by Russel Norman
It looks like the rest of the world is catching on to New Zealand’s dirty little secret: we trade off our “clean green” “100% pure” image, when in fact our environmental record has been anything but.
I guess we were hoping our export partners and potential tourists wouldn’t notice, but it just got pointed out in this Guardian article, which gives
the prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as ‘clean and green’, but has increased greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 22% since signing up to reduce them at Kyoto.
The author, Fred Pearce, is frankly incredulous that we can get away with this. He’s particularly outraged that New Zealand has a reputation for “global leadership in tackling climate change, when the country’s minister in charge of climate negotiations, Tim Groser, has been busy reassuring his compatriots that ‘we would not try to be ‘leaders’ in climate change’.”
The article doesn’t make for nice reading for any patriotic Kiwi, but while it may be harsh, there’s a lot of truth in it.
“Brand New Zealand” is one of our greatest assets, and we’re rightly proud of our international reputation for being a small but effective country that punches above its weight in the international arena. But if we are going to add our environmental image to that brand, it needs to be authentic, and it needs to stand up to scrutiny.
On climate change, it plainly doesn’t. We risk grossly undermining our national image if we don’t pull our socks up and commit to a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Given our heavy reliance on dairy exports and international tourism, both of which depend on the integrity of “Brand New Zealand”, this is a risk we can ill-afford to take.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Media | Society & Culture by Russel Norman on Fri, November 13th, 2009
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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BJ
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As much as I like to rant about NZ not being clean and green, I wonder if Fred Pearce is being a bit unfair.
World Bank, World Development Indicators data apparently shows that NZ is not as bad at CO2 emissions as UK.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=en_atm_co2e_pc&idim=country:NZL:GBR:AUS&tstart=-315619200000&tunit=Y&tlen=45
Pearce said ‘New Zealand’s emissions today were 60 per cent higher per head of population in comparison to Britain’s.’ but that is not what the World Bank, World Development Indicators graph shows?
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Stuey – Fred Pearce may indeed be being a bit unfair – we must point it out to him. I’m sure readers of the Guardian will revise their opinions the moment we set the record straight.
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The poms hardly have the moral authority to criticise NZ’s greenwashing. SEI’s 2005 study for the UK government “National and Regional Physical Accounts (Material Flows) for the United Kingdom” revealed that the UK’s carbon emission’s reduction was the result of shifting high carbon emitting industries to former soviet-bloc countries and that the carbon emissions of goods consumed in the UK had increased by much more than the 22% increase in this country. Mind you, that 22% for NZ hasn’t been corrected for imports/exports.
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Ah yes, but compared with Britain we didn’t have much to begin with and Britain did the really dirty work such as making the all parts for the Hilman Hunter, we just screwed the bits together and hoped for the best.
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The government has put out a press release in response.
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Apparently the production equipment for the Iranian-made Hillman Hunter copy, the Paykan, has been sold to Sudan, so their could be life in the Hunter yet. The Paykan totally ruled the roads of Iran up untill recently.
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Stuey worte: “World Bank, World Development Indicators data apparently shows that NZ is not as bad at CO2 emissions as UK.”
true, but that’s just CO2, not CO2 equivalents. about half of NZ’s emissions (in CO2 equivalents) are agricultural emissions which are not CO2 and therefore don’t show up on that graph.
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You’d start by looking at what the Minister actually said BLiP. Mostly he didn’t.
Apart from claiming responsibility for the things we handed him on a platter, and at least one thing that his government appears to have abandoned (Maybe Brownlee’s problem isn’t that he’s not talking to us, maybe he’s simply forgotten to talk to ANYONE. Loose cannons of that size are hazardous as hell. ).
The rest is buried deeper, and unless we see what he actually claims when he writes to the Guardian the generalities he is using will tend to protect him.
Unless someone responds to the Guardian as well. In which case he might well find himself tasting shoe leather for a good long time. There’s already a substantial thread of response from Kiwis who are there.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
BJ
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Meanwhile, turns out the figures on the emissions trading scheme are way out.
Labour are as much to blame for this circus as National Ltd® – why, oh why did we go for a trading scheme instead of a flat out, easy to understand, overt and clear carbon tax!!!
Its times like these I really lament the Greens disenfranchising me with that MoU!
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BLiP – you subscribe to the theory that we New Zealanders chose the National Government because they sensed that with them making the decisions, we wouldn’t have to face up to Peak Oil, Global Warming etc?
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Yes, yes, that too, but deep down I reckon there was a willingness to be represented by deniers. And here we are. In my opinion
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Still, what an ironic post given that the Green Party is assisting National Ltd® with the greenwash
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“No. I reckon most New Zealanders were bamboozled by the perception-shifters distorting reality with various memes”
You really are a blinkered individual aren’t you blip.
It was the “born to lead” arrogance from people like yourself that led to the current national govt. Swallow the bitter pill and move on.
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Sounds like it was your fault BLiP.
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Norman’s right New Zealand is not as ‘clean green’ as it is cr&ped up to be.
Every time I take a drive across the canterbury plains I notice something missing!!!!
A shelter belt, a few hedgerows, miles and miles of irrigation booms, algae bloomes in the summer that has resulted in dying dogs and may result in dying babies!!!!!
