Tag: Labour

National snub to Labour on ETS: part 2 – the fallout

Carbon News has a special update tonight with the gory details of the government’s snub to the Labour opposition on negotiations to amend the emissions trading scheme. CN has also made available the full text of Labour’s proposed memorandum of understanding with the government (PDF) — which reveals that substantial incentives for agriculture were on the table. Commenting on the news of the deal with the Maori Party, a surprised Charles Chauvel told Carbon News:

“Negotiations with Nick Smith were … (pause) …I’m not sure now we had any discussions in good faith. We’d need to be very careful about whether or not we’d have any discussions with them at any time.”

Labour leader Phil Goff accused National of a “major breach of faith” over the handling of the negotiations, and Chauvel indicated that ETS policy was now likely to become a political football.

Under Labour’s proposed Memorandum of Understanding, Carbon News reports that the agriculture sector would have been given:

…free units for emissions reductions made by farmers before the sector entered the scheme on January 1, 2013. The offer would be worth hundreds of millions and encourage early emissions cuts by farmers who would then have free units to trade on the international market.

[Disclosure: registered users of Hot Topic can claim a discount on subscriptions to Carbon News.]

National snubs Labour, buys Maori support for watered-down ETS

Nick Smith announcedthis afternoon that National has cut a deal with the Maori Party to support an amended, watered-down emissions trading scheme. Key features (from the press release):

  • Revised entry dates of 1 July 2010 for transport, energy and industrial sectors and 1 January 2015 for agriculture
  • A transitional phase until 1 January 2013 with a 50% obligation and $25 fixed price option for the transport, energy and industrial sectors
  • A production-based industry average approach to allocations for trade exposed, emissions intensive businesses
  • A phase-out of industry support aligned with trading partners and the Government’s long-term -50 by 2050 emissions reduction target
  • Incentives for afforestation created by a domestic and international market for carbon credits
  • Enhanced transitional support for the fishing industry

Smith says that these changes will reduce the impact of fuel and electricity price rises to 3.5 cents per litre and 1 cent per kWh. In addition, the Maori Party get assurances that “further work will be done” on extending the energy efficiency assistance for low-income households, promoting new forestry planting, biodiversity protection, and provisions for treaty settlements affected by the deforestation provisions applying to pre-1990 forests. The government aslo released two background documents: a summary of the proposals and “Questions and Answers” about the changes.

A couple of thoughts spring to mind. The Maori Party’s support flies in the face of their minority report on the ETS Review, where they said they would prefer stronger action, not a weakening of the emissions cuts being considered. I suspect that the real meat of their deal lies in the treatment of pre-1990 forests, where many tribes have very significant assets.

It also looks as though Smith could not cut a deal with Labour, who would have objected to the price cap and reduced obligations during the new “transitional phase”, and the considerable softening of the long term phase out of free allocations to big emitters. Both of these moves have the effect of increasing the subsidy from taxpayers to big (often foreign-owned) corporates. At the same time, delaying agriculture’s entry into the scheme by two years may not do much to blunt objections from farmers if recent Federated Farmers pronouncements are anything to go by.

I’ll have more on this in due course, but here’s a revealing line from the Q+A document:

Assuming new afforestation of 50,000 hectares per year, New Zealand’s emissions in 2020 would decrease by approximately 20% relative to 1990 levels.

In other words, despite refusing to acknowledge forestry’s role in meeting targets during the “consultation” process, Smith has clearly known all along the role it would have to play — because he’s expecting it to deliver a big enough carbon sink to offset all of New Zealand’s emissions growth since 1990 and then 20% more. Words fail me — but only briefly, you may rest assured…

Goff balks at the task

It doesn’t look as if we can expect transformational leadership from Labour leader Phil Goff so far as climate change is concerned.  Readers of my review of  David Orr’s Down to the Wire, may recall that Orr stated that one of the challenges of such leadership in the time ahead is to help us understand the connections between our energy choices and ecological consequences. Goff appears to be backing off from that before he starts.  In this morning’s Herald he nominates two initiatives of the previous government on energy use as “mistakes”.  One was the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs, the other encouraging builders to restrict hot water flow through showers.

