We commonly hear the vested interests (Fed Farmers, National, Fonterra) saying that agriculture should continue to get a 100% subsidy on its greenhouse emissions because there’s no way for farmers to reduce their pollution aside from producing less. That’s rubbish. In fact, as BR shows, agriculture is already producing more value for less pollution.
I/S reviews the ETS so far. It has worked, as Labour promised, to bring down emissions – helped by the recession. But don’t forget there are still massive subsidies for the emissions that are happening thanks to National’s changes. It’s nuts that you and I are forking out so that foreign-owned factories can spew out carbon dioxide on a more profitable basis.
I’ve been impressed with Labour on both sides of the ditch lately. Here of course Phil Goff’s Labour party has moved very boldly on the CGT. But across the ditch in Oz, Labor leader and PM Julia Gillard is fighting an even tougher battle on carbon pricing. Go Gillard!
John Key just rumbles on from one lame excuse to the next on the ETS. First bringing farmers in was going to raise dairy prices, now he’s making other claims that don’t stack up.
No Right Turn on the cost of the ETS to farmers. Forecast to be paid over $8 per kilo for milk solids, what cost do you guess that the ETS subtracts from that sum?
The United Nations joins those voices pointing out that Nationals”policy” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a complete sham. Reposted from No Right Turn.
The government’s books are tight. We shouldn’t borrow more, so there need to be reversals of the tax cuts and spending cuts. What matters is what is cut – all cuts are not the same. I’d like to see the $110 billion dollars of subsidies for greenhouse polluters under National’s Emissions Trading Scheme cut.
To all those deniers who claimed the record cold in January & February in parts of the Northern Hemisphere (and again in December […]
In Morning Report yesterday there was a clear question and statement on the difference between weather events and climate. This is a question that always seems to confuse our CCD’s (climate change deniers and skeptics). So it is worth examining it a bit in the view of some of the unusual weather that has been happening recently. A increased frequency of such events is going to be the main effect of climate change over time, leading eventually to famines.
The ETS-waste regulations currently being consulted on by the Government include a loophole that will actually increase greenhouse gas production in order to save polluters money. Who wrote the regs for the Government? A company that will be able to help landfills exploit this loophole by paying less whilst polluting more.
In a moment of uncharacteristic political honesty, John Key has come clean on his ETS. It loads “disproportionate” costs on to householders. National’s scheme is all about keeping things sweet for their business mates – muffling the price signal that an ETS is supposed to send by (as usual) socialising the costs.
The point of an ETS isn’t to just blindly pay more, it is to change our behaviour so that we don’t have to. National don’t get it, so they have brought us the worst of all possible ETS schemes. Badly designed and devoid of vision. An ETS with all of the costs and none of the benefits.
There’s increasing rumbles in the country side about a Country Party breaking away from National, on the back of the anti-ETS backlash, which National brought upon itself with its behaviour in opposition. A Country Party would be electorally viable. The Left has already splintered into natural fragments now that MMP makes it possible. The Right might be about to do the same.
Worldwide it is the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record. Heat waves have already killed tens of thousands in the last few years. In India 2010 is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s, and hundreds are dead. While ACT and Federated Farmers bitch and moan about the costs of the ETS, the deaths will keep coming.
National is under extraordinary pressure on its ETS, and it seems to be starting to panic. While I can commend them for sticking to their guns (better a gutted ETS than none at all), I don’t have any sympathy over the backlash they are facing. They bought it on themselves.
We pay for the need to reduce greenhouse emissions one way or the other. There’s no point complaining about the cost of the ETS on power and fuel. What we should be more pissed off about is that we are being expected to bear half the cost as taxpayers. We have to pay, the question is whether we put the cost on pollution to discourage pollution or we just lump it on taxpayers.
According to Newsroom [currently offline]: No money has been budgeted to pay for New Zealand’s contribution to a $44 billion component of the Copenhagen Accord on climate change or to withstand losses from the emissions trading scheme beyond Kyoto’s lifetime.
National is predictably planning to put the cost of polluters’ actions on to the rest of us by canning the major parts of the ETS. This stupid game of pass the buck is played out all over the world – polluters refuse to accept their responsibilities, governments refuse to act – as more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, locking us in to economic and ecological devastation.
Text from John Darroch a couple of minutes ago: hey just hanging ten stories up the mfat building in welly protesting against fonterror […]
I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Waatea News on RNZ this morning. Pita Sharples admitted that the Maori Party knew […]
So John Key has finally dropped his veils* and is going to Copenhagen. Well, Rob Emmerson correctly predicted how the ineffectual Emissions Trading […]