But the Selwyn District Council need not concern itself in that, it has just given Central Plains Water Trust a loan (ratepayers money) of $800.000 (to complete their consents) plus purchasing their loan ($494,000)from Christchurch City Council.
The mayor Kelvin Koe is very capable of couching all this in a swath of euphemisms ‘If gained, these valuable consents will be owned on behalf of the community by the CPW trust” I think SDC has one or two shares in this to keep up appearances.
But to be fair to Mr. Coe he did pay for his breakfast when he attended ACT’s properganda breakfast to listen to Dr. Jeck–, no Mr.Hides spin, he thought it was all very ‘interesting’.
If Norm wants to dig the dirt and expose corrupt little dealings he will find plenty in Canterbury. He will need to go back to Queensland, preferably to Goondawindi and bring back a road train.
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Shunda asks, quite reasonably, for bj to enlighten him as to the depth of National’s malevolence …
then tells BLiP to “Swallow the bitter pill (of having a National Government) and move on.”
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No no greenfly just hold on a second, I object to BLiP implying that National won the election due to some vast right wing conspiracy to trick the stupid masses into voting for them.
The Left screwed it up, that is why National won there was no need for the various “memes” that BLiP suggests or the fear of “baby eating lesbians”
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BJ.
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My position is yes to all of you, but deeper than that, we New Zealanders wanted an irresponsible, avoid-the-real-problem Government and we got one. We didn’t really want to do what’s necessary, so we called in those who were signalling that they wouldn’t make us.
Just like little kiddies, us.
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As an OZ who’s lived in UK & NZ and kept my finger on the pulse of all, my only comment would be that it is difficult to tell which has the most unaware voters, or the most slippery government. As for the clean green image of NZ,it is clear that it is a marketing front, unsupported by the evidence. My experience of the general NZ population who I speak to a lot about CC matters, is that they couldn’t care less & buy in to the marketing con. But hey, it hardly matters they say, our emissions are so small they don’t matter, and after all the Nats offered lower taxes.
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I’m expecting NZ, John Key and the National/Act/Maori/Dunne Government to get a slap around the chops that will set them reeling, at Copenhagen or thereabouts.
Am I being too optimistic?
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Others are talking about this.
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/greens-greenwashing-for-anti-envirnment-govt/
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See greenfly, they are still stabbing you in the back.
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Actually Shunda, they are stabbing in the front.
However, I reckon we deserve it.
BJ
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Yeah – nasty alright. Kinda creepy too.
I’m beginning to gradually swerve towards to your theory about New Zealanders deliberately electing a do-nothing government to make manifest our own inner-desire to do nothing in relation to the environment. In my trip to the supermarket today the car park was chocker, the individually-sliced and wrapped in plastic cheese was nearly sold out, and I was the only muggins queuing up with my own bags. Feeling a little guilt about my recent slothfulness, I took the long way home. Cycling along the footpaths to avoid Shunta-the-Munta types and their crazy driving is easy these days simply because no one seems to walk anywhere any more. The few souls I did see were lost in their I-pod world, there were a few keen gardeners out with masks on as they sprayed who-knows-what on their plants, one driver stopped to empty out their over-flowing ashtray into the gutter, and along one whole kilometre stretch debris from the nearby McDonalds could be seen everywhere.
Cheer up BLiP, I thought, there’s always the big soccer match on later. The All Whites versus Bahrain, isn’t it? There was a time, of course, when sporting encounters with a nation like Bahrain would have brought the people out onto the streets in protest rather than celebration.
Its sometimes easy to see that the rat race is over, and the rats have won. Humans, I think, don’t deserve the planet any more. Lets hope that the next civilisation hears the echo of the denialists’ screams and learns from our mistakes.
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Blip, National’s approach to environmental affairs is modelled on Labour’s approach to road safety. Denial, inaction and damn the consequences. Consequences that motorcyclists are now suealing very loudly about. Today National has been left with just six weeks to cut the road toll and seems to be finding that ACC has thrown them a timely diversionary tactic.
But, being the deeply committed and well informed environmentalist that you are you will know as well as I do that there is simple, well proved, way to cut the road toll by one-third in less just a few weeks but no New Zealand politician will ever implement it even though it will give them something well worth crowing about in the run up to the next election and could even be used to create some worthwhile semi-skilled jobs.
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Kevyn
Ahhh – you’re a convert to the idea that airbags are actually part of the problem when it comes to road safety and, instead of airbags, cars should be fitted with a two foot metal spike that pops out directly into the heart of the driver? Might be a few inadvertent deaths initially but, overall, drivers would have a far better concept of road safety if there was no doubt about their death should they be involved in a collision.
Or are you talking about free public transport?
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Shunda – I don’t expect any of the other parties to pledge their support to the Greens – all fear us and rightly so – we’re the ones ringing the changes and no one, bar us, likes the sound.
BLiP – you’ve had a tough day! I wish you’d been here at my place. We’ve a gathering of gardeners here, innovative, aggressive and knowledgeable – we’re strategising, laying down the seeds of change and having a good laugh at what we’ve already achieved. Tonight it’s stories from Ladakh, movies and more korero plans and schemes. Rats? They’d better beware! We’ve gauged their length and have the tools, the will and the derring-do!
