Author: Gareth

Cap in hand on carbon trading

Brian Fallow took a detailed look at carbon trading and pricing in yesterday’s Herald.

Mark Lewis, a London analyst with Deutsche Bank, has raised eyebrows by forecasting a price of €35 ($63.31) a tonne for allowances traded on the internal European emissions market over the 2008 to 2020 period. That compares with a market price of around €20 for 2008. It is also about five times higher than the $13 a tonne carbon price the Government uses in estimating the value of this country’s Kyoto liability in the Crown accounts.

In a month or two the government will be announcing its design for a domestic emissions trading scheme, and the relationship between the NZ price and the international price will be an important feature. Another will be how the scheme phases in various sectors of the economy. Labour has signalled it wants an “all gases, whole of the economy

Grape expectations

HanginggrapesWinemakers in Australia and South Africa are worried about the impact of warming on their wines. In Australia, a new report [Stuff] suggests that grape quality will be hit badly, unless the industry adapts by moving to cooler areas or by planting hot climate varieties. And Canada’s Globe & Mail reports on South African concerns:

It’s getting too hot, and too wet (at the wrong times) in the key wine-growing region, and the flagship but fragile sauvignon blanc has been the first, but not the last, to suffer. It’s a harsh blow, first, because after years of sanctions in the apartheid era, the country has gradually been winning more market share for its wines (just under 3 per cent globally, last year.) and its wines have garnered more critical acclaim as well.

Luckily, I planted some syrah…

[Added 10/8/07: Interesting perspective on changes in Spanish viticulture in response to climate change from National Public Radio in the USA.]

Whole Foods, big challenges

Good piece by Rod Oram in the Sunday Star Times last weekend, describing some of the challenges facing NZ exporters in the UK. I could quibble with the way he frames some of the six issues he outlines (I think he’s wrong about Air NZ and possums, for example), but in the main his analysis is good. Required reading for all exporting businesses.

Tuvalu sunk by pineapples

TuvaluThe NZCSC has been trumpeting the arrival in New Zealand of professor (emeritus) Nils-Axel Mörner, “a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion”. Prof Mörner’s mission? To reassure us that sea level rise is not happening. Mörner first takes the ritual swipe at An Inconvenient Truth:

I can assure you there have been no rises in sea levels, so you should ask yourselves how much else of what Gore says is similarly false?

Continue reading “Tuvalu sunk by pineapples”

National to provide sunset home for climate cranks

HomerWhy would the National Party, newly wedded to its emissions target of “50 in 50