The Greens have been keen on a carbon tax since 1993, and only supported Labour’s ETS after much soul searching and negotiating some big improvements as it was the only game in town. It was relatively easy to dismiss National’s version, as they fell into many of the traps outlined in the video above.

Feel free to discuss solutions to climate change in the comments, but just for once, let’s not have a discussion about whether climate change is happening, aye? As an experiment, off topic comments will be deleted.

The US and some EU countries are indicating that border taxes may be used to defend their local producers against imports from countries that have ‘soft’ climate change regimes.  The ETS that the government bulldozed through Parliament under urgency last week takes ‘soft’ to a whole new level; we’re talking marshmallows here!

While border taxes would be quite tricky to impose without contravening WTO rules about trade restrictions, and may not present a danger to us in the short term, we can’t be too sanguine about the longer term.

A much more urgent risk is that we are perceived as a country not making serious attempts to reduce our carbon emission, which will give our competitors an opportunity to turn market preferences away from our export products and services.

Given that we now have an ETS with no effective cap on emissions, and that does little to provide regulatory or financial incentives for our major polluters to change their ways and reduce pollution, we have handed our trade competitors a very handy club to beat us with!

Fortunately we do have some smart business people who understand the opportunities for genuinely ‘green’ or sustainable products or services that appeal to the growing number of socially and environmentally conscious consumers (the LOHAS  segment).

What a shame though, that any success they have in securing a share of this affluent, high value market will be despite the actions of the government, rather than being supported by it!

The key issue for Maori is fairness in the impacts of the ETS. This is easy to say, but fairness can have many meanings to different people.

Is it enough that Maori and pakeha foresters pay the same deforestation penalties and live under the same rules? Well, no – it’s not that simple.

Some iwi used Treaty settlement money to buy land under Crown Forest Leases with the express intention of deforesting and farming the land when the final rotation was harvested by the lessees. The question here is, did the value assigned to that forest when they bought it reflect the fact that there would be a large financial penalty for doing that? The penalty is charged to the owner of the land, not the owner of the forest.

For recent Treaty settlements, that fact is obviously taken into account in valuing the land. For Ngai Tahu a decade ago, and probably some others since, that is unlikely to be the case.

Some sectors in New Zealand will be affected more than others, because of their greenhouse gas intensity. For example, IT and computer software are hardly affected, while livestock farming, forestry, fishing and energy intensive industry are greatly affected. So another take on “fairness” might be, are Maori disproportionately involved in those industries? I think we need to know how much of the pre-1990 forest estate (the forests that incur a deforestation liability without earning credits because they were planted before the base year for the Kyoto protocol) are held by iwi, and I have asked for that information.

Then there are households. Every household will face the same rise in the price of a kWh of electricity and a litre of petrol, so that’s fair, right?

Maybe not – power and fuel are a much higher proportion of family income for those on low incomes than for high earners. Maori are disproportionally on lower incomes and more likely, statistically, to live in cold damp houses on the edge of cities where the only way to get to work is my car and the only affordable car is a gas guzzler. Maori don’t have this on their own of course, they share it with all low income people. But that is why I negotiated so hard with Labour for the return of the electricity SOEs profits to the people, in the form of home insulation and energy efficiency upgrades. We are working with the Government right now to make sure people don’t lose that.

It’s also a reason why we go on and on about improving public transport and cycle and walking facilities. We want to give as many people as possible the choice to leave their old gas guzzler at home and take a train or a bus that runs frequently, on time and affordably.

A new point to me was driven home forcefully, and I’m glad to have learned it. Most farmers are content to get much of their return on their investment and hard work via an increase in the value of their farm. Then when they retire they get a large capital sum to pay for a house in town and an overseas trip. But Maori land acquired through customary title or through Treaty settlements is not for sale – it must stay with the iwi for future generations. So capital gains are of little value to them. They need a good annual income to provide for the whänau. Policies that restrict their income but capitalise their wealth in land values disadvantage them relative to most other New Zealanders.

No-one will escape the impacts of climate change and no-one can be exempt from the costs of the ETS. In the end I put it to Maori submitters yesterday that “fairness” does not mean that Maori are not impacted but the ETS, but that Maori as a group will not be impacted more than society as a whole. That seemed pretty well supported.

Nothing however, is as compelling as live, up to the minute reporting and projections. StormPulse lets you watch as the third hurricane in as many weeks batters the Gulf of Mexico:

But wait, there’s more!

Thanks to the data linked in this excellent post at The Oil Drum, you can plot all the threatened oil infrastructure in the Gulf while watching the oil price changes live at Oil-Price.net.

If you’re clever, you’ll end up with something like this, which shows the crucial oil infrastructure in the Gulf and its likely susceptibility to the hurricane(s):

 Now, I don’t want to be accused of claiming that one hurricane confirms that AGW is happening. It doesn’t. It is awfully uncanny, however, that the IPCC said we were likely to see an overall increase in hurricane activity and intensity due to global warming, and that is indeed what we are seeing.