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Phil – Though I suspect you’re outside cultivating and won’t lay down your tools til dark
, today’s a great day to sow peas! Plant them directly into your newly-tilled soil, especially if rain is due over night. Corn too (if you’ve not grown your own seedlings, but some and get their roots into your warm tilth – they need a long season to produce plump ears) I’m growing kanga maa to make ‘fermented’ corn gruel a la tou tupuna i nga wa o mua. It’s rocketting away! Don’t delay.
Dig for victory!
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Have you taken up the spade yet Sapient? Mark of a ‘man of the future’, that productive vege garden!
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Greenfly, I thought you were against tilling?
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Baby steps Kahikatea. If I asked people to do what I do …
I’m in my dotage (around 110 I’m picking).
I’d be like Phil demanding that we stop eating meat NOW!
I’m a ‘minimal tillage’ advocate, never an absolutist
(How’s your garden growing, btw?)
Learned a lot today about the ergonomics of working in the garden, with the view to being able to grow food til
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Greenfly,
I do not even have a spade, nor allowence to dig up my land-lords lawn (his pride).
Have a lemon tree, an apple tree, a feijoa tree, and a concrete herb box next to the path. Thats enough for me whilst I remain destitute.
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“I’m a ‘minimal tillage’ advocate, never an absolutist”
Is it ok to use a rotary hoe (or “rotisserie whore” as my brother calls it) greenfly? It is a really handy tool on some jobs though I am using it more for landscaping than vege gardening, is this a sin against the ways of the greenie?
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“Cycling along the footpaths to avoid Shunta-the-Munta types”
You have nothing to fear from me BLiP, this munta is benevolent.
I share you views on our consumer society, just don’t think socialism will fix it.
I wish you well and may your paths be munta free and your cheese be freshly sliced.
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And then there is broadifacoum used widely… and 1080….. aerial drops and bait stations throughout NZ….
clean green NZ? What an absolute farce….. quite frankly I am ashamed.
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Sapient – food growing is the path out of the Mire of Destitution!
(I’m not joking).
Garden in someone else’s soil
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Yes Shunda, you have sinned.
Do your penance (10 ‘Hail Mollison’s’ will cover it) to obtain Green Absolution (and send me your outstanding Garden Party membership sub as well, I don’t want to get heavy with you but there are Gaga’s here looking to throw their weight around!)
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greenfly wrote:
“(How’s your garden growing, btw?)”
I don’t have one, because my health wasn’t good enough earlier in the year so I didn’t arrange an allotment. But after the surgery I had in August, I think I’ll be fine to plant one next year
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Sorry to hear your health wasn’t good Kahi and good to hear you’ll be garden-fit in time for next year (that’s not much more than a month away!) Perhaps you and Phil both will keep us up-dated as the produce rolls in!
Live to garden – garden to live!
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“(and send me your outstanding Garden Party membership sub as well, I don’t want to get heavy with you but there are Gaga’s here looking to throw their weight around!)”
greenfly is this the shindig you are talking about:
http://www.thegardenparty.org.nz/jointhegardenparty.html
all this time I thought you were joking!!
What’s the deal? what have you done greenfly!
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Copycat eh! I’m looking into it now. Thanks for the head’s-up Shunda.
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Is that not your thing greenfly? oh dear, I may have inadvertently started “the Garden wars”
You better get the trebuchet warmed up greenfly, and a good stock of swedes
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The trebuchet is never cold Shunda and we’ve swedes aplenty, though this skirmish calls for diplomacy, not confrontation (lobbying rather than lobbing)
I’ve deployed a crack Gaga unit to get to the bottom of this.
You’ll not read about it in the mainstream media.
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I think the Greens are guilty of “greenwash” themselves given that you have a pro immigration policy where sustainability is the deciding factor (a maximum). I tend to associate green with a love of the outdoors low population and plenty of open space etc. But as stated elsewhere “Green” Party is part of the “world wide Green Movement” so there is an element of differentiation.
http://www.greens.org.nz/press-releases/greens-counter-peters-welcoming-immigration-policy
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drakula,
algal bloomes(sic) — is there actual evidence of nitrogen outflows directly linked to seagoing algae.?
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jockmoron,
I am tasked to ask you whether a link to your given webpage – albeit the material for possible use there itself derived from wiki – will be in order.. Mats is the first graph where a most interesting ‘relation’ can be seen. Likely highly significant though least likely to out from the media or indeed other so-called news service sites..
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Blip.
“Or are you talking about free public transport?”
Most deaths and hospital admissions are the result of crashes on rural roads and state highways so PT is only a small part of the solution.
I was referring to the fact that the road toll in the latter half of last year was one-third less than in the first half of the year and either half of each of the previous two years. In fact, the specific months when those very low occurred perfectly precisely match the months when petrol cost more than $1.90 a litre. So the solution is simple. Add a 50c/litre road safety tax onto the price of petrol. For PR reasons the revenue would have to go into a dedicated road safety from which only road works that deliver at least 50% of the benefits would be eligible for funding. Traffic policing, walking school buses and a roll-out of a 40 km/h “living streets” residential speed management program could all be funded. The $250m freed up by funding traffic policing from the new tax instead of the existing petrol tax is enough to double PT spending from the NLTF. Carried on for long enough the fund would even pay to underground all those ugly roadside power and phone lines (especially the ones in the middle of the footpath on Marshlands Rd).
