by frog
More climate change news out today. A ShapeNZ poll released today shows that a majority of kiwis support taking real action to combat global warming. I am not surprised. The Green message ultimately gets through because it’s based on the science and a healthy dose of common sense. Rod Oram typifies the sentiment in his article from the Sunday Star Times. With respected voices from the business world like Rod’s and Gareth Morgan’s, it’s only a matter of time before the Green New Deal is a mainstream idea.
Ranked most popular, in the ShapeNZ survey of 2,851 New Zealanders want:
. More incentives for households to improve energy efficiency, 87% support/ 2% oppose
. Incentives for businesses developing renewable energy projects (like wind, solar, wave, geothermal, hydro power) 82%/ 2%
. Lower vehicle registration fees for fuel efficient and low-emission vehicles, 80%/ 6%
. A cash incentive to encourage replacement of energy inefficient home appliances with energy efficient ones, 78%/ 8%
. Financial incentives to purchase fuel efficient, low emission vehicles 75%/ 8%
. Incentives for landowners to plant more carbon sink forests, 74%/ 4%
. New Government investment funds to help quickly commercialise new lower-emission technology invented in New Zealand ( e.g. biofuel made from industrial process emissions, biofuel made from algae; bio fuel made from wood waste and woody residues), 74%/ 3%
. Lower road user charges for diesel vehicles using lower-emission bio fuels, 73%/ 8%
. A Government information programme to advise businesses and households about climate change policies and ways to help manage it, 71%/ 7%
. Increasing goods transportation by rail and coastal shipping, 71%/ 4%
. Increased spending on research to produce technology to help reduce emissions, 70%/ 5%
. Subsidies for farmers to use fertilisers which inhibit the release of nitrogen, lowering emissions and improving water quality, 67%/ 8%
. Assistance to sell New Zealand emissions reduction technology to other countries, 66%/ 5%
. Replacing road user tax with a lower vehicle licensing levy for light diesel vehicles, including cars, 65%/ 7%
. Allowing forest owners to cut their trees and replant substitute carbon-sink forests on other marginal land without incurring any emissions penalty, 63%/ 6%
. Higher road user charges for vehicles which are not fuel and emissions efficient, 54%/ 18%
. Higher road user charges for diesel vehicles which do not use lower-emission bio fuels, 53%/ 19%
About the only thing that I have a concern with is the notion of forestry offsets, which I worry about because they are not allowed in Kyoto, which means passing the costs onto taxpayers. The Greens did negotiate a clause in the ETS that would allow them should Kyoto rules change, but that still leaves the problem of regenerating (since 1990) native forests getting bowled over after 19 years and replanted with pine in order to allow an existing pine forest to be bowled over to make an intensive dairy farm. That’s not a climate winner no matter how you do the math.
Perhaps, (and I am musing here, not talking Party policy), when the Copenhagen agreement comes into force, it may allow offsets after having drawn a line in the sand at 2012, meaning you couldn’t bowl over a Kyoto forest without penalty, but could offset new deforestation by planting on land that was pasture/bare in 2012.
But clearly I am waffling. What the survey shows is just how out of touch the new government is with what ordinary kiwis think about climate change. If Key really is a pragmatist, he will rein in his wayward, unscientific coalition partner and get on with making the ETS work.
Pity the ETS Select Committee has no authority to make recommendations about how to improve the ETS. What we are delaying for is still a mystery to me.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Mon, May 4th, 2009
Tags: climate change, rod oram, ShapeNZ
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Notice how the support for taking real action to combat global warming changes dramaticly when the question is changed to remove the perception of a free lunch and introduce the perception that we will all have to pey our fair share. That’s the reality that politics forces into the democratic process and into free market responses too.
. Lower road user charges for diesel vehicles using lower-emission bio fuels, 73%/ 8%
. Higher road user charges for diesel vehicles which do not use lower-emission bio fuels, 53%/ 19%
However, if the ShapeNZ survey was conducted within the last few weeks then it is good news as it reflects the willingness to pay when the economy has clearly to turned to cr@p so support can only be expected to grow when ‘that nice Mr Key’ fixes the economy next week (or next month, since these things can take a bit of time to fix properly)
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If only it asked “would you be willing to pay for all of this out of your tax” and “what is your income” then we would have much more substantial, and interesting, results. lol.
Kyoto is terrible as it is and will never acheive anything significant past being a talking point; its limits are just too high and opperate in totally irrational manners.
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* a true product of politics rather than the realpolitck.
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Everyone loves to be ‘green’. No-one wants to pay for it or make other hard decisions.
There are of course easier decisions and harder ones. Thus far they’ve all been pretty much ignored, waiting for the ETS to price carbon and be the catchall instrument. Rather than making direct interventions.
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“Everyone loves to be ‘green’.”
They won’t when they realise they’ve been conned
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The Federation of Angry Farmers is stamping it’s hoof right now – There will be no buy in to Kyoto from us !