I am more interested in the irony that we can sit here on our computers here in NZ and watch the impacts of climate change impacting on the supply and price of oil, which themselves impact on climate change, and so on and so forth. We can do this on the eve of passing the historic Emissions Trading Legislation, without ever getting out of our armchairs. How quaint.

Methane breaks down to CO2 and water after eight to 10 years, so the methane a cow emits does not add to the methane in the atmosphere, it simply replaces it. The methane becomes CO2, which becomes grass which the cow eats. It all goes around and around, so there should be no tax to pay.

The CSC’s comments get dutifully picked up by a range of New Zealand’s better known and funded doubters, including Muriel Newman, Chris De Freitas and frogblog’s own Owen McShane. Because nothing says ‘scientifically accurate’ better than massive repetition.

Renowden dispatches the pseudo science behind argument but then notes that the argument is unlikely to go away – which is just what we need now as we try to bring agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme:

Oh dear. Here’s one major flaw in the argument. The global warming potential (GWP) of methane is 25 (AR4) not 20. Doesn’t affect Robin’s numbers too badly. But that’s over a long timescale – 100 years. Unfortunately, if you look at the GWP of methane over shorter timescales, say 20 years, it’s actually 72. It’s a fearsomely efficient greenhouse gas. So Daisy’s half a kilo of daily methane is equivalent over her lifetime to the impact of 36kg of CO2. On policy relevant timescales, Daisy is in deficit to the tune of 11kgs a day. And that’s before you take into account the effect of her urine and manure. It doesn’t all magically go into the soil…

Meanwhile, I suspect that this argument is going to find a fertile furrow in certain sectors of the agricultural establishment. Anybody care to help me nip it in the bud? All arguments gratefully received…

1. I asked if it had been reviewed as required in clause 12.2. The answer was: No, it will be reviewed after climate change legislation is in place. Now, if the MOU prevents the ETS bringing in agriculture early, isn’t a circular argument to then say that the ETS process prevents the MOU being reviewed?

2. The Minister then acknowledged that the original MOU target of 20% was last year reduced to 10% by the industry without agreement in writing of both parties as required in 12.3. He did correctly note that the target is in the “Background” section rather than the “The Parties agree that” section, but fact remains that the sector is not on track to meet these targets (which are intensity targets anyway)

3. The Minister confirmed that the MOU itself does not prevent the Government bringing agriculture in early – that Government policy is in the “Background” section too and is a political choice, not an agreement with the sector. Even National is now saying some agricultural emissions should come in earlier in their minority report on the ETS Bill.

4. The Minister agreed that clause 1.2 of the MOU – “there are currently no proven, practical and cost effective farm practices and technologies to reduce agricultural emissionâ€? – is no longer correct. Nowadays there are many, especially for nitrous oxide.

5. But when asked if he would therefore consider terminating the MOU and bring agriculture into the ETS early, the answer was no, despite the evidence above. Even dairy cows are more reasonable than that.

The Government will have to look to the National Party to support its Emissions Trading legislation if it is watered down to the point where it provides no significant environmental benefit.

“We are not in this game just so some can make money speculating on carbon prices. Emissions reductions need to be real and soon, or it is not worth doing it,� Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says.

Labour and National appear to be dancing towards a close embrace on an increasing range of policies, but, as their courante continues towards the election, let’s hope they don’t forget to act with gallantry towards Gaia.

What he is arguing is that because rising oil prices are blowing the fuse on household budgets, we shouldn’t fix the fault but should instead put a penny in the fuse box and pretend that it is fixed. Rather than spend the money now on a credible alternative to the car, (public transport and other mode shifts), we should wait until it’s a real crisis and the house is burning down.

Pity is, he didn’t even think of it himself. John McCain, the US Republican candidate for President, made similar calls two weeks ago. The Key difference is that McCain was calling for a tax holiday on all excise taxes, whereas Key only wants to scrap the environmental taxes and keep the excise taxes coming in. (How else would he fund all those roads?)

In both cases our right wing candidates are pandering to their only real policy point – cut taxes. Everything else is negotiable. Both candidates are labouring under the delusion that the current spike in oil prices is just a blip, like it was in 1973 and again in 1979. Meanwhile, Bill English was on Morning Report this morning, saying that these environmental fuel taxes were based on questionable reasoning, a direct dog whistle to the climate change deniers. There is no way that Key could have made such a statement, but English can. Having committed to the Emissions Trading Scheme, National is now sending signals that it might be gone by lunchtime should they be elected.

For more on the metaphor, read this post More Coins in the Fuse Box.

But when asked what the they think the government is actually doing 35% of New Zealanders think the government is doing below average on climate change.  Only 18% think it is doing better than average.

When asked to choose between the two old parties on who is best to manage climate change 35% didn’t know or couldn’t choose.  And that’s probably because they were not given enough choices, because when asked about the best coalition government to manage climate change 56% specified that they wanted the Greens in coalition government with either National or Labour.  By comparison only 30% specified a National coalition of some sort and 37% specified some sort of Labour coalition.