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Marshlands+Rd,&sll=-43.494028,172.662849&sspn=0.023536,0.109692&ie=UTF8&radius=2.75&rq=1&ev=zi&layer=c&cbll=-43.498492,172.661911&panoid=jYlWkKz4VFfLYeZOt5xqrA&cbp=12,17.91,,0,5&hq=Marshlands+Rd,&hnear=&ll=-43.498511,172.661991&spn=0,359.890308&t=h&z=13
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Yeah – I could go for that. I wonder, though, given that 45% of the sale of every litre of petrol already goes to the government, wouldn’t the total tax take actually reduce?
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Greenfly; You are a man after my own heart, everyone in the city should be digging every available bit of dirt for food. I took half of your advice about not growing through shade cloth.
The tomatoes are doing very well in the Hot house fingers crossed.
I have built a large compost bin 2m X 2m 4 cubic meters its got rotted wood chips, rotted pine needles (with a bit of lime), lawn clippings,horse manure, comfrey and greenery etc.
I am building a potatoe box on the same method using older compost, spuds do very well in compost and this method uses very little space and it can be built up quite high. Verticle gardening.
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Fred Pearce from the Guardian says NZ is one of the worst emitters in the world, and top of his reasons is all the coal we burn to generate electricity.
Clearly the man is either completely ignorant of what he is writing about, or he’s deliberately making false statements for his own ends.
The UK has just admitted there’s not much chance they’ll meet a target of 15% renewable energy by 2020. Our current renewables is around 70% with 30 new windfarms in the pipeline, and a 90% renewables target.
And sitting in his smoggy London office, in a country that’s currently planning many more coal power stations, Fred writes about our appalling high level of coal use (for our ONE major coal fired station) – what a joke.
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Russell, you say we can’t afford to risk brand NZ, yet when there is an attack on it in the Guardian article, filled with falsehoods, you do nothing to point them out.
In fact you add to what is effectively sabotage of New Zealand’s reputation by saying there’s a lot of truth in the article.
Fred says we’re at the top of the world for carbon emmisions per capita. This is clearly rubbish – we’re not even close to the top, but actually in about 50th place, with virtually no first world countries behind us. (see link below).
Fred says we produce 60% more carbon per capita than the UK. We’re actually 30% less.
Take out the rediculous addition of cow fart (rediculous because a/ the produce is to feed consumers in other countries, and b/ it puts out less in emissions than the grass absorbs), and New Zealands emissions would halve to just a fraction of virtually every first world country.
Carbon emmisions per capita, listed by country at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
We have 1/3 of our country locked away in parks and reserves (an area equal to 60% of England), 30 wind farms being built and planned, excellent govt subsidies for insulation and solar water, and other initiatives in all sorts of areas.
We can always do more.
But don’t you think you have a responsibility to stand up to a blatantly false attack on NZ, instead of endorsing it?
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Drakula – good to hear! (Do you grow garlic?)
Tomatoes like to be fed with every drink – have you got a barrel of liquid feed bubbling away nearby? Your compost sounds primo.
In today’s paper, Bill gates says that the fight to end world hunger is being hurt by environmentalists who insist that genetically modified crops shouldn’t be used in Africa.
“Some people insist on an ideal vision for the environment”, Gates said, ” They have tried to restrict the spread of biotechnology into sub-Saharan Africa without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it”.
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That’s just a chart of CD)2 emissions. Half our emissions (in CO2) equivalents) are methane and nitrous oxide, a higher proportion than any other first-world country, and when you take those into account, we don’t look anywhere near as good.
“Take out the rediculous addition of cow fart (rediculous because a/ the produce is to feed consumers in other countries, and b/ it puts out less in emissions than the grass absorbs), and New Zealands emissions would halve to just a fraction of virtually every first world country.”
Well, first you’re making the mistake of subtracting methane emissions from figures on a chart that already excludes methane emissions.
Second, most New Zealand farms are undergoing a net loss of soil carbon, meaning the amount of carbon put out is less, not more than the amount absorbed.
Thirdly, the methane from cow burps (or ‘farts’ as you call them) is many times more powerful as a greenhouse gas per carbon atom than the C02 absorbed by the grass. This is where the effect comes from, not the change in the number of carbon atoms in the atmosphere.
The point about food produced in New Zealand being eaten overseas is true. But it is also true that New Zealanders consume a lot of imported products that are associated with emissions overseas. For example, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with manufacturing a car is roughly equal to the amount emitted from driving it for it’s whole life, so if you exclude the emissions from farming for overseas markets, you would have to roughly double the emissions from vehicles to take account of the emissions involved in manufacturing them.
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Kahikatea – interesting into.
Although I’m not so sure about your clainm “..most New Zealand farms are undergoing a net loss of soil carbon…:
Yesterday there was a story about a study into carbon sequestation for vast tracks of NZ high country – the reason for the study? Because there’s virtually no infomation. Nobody knows what is happening and if the vast high country is a net carbon sink or not. Many suspect it is, when you typically have 25,000 acre farms running just 3000 sheep.