“We’d stopped listening to what people’s priorities were and seemed to be working on issues they thought were sideshows.”

Ecological consequences?  That’s a bit much for politicians to be expected to handle.  Electoral consequences, now that’s something we know about.  New Zealanders don’t like those funny eco-bulbs.  Therefore we were silly to try to make them standard.

It wasn’t silly at all.  It was important and would have made a significant difference to our level of electricity use. It provides a large immediate gain in energy efficiency. Many other countries have seen this and are phasing out incandescent bulbs, including the EU, Australia, Canada, Argentina and parts of the US.  Gerry Brownlee’s action in reversing the decision was ignorant and irresponsible.  Goff should be saying so.

Another function of Orr’s transformational leadership is that it prepares the public to understand the scope, scale and duration of climate destabilisation. Goff doesn’t seem to want a bar of this:

“…people thought Labour should have been more focused on what really counted for them, such as the struggle to make ends meet.”

I was a little shocked by the degree of caving-in Goff’s remarks seem to indicate.  He could have said the public mightn’t have liked what we were proposing, but they were small but important steps in combating climate change, there would have been a lot more to come because this is an issue of enormous consequence for the human future,  and we’re going to keep making that absolutely clear in opposition.  Evidently they’re not.  Sad for us all if that proves to be the case.

10:10 trumps 50:50

Imagine this: the prime minister and his entire cabinet, the opposition front bench and the largest other party in Parliament all sign up to make personal emissions cuts of 10% in 2010. Not 10% in 10 years, — 10% next year. Not in NZ, sadly, but that’s what has just happened in Britain. The 10:10 campaign, created by Age Of Stupid producer Franny Armstrong and her team, was launched last Tuesday. Armstrong is impressed by the rapid response:

“It’s amazing that within 48 hours of the campaign’s launch, the leaderships of the three main political parties have committed to cut their 10%. Who said people power was dead? These politicians clearly recognise that each person in Britain must start cutting their emissions as part of a national war-effort-scale response to the climate crisis.”

Meanwhile, New Zealand’s government flounders around trying to find support to water down the emissions trading scheme. Rod Oram in today’s Sunday Star Times considers National’s options:

..almost anything is possible because National has dissembled, prevaricated and otherwise failed to reveal its true beliefs on climate change in opposition and so far in government.

Time for a 10:10 campaign in New Zealand. Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party should jump to join in. Rodney and ACT are obviously a lost cause, but if enough people signed up — the momentum in Britain has been impressive, and the Greenpeace Sign On campaign here has done well — the pressure on Key and Smith might force them to do the right thing. But I won’t be holding my breath.

ETS report: wishy-washy and a waste of time

The ETS review committee has published its report [PDF here], and recommends that an all sectors, all gases emissions trading scheme should be the “primary economic mechanism” in the government’s response to climate change. However the report makes very little in the way of substantive recommendations about how the current ETS legislation should be amended. Agriculture should be included, and forestry given legislative certainty, but there’s no detail on how the current ETS timetable could be altered. The report’s main conclusions appear to echo climate change minister Nick Smith’s recent comments on the likely future course of climate policy — but effectively give him a free hand to do what he wants.

The majority report — supported by National and United Future — is accompanied by minority reports from Labour, the Greens, the Maori Party and ACT. Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party want tougher action, while ACT still denies the reality of climate change. The Maori Party and ACT would prefer a carbon tax to an ETS, but are otherwise on different planets. This leaves National trying to drum up support for amending legislation, but unable to rely on anyone other than Peter Dunne. Meanwhile, Labour is still offering an olive branch: they’ll support amending the current ETS, but not if it means huge taxpayer subsidies to big emitters or cripples forest planting.

Here are some of the report’s key findings:

Continue reading “ETS report: wishy-washy and a waste of time”