election

In the land of make believe

by Gareth May 13, 2008

Today’s lesson is taken from Jane Clifton’s Politics column in this week’s Listener (full text on the web next week). Her take on the current fuss over the Emissions Trading Scheme perfectly illustrates how the debate around this issue is being misunderstood and misrepresented, occasionally wilfully, sometimes from ignorance. This is not Clifton’s fault. She [...]

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So it goes

by Gareth May 6, 2008

The cacophony of lobbying around the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), coupled with high petrol prices, has prompted the government to announce a couple of changes to the scheme. Liquid fuels were supposed to enter the ETS in 2009, but this has now been delayed to 2011, and the phase out of the free allocation [...]

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White light/white heat

by Gareth May 1, 2008

The proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is under intense scrutiny at the moment. Lobbyists, economists and politicians are all pounding their respective beats, and as is usual in these matters, a great deal more heat than light is being shed on the proposed legislation. At the beginning of the week, the government’s climate change leadership [...]

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A rainbow (warrior) in curved air

by Gareth April 2, 2008

Second conference in a week in Wellington: this time the LexisNexis climate change symposium with lots of lawyers and a very impressive speaker list – and an invite to the Rainbow Warrior for a webcast climate change debate between David Parker, Nick “for Nelson” Smith, Jeanette Fitzsimons and Hone Harawira, with Sean (Jeepster) Plunket in [...]

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Emissions trading: baby steps not big enough

by Gareth March 8, 2008

As parliament starts to get stuck into the serious business of legislating for the government’s proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS), the tempo of criticism (from all sides) is increasing. Owners of pre-1990 forests have weighed in, and in the past week Greenpeace has launched a broadside: “The current proposal for the structure of the ETS [...]

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Blah, blah, blab, Blaby (*)

by Gareth November 15, 2007

Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, a British Tory politician who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet during the 1980s, is visiting New Zealand as a guest of the Business Roundtable to give this year’s Sir Ronald Trotter memorial lecture. Lawson withdrew from the mainstream of Conservative politics in 1992 “to spend [...]

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Howard’s carbon conversion

by Gareth July 18, 2007

There’s an Australian federal election on the way, and – bless his cotton socks – John Howard has discovered there are votes in carbon policy. Over the last few days Howard has announced a national cap and trade programme for greenhouse gases as part of a new A$627 million climate change initiative, coupled with subsidies [...]

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