I agree with your point on manufacturing, and whether emissions should be counted against producers in one country or consummers in another.
Similarly, what about the emissions for the last governments $160,000 “eco” BMW ministerial cars? What a farce. Cars with similar economy were available for $100,000 less each.
That’s about ten years tax for the average worker. Take into account all the emissions (10 years worth) to produce an additional $100,000 in tax, and it would be hard to find cars that are LESS environmentally friendly.
Even smokey old V8s would have a substantially lower carbon footprint to buy and run.
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Growth-is-good isn’t anything we can accept. We need to alter our relative position, and some growth in some sectors of our economy is good, but it will be matched by shrinkage in others… and that will be true on a global basis as well.
Which is why the truth is “inconvenient”. This isn’t about destroying any economy, but it is about putting a price on what the economy has up-to-now regarded as free and used without limits. That is of necessity, going to cause damage to some sectors of the economy… and bring advantages to others.
It will happen whether we like it or not. The only thing we have any control over is whether it will happen when it needs to happen for our own good, or when it is forced on us at massive cost to our children.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ – there is a massive assumption being made with putting a price on carbon -that it will actually shift consumption to lower carbon products.
Increaase after increase of taxes have ben put on alcohol, and petrol, and consumption of both has never been higher.
Similarly one company may use cheap dirty ways of producing a product, and after paying for carbon, still may have cheaper products than someone producing the same item using more expensive low carbon methods.
I’m not saying it will have no effect – but I am saying it might not make anything like the difference people think it will.
Just like the ministerial BMWs have the opposite effect of what was intended. And the artificially imposed regulation to enforce use of biofuel resulted in the destruction of forests.
Similarly a dairy farm that is making good money can put some into improving environmental issues. But a farm that’s forced into a costly regulartory environment too fast may not have the money to afford the same improvements. What we think is the right thing, can sometimes be worse.
In the face of uncertainty, only two things are certain with changes in regualtions – nothing EVER works exactly as it is intended, and there are ALWAYS negative unintended consequences with every regulatory change.
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“Whatever else you say won’t work” which is where this is clearly leading, I’m not going to pay much more attention. Something WILL work.
HOW it will work is another thing. People told us that the price of petrol wouldn’t change our behaviour… and for a while it did not, but it did in the end. The question becomes serious when it becomes something other than a marginal cost. When the SUV owner noticed that filling up cost $200, THEN his behaviour changed. When it was a mere $90 vs $70, it wasn’t that important a change.
BJ
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BJ – Why do you make false quotes then attibute them to me?
Making what is effectively a whole new duplicate tax system with masses of additional bureauracy and compliances for the world, will make every company and country LESS efficient than it already is. The inefficiencies of complying to the new system, the payments, research, measurements, administration, new govt departments etc, all has to be overcome just to get back to the point where we are now.
Being much less efficient means there is less money to spend on changing the actual problem.
I never said it won’t work. What I’m saying is it won’t work as intended, it won’t make the big differences people are hoping for, and there will be many cases where it will have the OPPOSITE effect of what was intended.
A massive amount of the revenue collected and costs will go on the system, instead of towards the problem.
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Fair enough Photonz, I did do something rude and I apologize. You only said it would not work as intended.
The problem however, is that it HAS to be made to work… and when the price gets high enough it will make a difference, because we do not want to get back to the point we are at now, with no price signal when we destroy the irreplaceable. Efficient or not, we have to put the price on it.
You tell me another way to do it. WE asked for a carbon tax… which would have been simpler all around. Now we have to put up with a market.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ – just because is HAS to work, doesn’t mean it WILL work. If prices get very high, that will definitely change bahaviour, but some of that change might be buying from companies in places that are not signed up to the scheme (i.e Australian agriculture chosen over NZ agriculture – effectively that would probably INCREASE emissions).
You say we don’t want to get back to the point we are at now. What I’m saying, is that after paying for the cost of the scheme, new govt departments, administration, measuring, monitoring, auditing, and paying, all this inefficiency will take us BACKWARDS – where we are now might be an aspirational aim in five years time.
You dismiss efficiency, yet surely this is the key to everything. If we become inefficient though a bureaucratic second tax system, we have to produce MORE to get the same income we had before.
I hate to say it, but George Bush may have been right about climate change (the only thing he was right about?) when he said that technology will have a far greater effect on reducing emissions than regulation.
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Photonz
A. You misunderstand. Something has to work to change behavior because behavior IS changeable. In this statement I am asserting only that there is a set of circumstances that will serve the purpose of causing change… and I am quite sure that it actually will at some Carbon price (subject to b below).
B. I have never seen a scheme of this nature that did not include tariffs on the non-participant’s goods. I doubt that I will see one in my lifetime.
C. I do not think that we can go backwards from where we are now. National is in government. I cannot imagine anything more backward than that…. possibly because I cannot imagine Rodney Hide as PM. Faulty imagination I guess.