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Yeah – they contribute more than any to GW (except the airlines & some military). It’s too late Kiwi – buy mountaintop Real Estate and watch ev’yone else go first – I won’t bother…maybe ears are just stunted wings, proof we once used to fly?
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The real question is how do we make the real culprit, the Sun, pay for its share of global warming? Is it time to use all those redundant nuclear warheads?
Or should we just fire all our rubbish at it and then give it carbon credits?
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Shunda, It is far from proven, to legal standards, that the Sun is the real culprit. We all know that the solar maxima coincide with volcanic minima thus the Sun can argue, in any competent court, that is actaully Mother Earth who should be sent the bill. Worse, the sun could argue that he has provided Mother Earth with free energy for quite a few years and henceforth Mother Earth can start paying or go without.
It’s much easier to blame mankind, which it appears is what Mother Earth and the Sun have conspired to do, communicating said decision through the annointed ones.
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Voting themselves someone else money? Oh, what a surprise.
I have a green friend who whinges about the price of her power bills, yet supports building more windfarms, and objects to more hydro.
I smirk, knowingly.
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“It’s much easier to blame mankind, which it appears is what Mother Earth and the Sun have conspired to do, communicating said decision through the annointed ones.”
And the Moon just sits there, quietly mocking us.
It is decided.
The moon will be nuked as a sacrifice to apease the Sun and Mother earth, no longer will the smell of low tide woft our shores, nor the pock marked “moon face” mock us by night.
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I smirk, knowingly. MOO
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Baaa
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Is it me or has this thread turned into a AGW haiku competition?
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The world overheats
New Zealnd stands and fiddles
While home burns – aue!
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People are stupid
Government wants more tax cash
Al invent problem
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A Dead Moon
The Fragments Glisten in
The Deadly Rays
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The skeptics cry.
Their wealth run dry.
The earth overheated and dead.
They bemoan the inferno,
their ignorance hath fed.
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Rodney wants to Hide
his head in the blinding sand
It’s a selfish Act
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Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
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Ignorance is bliss.
How blissful Mr Hide, head always
in the dense iron-sand.
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Stop it write now! I’m going to start a thread just for these. Please re-enter yours, so we know the author!
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A linguist would shrink,
From haiku thus constructed.
Their form; so flawed.
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No more haiku guys
Frog has stamped his little foot
The thread is unwound
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No no! take it to the new thread! don’t stop now!!!
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Bah humbug linguist
Why baulk at these rough attempts
Best stay in your tower
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Gee…all that support and you can only muster 6.72%.
Could it be that this “poll” is less than balanced?
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A tired nay-sayer
Big Bro stumbles in to snipe
Then away he blows!
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big bro, the big blow
must descend lower than low
time to stop, big bro
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Valis said
“but God is dead”
AGW instead
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Come on guys, take it to the HAIKU Thread:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2009/05/05/agw-haiku/
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Shunda barunda
finds science a wonda
but denial’s a blunda
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Sorry frog!
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There were 17 questions.
It is interesting, or perhaps not, that . . . . .
13 of them (71%) involved increasing public spending.
One of them
. Increasing goods transportation by rail and coastal shipping,
involved someone doing something but who, and how it would be achieved, is not specified.
ONE
. Allowing forest owners to cut their trees and replant substitute carbon-sink forests on other marginal land without incurring any emissions penalty,
suggests allowing people to use their personal property as they wish
AND two
. Higher road user charges for vehicles which are not fuel and emissions efficient,
. Higher road user charges for diesel vehicles which do not use lower-emission bio fuels,
propose an increase in government revenue that the Green Party would not, by definition, want anyone to actually pay.
Until there is a clear proposal of what new taxes would be imposed, and/or what current spending would be stopped, to pay for these programmes it is easy to get people to state in a poll that they support them.
If I ask everyone in my suburb if they would like our roads to be resurfaced, a significant majority will undoubtedly say yes. If I ask them if they will pay $5,000 per house to resurface our roads, a significant majority will undoubtedly say no. Please answer yes or no Frog – Have you stopped beating your tadpoles?
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Greencarcongress tackles the same topic from a different angle in Automotive Market Research Perspectives on Selling “Green” in a Try-to-Survive Market
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/05/green-trouble-market-20090502.html
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Please answer yes or no Frog – Have you stopped beating your tadpoles?
Yes. I have stopped. I regret what I did but have grown up and will never do it again. My tadpoles have forgiven me and will follow my example and never beat their own tadpoles.
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Excellent dear frog, you have become a ventriloquist, making greenfly your dummy rather than food!
I am glad your tadpoles have forgiven you, no doubt they will expect the same from their offspring when they are beaten by their other parent.
(-_-)
.
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strings – making greenfly your dummy rather than food!
Great line
Apologies for hogging the lime-light (it’s my colour u c ) but I’ve an overload of energy right now.
The ‘other’ parent will be measurably less likely to spank the tadpoles, living with a ‘born-again’ non-spanker, like Frog.
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