What I’m reading today
Lyndon Hood’s answers to frequently asked questions about the Emissions Trading Scheme is a beaut:
If New Zealand wants to maintain its edge as a clean, green nation, we urgently need to pretend as hard as we can to take decisive action on climate change.
I suspect he was inspired by John Armstrong on Saturday:
The result is a charade in which governments assuage voters’ guilt about climate change by pretending to set tough-to-meet targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions which they have no intention of meeting because the same voters don’t really want them to do so.
Idiot/Savant has some timely comments on the sort of tax policy a government that was concerned about equity might be trumpeting at next week’s budget announcement:
Rather than cutting taxes (which permanently reduces income and almost always disproportionately benefits the rich) the government should be paying social dividends. While initially these should be aimed at those on low incomes, the ultimate goal should be for equal payments to every taxpayer (or better, every New Zealander), on the basis that we are all equal participants in our society. Beyond that, we should be aiming to build the system towards a universal basic income - a universal payment given to every adult regardless of circumstances.
Don’t hold your breath.
Then there is the ongoing furore in the United Kingdom over Gordon Ramsey’s hyperbolic explosion that ‘British restaurateurs who serve up unseasonal produce flown in from all four corners of the world should be clapped in irons and slapped with a fine’. The resulting blog war is the internet at its most ‘deliciously’ ferocious. None of them mention this environmentally friendly solution though (not that it would work in New Zealand).
May 12th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Who says it wouldn’t work here?
http://www.taiko.org.nz/Possum02.jpg
May 12th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Ramsey is just riffing on the protectionist line. He’s dead wrong, of course, but I thought you chaps liked that sort of thing?
May 12th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
BP, there is nothing protectionist about it at all. For a start, Ramsey is only talking about fresh fruit and veg.
He’s not talking about meat, or wine or other produce that can be shipped around the world. He’s talking about the stuff that has to be air-freighted to get there fresh. And air-freighting is the most carbon-emitting method of moving produce to a market.
So if there are things that don’t grow in the British winter, so have to be air-freighted to British markets, let the Poms eat the things that do.
Just as we here should forget about eating imported grapes and peaches when they are out of season, and eat the grapefruit and mandarins that are in season. And at this time of year, try the brussel sprouts - they are starting to get that nice tangy taste that only cold weather can bring.
Sure, Ramsey was OTT in talking about fines and regulation, but his underlying message about encouraging people to eat seasonal fruit and veg rather than pouring untold tonnes of CO2 into the air to get imported produce half way around the world was spot on.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
>>BP, there is nothing protectionist about it at all
Oh, there is.
I have spent years living in the UK. The BBC, and other media, have been spouting the local food line 24/7 since the mid 90s. Check out the food programs. Local = good, imported = bad.
It’s deeply nationalistic, particularly amongst the middle class.
The already heavily subsidised - and highly inefficient - farmers are are right behind it. As one would expect.
From a foody perspective - yes, you cook and eat in season. But Ramsey misses the point. The imported food IS in season, just not in Britain. The average car journey to the supermarket uses up more energy than the apples did being shipped from New Zealand.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Toad
I need to clear something up, when you have successfully destroyed our major export earner (dairy produce) and by the sound of it also killed off our orchards what on earth are we going to produce in NZ that will being in export dollars?
May 12th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
BP is right, I spend the vast majority of the 90’s and a good deal of the early part of this century living in the UK, the push for local produce was underway well before the global warming con caught on, it is all about protecting their industry.
By the way, if you really want to see inefficient farming then you only need go to the UK, they make our old SMP system look positively brilliant, farmers paid to do nothing with their fields, needless to say they love the idea.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Colour me surprised that any Labour supporters like Universal Basic Income. Maybe there are still some Leftists remaining there!
May 12th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Two more posts worth pointing too - both from George Darroch at Contradiction:
There is no Hardship
and Supporting your friends.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
looks like Don Elder and his buddies are writing the ETS and labours’ climate policy at the moment…
May 12th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
whats bad with protectionism anyway?
what ever happened to think local?
May 13th, 2008 at 1:12 am
treesoftomorrow, When protectioism extends to local manufacturers or assemblers being exempted from safety and environmental regulation while importers are subjected to the rules applying in the country of manufacture then it is bad for locals. In the 1970s the Morris Minor was still being assembled here two years after it failed the UK mandatory crash test. At the same time Aussie cars had to have seatbelts for all seating positions and inertial reel belts in the front. Neither were required when those cars were assembled here. In the 80s the Commodore had key crumple bracing components omitted to keep the weight within the capabilities of the small engine, but only in this country - it was illegal in Aus.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:14 am
>>whats bad with protectionism anyway?
The World Bank ound that if the cotton price was not distorted by (mainly US) subsidies, the number of people living in poverty in Burkina Faso could be halved in six years. It makes
Protectionism is based on the lie that the government can dictate where jobs go. “The assumption is that if the government tells businesses that they can’t export jobs, that those jobs will stay in the United States and they won’t be lost.
Except the fact is that for that to work, someone else has to lose their job. If a company must reduce costs, they can’t keep the same number of jobs - and in the end, those jobs that would have been imported will simply go away.
That produces even more collateral economic damage in its wake - not only have those jobs disppeared, but those who depend on the products or services created by those jobs are now out of a job as well. After protectionism is enacted, you end up losing more jobs than you would hav”
May 13th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Source: tinyurl.com/42m8qa
May 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
surely you must see some positives too?
for instance under free trade - a community might be making food for export, and being given aid of the same type - killing the local demand and economy for it - forcing them into exporting and cash crops.
——-
May 13th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
so the positive would be growing and producing for local demand, creating local employment and industries for local needs and demand
May 14th, 2008 at 1:57 am
So you want an example of the ills of protectionism. The US Transportation Equity Act includes a buy American clause. When the Highway Trust Fund pays for new buses they have to be American. Consequently Designline will not be tripling it’s manufacturing capacity here in Canterbury to make hybrid buses for the US. It is instead building a factory in North Carolina.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:59 am
PS, New Zealand isn’t taking global warming as seriously as the Americans and Chinese so there isn’t any demand for hybrid here. That’s why they’re all exported.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:41 am
treesoftomorrow
Thats not free trade. Thats a wilful geopolitical policy on the part of the Americans. A fact that is illustrated by a statement made by Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculturem uner Nixon and Ford. “Hungry men listen only to those who have bread. Food is a tool. It is a weapon in the US negotiating kit.”
They wouldn’t be able to do that without um, PROTECTIONISM back home in the form of subsidies, quotas, and prices controls for the powerful agriculture lobby.