After paying for the cost of the scheme, measuring and monitoring and auditing we will have spent more MONEY on it than we save in CO2 credits or foregone tariffs…. but as the price rises we will of a certainty be using less Carbon…. that is, if National can be prevented from forcing it all on the taxpayer’s back and cutting off the market signal it is certain.
I dismiss efficiency in terms of money and person-hours, but not in terms of actually building things or supplying goods. THAT will be increased because the CO2 signal demands it… because the invisible hand will finally be able to feel the heat.
Prosperity is NOT the object of the exercise. CO2 emissions are. That’s where we are at cross purposes here. Not efficiency in terms of money, but in terms of actual work required to keep the country running. We personally will have to have the odd can of franks and beans. We had wanted it all as a tax, but we will take it as it comes.
If the country wants to become “more prosperous” it isn’t going to do so through the ETS. Trying to subvert the ETS to that purpose destroys it. The cause of prosperity would be better served by stuffing regulations down the financial sector’s throat, removing the tax incentives around housing and adopting a Tobin tax and/or wiping out the Fractional-Reserve system entirely and making the NZ dollar redeemable, backed by an amount of NZ KWH in NZ. The removal of the Fractional Reserve removes the imperative of continual exponential growth and with the shift to a redeemable dollar it would collapse the global economic house-of-cards in 3 to 6 weeks. Paradigm shift.
Prosperity doesn’t come from this. Survival comes from this.
Prosperity comes after survival.
Bush was never as dumb as he seemed (nobody with human parents could be), but he was wrong about the WAY he relied on Technology. Technology is more likely to save us than any deal we humans can reach (we are horribly bad at making such agreements and keeping them at the international level), but it is not going to reduce our CO2 emissions well or quickly. Until the real problems of the CO2 are so obvious that the deniers are buried, just as the Tobacco lobby was finally buried, in reality and in lawsuits that pulled its teeth, they won’t stop.
The problem is that by the time that happens, recovery through reduction of emissions will be impossible. It will be literally impossible, even if we turned off every single machine, to cause the climate to recover to anything like the conditions under which we evolved.
So we will have to have, ready to hand, technical means to alter the solar input even as we tackle the reductions of emissions and the increases in efficiency and controls over our consumption that all have to come in order to get the Carbon back into the ground. Nothing else will serve. We have to have enough control to stop the warming. Which is technical yes, but not a reduction in emissions. THAT has to come from us putting a price on them. Nothing else will serve.
respectfully
BJ
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You’re right – properity is not the object of the game, however without it, you face an uphill battle.
With prosperity, companies don’t have as many choices of what direction to head in, nor do they have the spare money to spend on environmental issues.
Without prosperity, there are less choices available, less money available, and frankly – much less concern about the environment.
The environment is something most people worry about AFTER they have their basic needs met. If the economy is in bad shape, environmental issues will ALWAYS drop in priority.
And for most people it will never be the top priority. You have to convince people in Invercargill that their city being warmer in 50 years time is a really bad thing.
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BJchip,
A simple approach.. for that behavior changing strategy you suggest.. on and off I’ve thought about it for years.. the other day finding someone else capable of stating it.. into a tax-averse corporate-controlled or, if you will, ideologically constructed economy..
A consumption/services tax.. abating to various levels per required (behavioral) outcomes.. eg (illustrative only) fossil fuels at the pump 15 percent, food at retail, 5 percent..
GST could – according to a commenter elsewhere (‘slarty’ I think the name was) – serve as vehicle for this kind of thing..
I’d welcome your view..
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tomfarmeer – different levels of gst would be a total nightmare for business.
Instead of totaling your expenses to work out gst, you’d have to sort thousands of expenses into different levels of gst. Many receipts would have items with different leves of gst on the one receipt.
We’re a small business (just 2 and a half workers). It already costs us well into five figures per year to do our accounts for tax and gst, not to mention a few thousand more for the accountant.
If you want a really simple system, you could start by just taxing a small number of the largest emission types. i.e.
- added petrol tax, as this would cost nothing extra to collect – it’s just half a dozen companies who need to change the current tax rate.
- perhaps a tax at source for thermally genratated power
However simply taxing to try change habits may not work in some cases. What say we can buy “high carbon milk” including emission taxes for $3 per litre, and “new improved low carbon milk” which costs much more to produce and retails at $4 per litre. Which one will people buy? (that’s where the prosperity arguement comes in again, just like with free range eggs, chicken, pork etc)
And that brings up the issue of whether the system will backfire in many cases. What happens to the companies and industries who need the most help to research and develop new techniology to reduce their emissions?
Will they get the help they need, or will they be penalised and suffer lower sales, and be less able than ever to change.
Emissions trading will very likely do the most harm to those companies who need the most help.
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The entire point to this process is that the ecology comes first. Without it you don’t have an economy to complain about, and the only way to protect the ecological commons from the economic distortion of it appearing to be free, is to put a price on it. There isn’t any other way short of abandoning capitalism entirely and even then you’d still have to put a “value” on it to save it.
It isn’t about a company having “spare money”… there is no such thing in a real economy, yet there is a massive flood of the stuff in the fake economy currently in vogue. The only problems are that it is concentrated in the hands of a few people and the malinvestment that has resulted is still to be swept from the table. In this country the malinvestment is in the housing market as opposed to bankers in other countries.
