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Greens slam climate change bill

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Greens slam climate change bill

3News NZ

Greens climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham

Greens climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham

The Government has stopped even pretending it is serious about combating climate change, the Green Party says.

A bill introduced to Parliament on Thursday will implement previously announced changes to the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and the Greens say it is a "self-defeatist piece of legislation".

The bill indefinitely defers bringing agriculture under the ETS and freezes the price the scheme puts on carbon emissions.

The Government says it can't afford to impose burdens on the economy during tight financial times.

"This is business as usual for the government - they don't want to deal with climate change and so, just as with the brain drain to Australia, unemployment and housing unaffordability, they are simply ignoring it," the Greens' climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham said on Thursday.

"The ETS was already weak but will be irrelevant after these changes go through."

Dr Graham says the effect of the bill means taxpayers will have to keep subsidising polluters as the Government meets its international climate change obligations.

NZN

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Comments

24/08/2012 1:37:36 p.m.

Mike wrote:

Farming already pays ETS, just not on biologicals - ie for animals breathing.

ETS is flawed as it was designed that way by corrupt politians, who through bribery and stupidity were employed to kill NZ's dairy industry for overseas dairy interests (in the EU).

The basis of the ETS is the penalty rates of methane. Any hydrocarbon decay produces methane, be it composting of plant matter, or inside a cows stomach, even inside a persons stomach.

So if we apply ETS for methane accross even forestry, it will have to pay for the methane generated by the plants rotting, ie forrestry would have to be taxed as unclean.

Nowhere in the world are biologicals taxed for breathing, but our corrupt politicians wanted it here to be first to knife our country in the back. Best check their overseas accounts as some of them have had substantial deposits from foreign interests.

Take the Amazon jungle. If ETS of methane was applied to it, we would want to cut the whole lot down immediately, as the methane produced would bankrupt Brasil. Owning a dessert would be more ETS friendly than the Amazon jungle, and according to the ETS supporters, it would be more enviromentally friendly to burn the amazon all down than to have all that methane production!

If forget that side of it. What would ETS applied to biologicals mean? Its a local tax, and farmers dont have the incomes to soak up the tax, so they will pass the tax on locally through higher prices. This will require the price of dairy products to roughly double locally. International prices they can't collect the tax, as they dont set international prices, and internationally nobody else is taxing biologicals.

If we can tax cows for breathing, why not beneficiaries (as they too produce methane), as they at least get paid while cows dont. At least cows help earn export dollars, and help employ about 1/3 of NZs economy.

24/08/2012 12:06:41 a.m.

lani wrote:

Agriculture is our single biggest polluting industry and should be included in our ETS. Farmers, I know ETS presents real challenges, but if you have any sense of responsibility and fairness, and if you give a damn for the future of our kids and our grand kids, you should be opposing National on this bill. We are not going to get the kind of investment needed in technology to lower emissions from agriculture until farmers are actually paying for some of the pollution they cause and profit from. This country's politicians seem to believe in 'user-pays' for everything, except when it comes to pollution and environmental damage. Come one Act, how come your neo-liberal, user'pays, policies don't apply when it comes to paying for carbon emissions?

23/08/2012 1:52:19 p.m.

bArt wrote:

Good, it's all pseudoscience.