New Zealand Celsias

This ETS sets a standard of mediocrity that means that any bold claims NZ had on environmental standards have been sunk . This is worrying because New Zealand makes its living from the environment.

More than any other developed nation, we depend on the environment for our income. The challenges of climate change are enormous and the opportunities it throws up are also enormous, especially for a country that has proudly traded on a country label of “100% Pure “ since 1999.

How long can we really continue to use that powerful brand when we are already amongst the highest emitters per capita in the world and we are about to become even more noxious (or obnoxious ) to the planet?

I was hoping against hope for an Emissions Trading Scheme,  which would actually mean that the polluters pay . I thought that was the point of an ETS.

Actually, I thought the reasons were two fold .

To meet our commitment to the world to try, along with every other country to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, which have a very real potential to make large chunks of the planet unlivable in the next 20 years .

We signed the Kyoto Protocol.  We said we would do this, and as we watch our Pacific neighbours ( Kiribas, Tovalu, Tokelaus) fast become uninhabitable we know we have to do this.

The catastrophic effects on the Phillipines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh with hundreds of millions of people affected might also have been sufficient to spur us into action, I would have thought .

As a world we have actually done this before when we banned the production of CFCs which were causing  ozone depletion . The concept’s not even new.

Secondly, I also wanted them to take action that spurred the talented innovators and inventors of New Zealand to find different methods of doing things to hep give this planet a chance. I understand there is a narrowing window of opportunity before we may lose control completely.

We’ve almost started this process in other areas. We’ve constantly raised the cost of dumping waste .We’ve even got a Waste Minimisation levy, initially $10 per tonne to try to reduce waste , which came into effect at the beginning of July 2009 .So two months ago we did this with physical waste to try and spur change .

We have supermarkets realizing that charging for plastic bags is no bad thing. And this concept of taking real action to realise major changes is not new. We tax cigarettes to recognize they destroy health and cost us all money.

Greenhouse gases cost us all money, and unchecked have the potential to cost us the livability of our planet. How much more of an incentive do we need ? Why is it so hard to deal with them ?

So what terrified the government and the Maori Party and caused them to run to the sides of the big polluters and want to hold their hands ?

Here’s what it seems to me New Zealand got out of this ETS:

We got a system whereby we as taxpayers subsidise, for a very long time, the polluters . So no, the polluters don’t pay. And in many ways the more of a polluter you are at the moment, the more of a break this scheme gives you and the more we subsidise you as taxpayers.

For a very long time 49% of our emissions come from agriculture who don’t even come into the scheme until 2015!

This slows down any changes that happen from price signals. We continue to pay publicly through our taxes while private businesses pocket the profits of pollution.

I can not believe that we can look at NZ’s balance sheet into the future and come up with this solution to our survival economically -never mind the cost environmentally.

One of the scary things about this is that we will fall seriously behind the rest of the world. Their price signals will spur innovation and change. Our lack of strong signals will make that slower, and innovators who can already receive seriously better tax and R&D credits in Australia will find it hard to justify staying here.

I’ve been despairing of the Government’s calls that we don’t want to “get too far ahead of Australia “

Australia’s record in this field is nothing short of dismal. Its even worse than ours. Its almost impossible not to be ahead of Australia! Only a few countries like Qatar have higher emissions per person.

So what was it that meant that people we would generally regard as sane and affable (in fact Pita Sharples is one of my heroes) have done this to us as a country?

Those savings they thought they saved us from in our power bills and in our cars are nothing compared to the damage to NZ's balance sheet economically and environmentally for years to come. 

I don’t feel so proud to be a New Zealander on this issue.

More articles on Celsias:

National snubs Labour, buys Maori Support for Watered down ETS

Climate Change, Migration and Adaptation: New Zealand's Future

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