Without prosperity, there are less choices available, less money available
It is rather repetitious this obsession with money and prosperity and spare-money and the lack of choice… because it is contrasted with the singular lack of choice that our children will have about losing most of the planet and because the prosperity we have today is already borrowed from our children.
We are living a lie. Not so much in NZ as in the USA, but as a planet we have stolen trillions of dollars and resources from the future. So while I applaud measures to improve things here, I am not impressed by cries of poverty when the basics of the ecological system are at stake. We weren’t poverty stricken when decided to build a Rugby Stadium. We aren’t poverty stricken if we are electing to build nothing for less than a half-million dollars in a subdivision. We aren’t poor in the sense of starvation setting in… but, when it comes to the paradigm shift of actually having a price on the commons, we can’t afford it?
We have to build the economy from the ground up with a proper acknowledgement of it being secondary to the ecology and we have to build it out of bricks rather than cards.
respectfully
BJ
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bj – you say “The entire point to this process is that the ecology comes first.”
In the ideal world mayube, but back in the real world, many people do not have the disposible income to make many choices. For instance how many people pay $20 for a free range chicken when they can buy a standard one for $7.
How many people spend $50,000 on a hybrid Toyota Prius when you can buy a similar sized new car for half that? It’s way out of reach of the average person.
Often making the “right” and usually more expenensive choices, requires a higher disposible income than many people have. Yes we can all do our bit, but
Of course it’s about companies having profits to make choices. It’s little different to a household – a company doing well has a wide choice of what to spend it’s profit on.
For example Fonterras new milk drying plant that Greenpeace protested yesterday. It’s 30% more efficient than the old driers – the most efficient milk drier in the world – it cleaverly uses the steam from the drying milk to generate 25% of the plants electricity, and it cuts a massive 90% of the number of shipping trips compared to liquid milk. However it cost $200 million. Massive effciency gains made by a company with money to spend and choices to make.
Without prosperity, they would be stuck with old much less efficient milk driers.
With low or no profits, there’s no new money to spend on anything – survival becomes the first priority, and issues like environment drop way down the list.
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…and the milk would cost more because there would be a price to pay for that, and people would buy less because it would cost more. The savings in terms of the CO2 would happen.
The borrowings from the future which have already bankrupted the planet, would not be required.
If I can’t afford a Prius (and I can’t), and I can’t afford the petrol to drive a clunker, I can take the train.. which is electric and efficient. The behavioral change is made. Survival does not require me to have all the “things” that are mistaken for necessities in this country and certainly not all the “things” that I used when I was in the USA.
…. and I place the welfare of the chickens somewhat lower on my scale of “needs” than the welfare of the planet.
Survival is INDEED the first priority Photonz, but without a healthy environment, survival isn’t even possible.
The problem for the companies is not that environmental concerns cost them so much but that the props under the housing market and the abuse by banks suck so much investment capital out of their reach that they’re starved. They have THAT problem now, as environmental CO2 has cost them stuff-all to date and they’re starving for capital.
Fix the OTHER problems for business and see where that leads. You still have to tell me what you’d do instead of putting a price (or tax) on CO2.
BJ
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photonz says: survival becomes the first priority, and issues like environment drop way down the list.
Until it reappears at the top of the list and won’t be shaken from that position – then you’re screwed. My guess is that you don’t see that as the present situation, where many here do.
As for Fonterra’s new efficiency – they’re still digging up crappy coal and burning it, no matter how much improved that might be on their past performance – certainly not improved enough to be regarded as clean.
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Photonz “Without prosperity, they would be stuck with old much less efficient milk driers.”……
bj…. “…and the milk would cost more because there would be a price to pay for that, and people would buy less because it would cost more.”
That’s amazing bj – you just argued in favour of old inefficent coal powered technology that emits vastly more carbon. That’s really twisted logic.
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different levels of gst would be a total nightmare for business.
Instead of totaling your expenses to work out gst, you’d have to sort thousands of expenses into different levels of gst. Many receipts would have items with different leves of gst on the one receipt.Frankly, photo, this is nonsense aka trivialization for the sake of argument.You’ll be aware of spreadsheets and amending legislation.. of course you will. Polemics elsewhere. Let’s keep to simple ways and means in all important matters.
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tomfarmer – clearly you’re not someone who spends many weeks every year doing gst.
It’s blatantly obvious that if you’ve got a whole list of items on the one invoice with lots of different gst rates, then BEFORE you can put that in a spreadheet, you FIRST have to manually indiviualise every item.
What was a 30 second input suddenly takes 20 or a hundred times longer.
Pricing items in shops would be a nightmare – imagine the shop junior trying to work out various percentages on all sorts of different products, and trying to work out which ones were in which category.
Face it tomfarmer – it’s a really stupid idea.
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Photonz
What I argued for is that the company does what makes sense to do when the price of carbon is included. When it is, the company will discover what you seem to have forgotten about the economics of the situation. Which is that the break-even point for use of the more expensive kit has changed. The economics will be different, but the efficient hardware will pay for itself much faster with CO2 included, so the investment may well still be made… or we all suffer with more expensive milk until someone else invests in new plant.
