by frog
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Mon, August 15th, 2005
Tags: environment
tadpole ‘toon
Published: August 15, 2005
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Please use 
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Donating a few billion dollars a year to those countries less fortunate than oursleves is the least we can do.
I do call on all young mothers to push the pram 4km in wind and rain to the plunket playgroups, rather than take the Fiesta.
Or move to Auckland. If we could all cram into Auckland we could take advantage of big city density. As long as we don’t ban prams on buses (5 prams on a bus is simply chaos – do those mums have no regard for genuine travellers??)
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zenTiger
We can’t afford to abandon it.
The pressure on the USA is intense, and while it may not appear to have any effect yet, it will… if we can keep it up.
If however, “clean, green New Zealand” drops Kyoto, the US will NEVER consider picking up its share of the burden. Finished. Done like a duck.
However bad it can get given where we are now, it would get worse every year, with no action taken until the tide actually starts to rise and the storms turn into Gods own erasers, wiping clean every moderately flat island in the tropics, and Florida.
That said, there’s no point in going nuts about it. There is compliance and then there is compliance, and our efforts need not be massively effective and expensive. We need to do a lot of this stuff anyway because of peak-oil. Building sustainable energy systems and conserving energy make sense for us. That we don’t need to hammer our industries in the process is clear enough, Kyoto is only as big a problem as we make it. I think sanity will prevail in the end. Carbon discredits or no, we will have to change our ways as the price of fuel goes up. It surely isn’t coming back down barring a full global recession.
respectfully
BJ
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1 (-1)
“If however, “clean, green New Zealand? drops Kyoto, the US will NEVER consider picking up its share of the burden. Finished. Done like a duck.”
Fancy trumping me so easily. Bush rang me yesterday to ask if we were going to drop the anti-nuke policy. I had to say, Georgie boy, it wasn’t looking good. He said, “well that does it. If NZ are resolute, we are disarming. We’ll also can our 100 odd reactors and replace them with soy based fuel plants.”
But to change the topic slightly, what’s the deal with sending billions overseas rather than spending it on our own environmental initiatives?
You are worried about peak oil. Haven’t you heard about peak tax?
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check that fwwog, dudes, chipper say,
‘ if NZ drops the [ dead Coyote ] USA will never consider picking up its share of burden’
this excellent, US policy made in NZ, much better chipper,
sanity prevail, we donts pay the russians,
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zenTiger –
Nobody is asking me about sending billions of dollars overseas… to what does this refer? If you’re talking about Carbon Discredits you need to check your circuits. No Green wants to send a thin dime overseas on this account. What we want is to change behaviour here so people pay NZ. That’s something we CAN do and if we don’t its our own fault. Those changes are money spent in New Zealand, and I don’t see the problem unless you tell me we aren’t going to or can’t change… but Kiwis are nothing if not adaptable.
When I tell you what will happen in the USA it is my read of the politics on the ground.
Kyoto could have been ratified under Clinton, but even Democrats backed away, for much the same reason as Dr Brash backs away, only they blamed India and China for not being part of the agreement. If you think the economic impact here would be tough… they were looking at a financial tsunami, so they bailed. Re-election is more important than saving the planet. Not Greens. Not like us. Not at all.
My point is that there is a lot of resistance, even now, because there is the feeling that the US will pick up this burden alone. The thing that keeps it alive as an issue is the ability of the conservation movement, the green movement, to keep the focus on the consequences of inaction. If NZ quits for financial reasons, the anti-kyoto, anti-warming purveyors of XOM lies will have a field day, and the electorate in the USA will buy the story that Kyoto is a bad idea and nothing can be done, or should be done. That’s not a simple answer, but you need to remember that whatever else I am, I am also an American and I do know how they respond to advertisement… and I am pretty sure what the PR flacks at XOM would do with the news too… has nothing to do with Bush zenTiger, I am telling you what America will do.
I worry about peak tax, I pay it and I worry about it.
Can I fix it? Only if I get Cullen alone in a dark alley…. but I said it before, I am not voting Green on account of taxes. Like most Greens, I put the children first. The country and civilization I turn over to them, that comes FIRST… and I know damned well what it costs. I AM angry about the effective marginal tax. I am angry at the hump in the taking from the middle class… but I don’t vote on that issue alone, and even if I did I have seen not one party of the lot that has a real plan for fixing it properly.
Besides I know Bush wouldn’t call you… he never calls anyone unless they have lots of money to donate. You can’t possibly be that wealthy… can you?
respectfully
BJ
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Peter
Russians are our friends!
товарищ !
Want to get a trade deal? Russians will make one, and they won’t ask to send any Nukular ships to visit either.
New era coming.. commodities important. Food important.
Trouble coming too, peat bogs in Siberia, Canada can melt, release methane. Makes CO2 problem look like kid stuff. Tipping points we don’t KNOW about, but if one of them starts we’re finished.
respectfully
BJ
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Russians are our friends? What reality are you living in bjchip? Russians have never been anyone’s friends ever since the Romanovs took over Moscow several centuries ago. Yes, I know they are gone, but their legacy lives on.
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BJ, I was under the impression we were going to be sending kiwi dollars overseas, regardless of the Greens desire to change usage. Whatever the Greens could successfully do to alter Labour’s course of inaction will take some time to have an effect. Meanwhile, that money sent overseas could be spent in NZ.
