Tag: ACT

Wagging the dog

John Key has just announced the deal he has signed with ACT, allowing National to form a minority government. It looks – at least in terms of the agreement on climate policy, very much like Hide’s tail is wagging the National dog, and New Zealand’s stance on climate change is about to take a big turn for the worse. Implementation of the ETS is to be delayed until a special select committee reports on climate policy. The agreement includes the following section on climate policy:

National is committed to retaining measures to address New Zealand’s Kyoto obligations, by making amendments to the legislation that will balance our environmental responsibilities with our economic needs. ACT campaigned on a policy of abolishing the ETS.

National agrees to a review by a special select committee of Parliament of the current Emissions Trading Scheme legislation and any amendments or alternatives to it, including carbon taxes, in the light of current economic circumstances and steps now being undertaken by similar nations.

National further agrees to pass forthwith an amendment to the ETS legislation delaying its implementation, repealing the thermal generation ban and making any other necessary interim adjustments until the select committee review is completed.

ACT is not opposed to New Zealand adopting responsible climate change policies. What it opposes is an ETS that was never adequately justified. If a rigorous select committee inquiry establishes a credible case that New Zealanders would benefit from action by New Zealand, in conjunction with other countries that are important to us, ACT would be prepared to support legislation giving effect to such action. National agrees that the Terms of Reference for such an inquiry will be mutually agreed between ACT and National and that the Terms of Reference proposed by ACT are attached as Appendix 1 will be an initial basis for discussion.

Before the election, National was committed to retaining the ETS. Now it is only committed to “retaining measures to address New Zealand’s Kyoto obligations”. It looks very much like the current framework of policy on climate change is about to be dismantled, and that John Key has failed his first test as prime minister – before he’s been sworn in.

Full text of ACT’s proposed terms of reference below the fold:

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When will they ever learn?

homer.jpg“Forget global warming. The cold, hard facts point to another threat on the horizon – severe cooling.” That’s the strapline over an opinion piece in yesterday’s Dominion Post business section (Sunspots spell end of climate myth), contributed by Bryan Leyland, one of the more vocal of our local climate cranks. It’s an astonishing piece, given a splash treatment by the paper. Consider this sentence, given prominence as a pull-out quote by the Post:

Researchers have discovered that warming since 1975 is not caused by greenhouse gases.

That’s news to me. It would be news to anyone with half a brain. So why then is this “fact” not on the front page of the Dom Post, or indeed the world’s newspapers? Because it’s not true. Leyland is making stuff up.

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Things are gonna change (the morning after)

On the morning after I was more interested in the rugby than agonising over the entrails of Saturday night’s election result, but today it’s worth traversing what new Zealand’s new political landscape might bring for climate policy. For the wider picture, I recommend Russell Brown’s take at Hard News and Gordon Campbell’s at Scoop; they summarise the politics of the situation nicely.

The big question, of course, is to what extent Rodney Hide’s ACT contingent – guaranteed a coalition deal, with Hide in cabinet – can persuade prime minister designate John Key to modify National’s policy on the Emissions Trading Scheme (keeping it, but watering it down even further).

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John, I’m only dancing

rodenymorph.gifYou gotta to hand it to Rodney Hide – his bumptiousness knows no bounds. Yesterday he sent a public “letter” to John Key: What Rodney’ll tell John If You Give Him Enough Act Mps! And in it he repeats his now-familiar climate crank schtick:

John, you gotta get the country out of this Emissions Trading Scam.

I’ve read the NZIER report. Have you read it?

John may not, but I have. It manages to make the economic consequences of an emissions trading scheme look very bad, by making some ludicrous assumptions – the biggest of which is that New Zealand acts totally alone, that the rest of the world does nothing. That single assumption makes the rest of the NZIER report meaningless – except as a source of daft numbers for the likes of Rodney Hide, the Greenhouse Policy Coalition and Federated Farmers to wave around.

So after beating around the bush with a bird in one hand and a cleft stick in the other, he reveals his credentials:

“I’m not your classic climate change denier. I’ve been worried about the future of the planet since I was 15.

(“Although it’s funny. Back then, the wise ones were all saying we were going to freeze to death in a new Ice Age. I was so terrified, I went and became an environmental scientist.)

Rodney certainly isn’t your classic crank, but I have to suspect that he’s creatively re-interpreting his personal history when he asserts that he became an “environmental scientist” because of the global cooling scare. There are two problems with this statement. There wasn’t a global cooling scare, and Rodney isn’t an environmental scientist (see this comment on an earlier Hide post for a description of the course he did). His Wikipedia entry has the details:

After returning to New Zealand, Hide gained a degree in resource management from Lincoln College, Canterbury. He then took up a teaching position at Lincoln, first in resource management and later in economics. He completed his master’s degree in economics from Montana State University in record time.

His first degree was in zoology and botany, so he does have a science background: it’s just a pity he seems to forgotten all about it.

And over the next 30 years, I found out my green friends were well-meaning, but they weren’t very well-informed.

So I’m not as worried about the future of the planet as I used to be. Even the UN now admits the globe stopped warming in 1998.

No, “the UN” hasn’t admitted that the globe stopped warming in 1998. Because it didn’t. This is something so easily checked that you might expect Hide to show some regard for veracity – but his pronouncements on climate change show no interest in the truth.

Hide seems to think that being bumptious and amusing is enough to allow him to tell lies and get away with it. He’s like a little child, bouncing up and down being outrageous for an audience. It’s about time someone told him to shut up and go to his room. Here’s hoping the good voters of Epsom save John Key from the tragedy of having Hide in his cabinet, should the election result give National the numbers to govern.

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Take care the road you choose

vote1.pngNow that one election’s out of the way, (a good result: Obama’s committed to 80 percent reductions by 2050) time to focus on what’s happening in New Zealand. I’ve promised several times to offer an analysis of the major parties offerings on climate change and emissions reductions, but I’ve been pre-empted by a very useful summary by Vote for the Environment (a joint effort by Eco and Greenpeace). They set up an “ideal” set of environment policies, and then surveyed the parties and scored their answers. The results are pretty close to my impression of the state of the parties…

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