I know you guys pride yourselves on being good economists. What you can’t seem to get is that making it all happen by using the economic lever of CO2 works, but works differently from whatever it is you aren’t suggesting…. and I am still waiting on that.
respectfully
BJ
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The notion that things have different GST rates is not greatly different from having some on GST and some not, and that’s been the case in the USA for 30 years. Would you do it by hand? I dunno… do they total up your family grocery bill by hand. ?
Different things have different GST rates in at least one other country I am aware of, and that is Sweden.
respectfully
BJ
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bj – if you are taking your grocery bill (say for a restaurant) and there are different gst rates on different products, how do you suggest this receipt automatically sorts itself out and magically makes it’s way onto your computer??????? With one rate its a single entry, but with multiple rates you have to add up every individual item from every different rate and sort it into it’s correct place – it’s totally daft.
Clearly you missed what I suggested earlier.
Hit the MAIN problems, with tarrifs that don’t mean setting up a completely new double taxation system, or daft multiple gst rates, or any other stupid system where a massive amount of effort goes into the collection, administration, measurment, govt dept, etc, which makes everyone LESS efficient when the goal is to make everyone MORE efficient.
Hence, simply up the tarrifs on petrol – not a single dollar of extra administration cost for any person or company. It’s the same administration costs as now, affecting no more than half a dozen companies, but with a higher rate.
Similarly put a tarrif on thermal generation, which just a handful of companies would have to administer, or thak that back another step and put the tarrifs on coal. Again, it only affects a few companies at source.
And you could take other regulations ALREADY in place, like emission levels for factories, and gradually tighten them.
Of course you realise what will happen with an emission trading scheme? Countries like NZ will get screwed. Criminals and corrupt officials from other countries only need a piece of paper saying that such and such company has so many million credits. For nothing more than a piece of paper (authenticated by the corrupt official) they can get millions of dollars from companes in other countries.
I can see this being the world biggest scam – organised crime and corrupt officials will be laughing all the way to the bank with this one. What’s easier than falsely documenting carbon credits and selling them for millions.
Care to take a bet on when the first story will appear about a myriad of false carbon credits?
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A consumption/services tax.. abating to various levels per required (behavioral) outcomes.. eg (illustrative only) fossil fuels at the pump 15 percent, food at retail, 5 percent..
I believe that was the original suggestion. No?
I happen to know that this is done in Sweden and in the US it is a tad more bizarre, as the sales tax (equivalent to gst) can be imposed by State, County and City. With each applying a different rate and to different items. The taxes are additive. I have no idea why you think associating a different tax with a product or product category is so hard. It is done all the time. Just not something you’re used to seeing I guess.
Note that I’m not disagreeing necessarily, about the rest of your post. A high tariff on petrol and/or diesel would be fairly effective at reducing THOSE emissions, but I don’t know what problem we were trying to solve on this branch of the thread.
Put a price on carbon and you automatically get all of the complications involved in trying to work out the balance of efficiencies. The tariff does have the advantage of being easily applied and computed, but we invariably knocked back when such things are required… and who knows, we might come up with some way of doing things that burns something else that is worse but not covered. Coal fired steam cars come to mind.
Of course you realise what will happen with an emission trading scheme? Countries like NZ will get screwed. Criminals and corrupt officials from other countries only need a piece of paper saying that such and such company has so many million credits.
I don’t think that that is going to be a common outcome. More likely to see the same credits sold multiple times – but what choice were WE given Photonz? We said tax. LabNats said “No way”.
The SIMPLE ways were blocked, I think partly because the wealthy and powerful people who control this planet demand their cut and refuse to relinquish their power. The other part is ideological blindness on the part of National.
At this point I say GIVE it to them and deal with them later, because they can block action until the water really starts to rise and if that is allowed to happen it won’t matter if we finally throw them to the sharks.
We have something that looks like a workable ETS and National wants to transform it into a completely unworkable version. I am not tempted to abandon a workable ETS on the possibility that I might persuade this government to actually add taxes to anything.
I wasn’t born yesterday mate, and it’d be stupid to trust this government further than I can throw Mt Ruapehu.
respectfully
BJ
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bj – yes – pricing carbon will be a factor for companies, but that doesn’t actually mean things will change, or that they’ll move in the direction you want.
It may be cheaper to manufacture (say milk powder)in old polluting plant AND pay for carbon, than the added cost of a new $200 million drier (which will probably have to pay nearly as much as the old plant anyway).
Just like on a consummer level, even with carbon priced in, it may still be much cheaper to run your old V8, than to buy a Prius and save on emission tax.
In fact with the price of old large engined cars plummeting, it’s never been CHEAPER to run them.
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bj – you should try spending several weeks of completely unproductive time (or were paying sdmeone elses wages for several weeks for ZERO productivity), doing gst returns (on a regular basis).
Then think about massively complicating that work, making it take many times longer, (but not to necessarily get any more tax) and all you have is totally needless inefficiency.
Variable GST is truely is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.
We are a small business, and ALREADY have some payments where it has cost us MORE to account for the gst, than the gst amount.
Simple GST works. Complicated GST (i.e. like the silly idea of taking gst off food) would be a disaster.
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