I don’t vote on tax issues per se either. What I am voting on is setting up the financial capability to fund intelligent and critical policy. It takes money. I would like my next car to be a hybrid. But I will not enter into debt to buy it. I will start a savings plan and combine it with some extra work to generate extra money to make that goal.
So too with ACT’s overall economic policy. It allows businesses and individuals to direct the money they earn far better than the government. What the government can do is set policy to guide that expenditure. That is different than taking the money and spending it for them.
For example, they could make buying hybrids cheaper than a normal car. The first problem we have with hybrids is supply. Apparently, the waiting list is one year. How on earth do we implement sensible policy with a lag of one year when we haven’t even tried to build demand?
See where I am going?
RE: Russians. They are NOT our friends. Friends have to do something more than promise not to visit with a nuclear ship. Russians can be a trading partner, we can be polite, we can enjoy a vodka together, and we can talk.
I am sure there are a lot of wonderful Russians out there that are not too psychologically damaged from living through Stalinist Russia, and beyond, but I am talking about Russia as a nation, one that promotes its interests ardently on the world scene, and demonstrates that those interests will come ahead of comrade trading partners.
We can be friendly to them, but I would want to see their loyalty earned before ranking them with our long time friends and family.
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zenTiger, Lucyna – My apologies… I was sending up PQ who has a habit of incomprehensibility and that was not intended to be taken real serious
That’s why I pushed the Russian into the post. One clue is the use of the exclamation mark. I never use one in a serious point.
Seriously? We could probably have a trade deal with Russia without a lot of trouble getting it… but I don’t regard them as “friends” in the sense of the Aussies, or the Brits or (in spite of Dubya) the USA.
——————–
As for the Prius, there’s no way for the government to make the hybrid cheap. It could eschew tax on the purchase, it could raise taxes on fuel, but it can’t make the darned thing cost a lot less. It is an expensive (to produce compared to a regular car) vehicle. Where will you get the money to make it cheap? You were just complaining that the government doesn’t run the economy as efficiently as private citizens can… I am assuming you don’t want to subsidize the things directly, but no matter how you direct the economy, that’s effectively what will happen.
My thoughts ?
Government fleet vehicles to be Hyundai Getz Diesels or Honda or Toyota Hybrids. That forces up the numbers and puts them, the batteries and the repair capabilities into the mainstream.
I don’t think we have to send Kiwi $ overseas. I think we have to buckle down to the task of making sure that doesn’t happen… and in the bargain insure ourselves against the impact of peak oil.
That means changing the agricultural incentives to the forestry industry and making some effort to capture methane from farm waste… and it also means pushing our overall fuel consumption back, which is what makes the wind farms so important. I don’t see the commitment to doing that with a National led government. That’s what makes this toon righteous.
ACT tax policy doesn’t trouble me too much… but I would rather see the bump in the effective marginal tax addressed than simply forming a tax-cut policy in general. The benefit structure has to be integrated with the tax structures to create a monotonic increasing ramp to whatever the highest rate actually needs to be. That isn’t what anyone is on about, except indirectly.
respectfully
BJ
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for goodness sakes haven’t you bunch of right-wing spoilers got your own blogs to hang out on?
Please don’t bring up the Russians again! 
It is not set in stone that NZ will be a net loss-maker with Kyoto. If people change their behaviour and use less energy and less petrol then NZ can still be a net Kyoto-earner. You bunch of right-wing spoilers must surely conceed that point? Obviously you only continue to bring it up because you are hoping to make election capital out of it, if you had the best interests of the country at heart you would be encouraging people to use less energy and less petrol so that NZ saves money, not just seeking to weasel your way out of our committments.
Also, I completely disagree that anything we do will take too long “to have an effect” we are talking about 7 years until 2012. And, when the country was facing power shortages due to lack of rain in winter 2002 and 2004, the government launched education/publicity campaigns that had an instant effect – together we saved nearly 10% of countries energy usage then. If the government had a publicity campaign that made a patriotic issue out of saving energy so that we didn’t have to pay Kyoto discredits, then we could save as much easily.
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Stuey, if you hung out more on MY blogs, and the others I frequent, you’d realise I’d insult you all a lot more, it is merely a time constraint
I’m glad to hear the exclamation mark is a humorous device and not a “double-plus good” statement. Russians aren’t well known for their sense of humour, and they can’t dance for shit (ignoring the Russian Ballet and thinking more of Boris Yeltsin here) and as long as they don’t go suppressing any-one or manipulating UN resolutions, I shan’t mention them again. Much.
I reduce emissions with the best of them. It’s not going to help. My feeling is the Kyoto taxes will flow out of our pockets long before Labour manage to do any-thing constructive. So, at this stage, I don’t concede any-thing.
I’ll match the peak oil doom sayers with equally gloomy predictions of Labours ability to tax in advance, and like the peak oil doom sayers, I expect to be taken seriously.
Note: Setting up another 1000 bureaucrats and a few more commissions and spot advertising appealing to patriotism, all but destroyed under Labour, will not be considered success. That would be like making up advertisements that say “if you are prepared to speed, you are prepared to kill” and then claim 180km per hour across Canterbury was “safe”.
I do have the countries interests at heart. That’s why I do not want Labour (and quite possibly National) in power. If that doesn’t explain why I can come across a tad tetchy, nothing will! (note, the exclamation mark is cunningly used as BOTH a humorous device and a double-plus point)
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