akin to believing in the tooth fairy. Liarbore and those that support the loony left care diddly sqaut about the bloody enviroment, this bill is about the resourcing and further implementation of socialism. This bill delievers badly needed cash to a corrupt government hell bent on further control of our lives. This bill is socialism come communism dressed up in green.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Two ticks ACT.
That is the only solution.
“It’s the economy, stupid!”
Kind of ironic don’t you think?
Everytime National talks about their version of an ETS, they make an election advertisement for ACT.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I’m sorry, DPF, but I must say that I disagree with you. This bill is critical to the immanentisation of the eschaton, the culmination and crowning achievement of Our Dear Leader’s plans, and therefore must-absolutely must- pass; to delay it is to hinder the ascension of Our Dear Leader into worldwide fame and influence as, trailing visions of wonder behind her, she strides purposefully into the future, bringing us all into a glorious millennium of peace and prosperity, and coincidentally attaining for her the post of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Environment.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
They had me up until There is no question that Labour is well-intentioned.
Edit: SSB – Snap!
September 8th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
From a speech given in Washington in May, by Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, my favourite world leader:
“……Nowadays, we should pay attention to other factors and processes, by means of which capitalism could be brought to an end, such as the traditional, but in the current “brave new world” of postdemocracy enormously expanding and growing disbelief in the ingenuity of man and in the advantages of the market process. It is, of course, not new because there have always been radical attacks on the market system, but I see a difference now. In the past, the market was attacked mostly by means of the socialist arguments and with the slogan about “the immiseration of the masses”. Now, it’s been replaced by a more dangerous slogan: the immiseration (or perhaps destruction) of the Planet.
It has many similarities but one important thing is different. The evidence that the people are better and better off (not worse off) could have been amassed in a shorter time, in a time – to turn the famous Keynes’s dictum upside down – when we all are not yet dead. Now, it will take centuries to come up with a convincing proof that the Planet has not been destroyed or does not find itself on the brink of destruction.
The free riding this new horse is therefore much easier. The ambitious politicians who try to mastermind the world and their fellow-citizens have been dreaming for decades to find such a marvelous, from reality immunized doctrine. Years or decades of cold weather will not disprove it – to my great regret. It is almost religious. My certainty that this ideology becomes the main vehicle for the destruction of the free market……..”
Love his “Eastern European English”…….”a marvelous, from reality immunised doctrine”…….but we know what he means.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
This ETS crapola madness has got to be stopped in its tracks It a grand tax scam by the LEFT and an excuse to raise prices and profit margins by big business.
The taxpayer and the consumers are going to be raped pillaged and burned without evidence to show a good outcome.
And everyone who seeks to debate the issue is labelled a DENIER as in holacuast deniers by the evil feral venal swine that support this madcap lunacy
September 8th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
“There is one certainty in the global warming debate: the problem of climate change is not one that will be solved by an overnight fix”
Well they have made two assertions of certainty there. The most obvious is that there is no overnight solution. However the very premise that climate chnage is a problem that needs a solution is stated as a certainty. Utter BS.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
“t is absurd that Labour believed it needed to stitch together a series of backroom deals and then pull out all the stops to rush through an emissions trading scheme in the final few days of Parliament before the election”
It’s all about Helen’s CV for the UN.