Silly season has begun once again with over 17000 delegates descending upon Doha for another round of the global warming talkfest. I nervously search through the international newspapers each morning to make sure that nothing has been agreed.
Luckily Tim Groser is pretty cool on the whole thing and has confirmed that NZ will not commit to Kyoto 2. That does mean he is heading us down the track towards a 2020 agreement with legal force, so lesser of two evils but still an evil. It must be funny as a fight over there with politicians like him not really wanting to do anything and pretending that they do.
A report was issued at Doha last week stating that 400, 000 people have died because of global warming. The delegates would have lapped it up I am sure and none of them would have questioned it.
The news so far is all about the poor countries condemning the rich countries for not doing enough and not giving them more money. The self interest from these countries is atrocious. They shamelessly demand money. The rich countries are being taken advantage of and we are lucky that the USA at least has enough pride to not buy into it.
It would be a different story if the other lot were in parliament over here. Kennedy Graham would be leading the charge to ruin NZ’s economy and sign us up to Kyoto.
What they don’t say is what they would do if they signed Kyoto. The problem is that NZ’s emissions have increased 59.5% since 1990. We are still in credit because the 1990 emissions level is set using gross emissions and we meet the target using net emissions. (gross emissions less forestry removals)
When countries say their emissions will be 10% lower than 1990 they are not saying what you think they are saying and that their emissions today will be reduced and be 10% lower than they were in 1990, because the 1990 figure ignores forestry removals and the emissions they measure today include them. In NZ’s case our gross emissions in 1990 were 61 million tonnes and our net emissions 34 mt. Now our gross emissions are 72 mt and our net emissions are 54 mt. Because 54 is less than 61 we are in credit even though emissions have actually increased.
NZ’s emissions will continue to increase and will be above 61 mt before 2020 so we have 3 options.
1/ Don’t sign up to Kyoto
2/ Sign up to Kyoto and pay the price offshore when our net emissions increase to the point they exceed our gross 1990 emissions. (in other words cost the taxpayer )
3/ Sign up to Kyoto and reduce emissions.
Option 1 has been chosen by the Govt. Options 2 and 3 will cost us money. And the opposition and the greenies who call for this are never questioned about the cost. Option 2 will just see taxpayers dollars sent overseas to Australia or Europe depending on who is in credit.
Option 3 to reduce emissions will also come at a cost. The ETS in its current setting will not bring about any reduction in NZ’s emissions. Groser confirmed that emissions will continue to increase even with the ETS in place. It is an expensive white elephant. If it was beefed up to make it effective the price of power would skyrocket and that would see the rich pay more for their power and the poor going cold because they could not afford to use their heaters. Is that what the Greens and Labour are proposing?
Those who want NZ to sign up to Kyoto need to understand what they are asking for. Hardship and suffering inflicted on the most vulnerable NZers. They also need to understand that there will be no environmental gain from all this suffering because Kyoto covers only a few countries who are only signing up to it because they can meet the targets anyway.
Well done to the dairy farmers who made windfall profits on their Fonterra shares. Enjoy your good fortune. I suppose you are even more opposed to a capital gains tax now.
Good luck to us all for this week,I will be nervously watching the papers. lets hope Tim Groser does not sign away too much of our future.