Slightly less mad?

Following on from yesterday’s post on the New Zealand ETS that, according to PM John Key, is “working”, The Australian today reports that our neighbour across the ditch is actually scaling back its ETS in the face of economic pressures. Julia didn’t mention that, did she?

AS Julia Gillard urged Australia to follow the “gutsy Kiwi” lead on carbon pricing, Prime Minister John Key has declared New Zealand will be slowing its expansion of emissions trading and doesn’t want to “lead the world”.

Mr Key refused to offer advice to Australian politicians embroiled in the carbon tax debate and signed an agreement with the Australian Prime Minister for a joint working party on trans-Tasman carbon emissions trading.

But he warned that New Zealand would be delaying the inclusion of agricultural emissions in its system for at least four years and was unlikely to double the carbon price from 2013, as previously planned, because of pressure on consumers.

…

Earlier, Mr Key said in an interview with The Australian his government was reviewing the ETS he inherited from the former Labour government and there would be changes to the “quite expensive system”.

Mr Key said the New Zealand system, which prices carbon at $NZ12.50 ($9.55) a tonne and includes all gases and emitters, was costing consumers about $NZ150 a year but the price was due to double to $NZ25 a tonne from 2013 and include agriculture, which accounts for 50 per cent of New Zealand’s emissions.

Mr Key told The Australian the review would mean “the government is likely to move a bit more slowly because of the global financial crisis and other countries are moving more slowly”. (source)

So NZ is actually taking notice of the fact that the other major emitters are doing nothing, and responding appropriately. How refreshing. Just as the Kiwis sensibly don’t want to “lead the world”, neither should Australia.

Key... to the asylum

Hmm. “Worked” in what sense, John? Added costs to every business in New Zealand? Check. Raised electricity prices for every Kiwi in the land? Double Check-a-rooney. Made everything that they buy in the shops more expensive? Triple Check-a-doodle-doo.

But what about the climate? Did it lower temperatures? Nope. Did it make any difference to “global action” on climate? Double Nope. Did anybody, except the twits in the Gillard government, take any notice whatsoever of the fact that New Zealand had stitched up its economy like a kipper? Nope, nope and thrice nope.

New Zealand emits just 0.11% of global emissions. I’m going to write it BIG so people can see it:

0.11%

Even if that were reduced to zero, the planet wouldn’t give a sh*t.

What begets such total climate madness? Seriously, it’s completely, utterly, totally, mind-bogglingly beyond comprehension.

Wave your economy goodbye

Token Gesture Alert as the government of New Zealand, unable to think straight thanks to years of green environmental propaganda, brings in its emissions trading scheme. New Zealand emits about 0.1% of global CO2. So even if New Zealand reduced its emissions to zero overnight, AND it were demonstrated that the climate sensitivity is large enough to notice (which it hasn’t been), it would make not the slightest bit of difference to the climate. Not only that, but I hardly think that China and India are going to look at New Zealand, and, wracked with guilt and remorse by the plucky little country’s valiant efforts to save the planet, stop their coal fired economies in their tracks. Not on your life. China and India are far too busy building their prosperity and lifting their populations out of poverty. It’s only wealthy countries can afford the luxury of pointless environmental gestures like this.

So the only result will be higher prices for poor Kiwis. Everything will cost more: electricity, petrol, groceries, consumer goods – everything – since everything (virtually) requires energy for its production or transportation. As the ABC reports:

New Zealanders are bracing for higher electricity and fuel prices with the introduction of an emissions trading scheme (ETS).

From today New Zealanders will pay around three cents a litre more for fuel.

Electricity bills are set to increase by up to 5 per cent as companies pass on the costs of buying carbon credits to consumers.

Environment minister Dr Nick Smith says New Zealand had to act because its greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 25 per cent over the past 20 years. [So from absolutely tiny, to slightly less absolutely tiny]

“It’s actually about New Zealand starting the path, starting the change to a less carbon intensive economy,” he said. (source)

Good luck with that. Just watch your industries move offshore, and your economy decline for no purpose whatsoever.

Climate madness.

Climate disaster

I’m not talking about some disaster caused by climate change (because there haven’t been any), but an economic disaster caused by pointless efforts to “tackle climate change”. Not only is New Zealand’s ETS “beyond rescue”, but it also has a liability of up to $5bn under the Kyoto protocol for failing to meet emissions targets. Now $5bn is a truckload of money, which could have been far better spent on health, education, employment, infrastructure etc – in fact, anything rather than trying to change the planet’s climate:

The authors of The Carbon Challenge – Victoria University researcher and economist Geoff Bertram and climate-change analyst and researcher Simon Terry – also describe the Government’s current ETS as “technically obsolete” and “beyond rescue” as a sustainable framework for tackling climate change.

They say the scheme will not make any inroads into cutting New Zealand’s gross emissions levels.

On top of that, the ETS was so unfair in the way it distributed benefits to high emitters with political influence, while placing a regressive quasi-tax burden on households, that there was a risk it could undermine the public’s willingness to support a stronger regime in the future. [So I guess the news isn’t all bad.]

…

The authors say the bulk of the financial liabilities of several billion dollars arising from New Zealand exceeding its Kyoto Protocol target will fall on future taxpayers, making it a “massive intergenerational transfer of liability”.

“The ETS completely fails as a mechanism to make today’s polluters meet today’s emissions bill.”

The book says there is complacency in New Zealand that credits for storing carbon in forestry crops will save the country from having to seriously address reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

But this year’s Budget had broken with the past by flagging the real cost of New Zealand’s 22 per cent overshoot of its Kyoto target. Depending on the price of carbon, it said the Kyoto liability could be as much as $5.7 billion.

That Budget reference officially scotched the myth that the Government did not face any financial effects under the protocol because it could rely on offsetting credits from plantation forests.

“The credits must be paid back when the trees are harvested in the 2020s.” The authors say using these credits to pay the Kyoto bill is like putting it “on the plastic” for the next generation to pay.

And Australia is heading straight down the same path.

Read it here. (h/t Andrew Bolt)