Tag: ACT

Tangled up in blue (first reprise)

Key.jpgThe government’s demolition of New Zealand’s climate policy is continuing apace. This week, as part of cost-cutting and restructuring at the Ministry for Environment, they have chopped the carbon neutral public service programme. This comes on top of Gerry Brownlee’s removal of the moratorium on new thermal generation, the curious case of the ETS scheme that’s on hold and yet being reintroduced at the same time, and prime minister John Key’s apparent lack of conviction about the severity of climate change. Commenting on the changes at MfE, environment minister Nick Smith offered these pearls of wisdom (Stuff):

“It’s not government policy that we should move to a carbon neutral public service. That was a cheap slogan from the previous government. I’ve heard awful stories of senior public servants … spending an hour on how they might reorganise their rubbish.”

Smith appears happy to decide policy based on hearsay. Not a good look for a senior politician. The carbon neutral public service (CNPS) scheme was never going to make a huge difference to New Zealand’s emissions, but it was a way for the apparatus of government to show that it was taking the problem seriously. By acting — and crucially, purchasing goods and services — with lower carbon emissions in mind, it was sending a useful economic signal into the world beyond Wellington. Take that signal away, and the message is all too clear. The Department of Conservation will also be left in the lurch, as a number of their trial native bush regeneration for carbon offset schemes were earmarked for the CNPS.

Another worrying sign is that Smith has appointed a former Business NZ climate policy analyst to his political team. According to Carbon News, George Riddell played a key role in developing Business NZ’s climate and emissions trading policy — which is currently to delay implementing the ETS to 2013.

Put all this together and you get a very clear impression of a government that does not have a real grasp of the danger of climate change, or the need to implement coherent climate policy. Worse, they give every impression of being in the pockets of the big emitters and big business interests. So far, all the new government has done is to pull down the climate policy of the last administration, but has given no hint of what it might put in its place.

It’s high time John Key and Nick Smith stopped playing politics and started taking this issue seriously. A coherent statement of their appreciation of the size of the problem and the policy levers they intend pulling might be a good place to start.

[KT Tunstall, and very good indeed…]

Someone took the words away

NZETS.jpgDone and dusted. My submission to the Emissions Trading Scheme Review has been safely committed to the tender mercies of NZ Post. It’s a bit long to be posted in full — it’s over 3,500 words (there’s a PDF of the full document here), but I will run through the main recommendations I make. Because the terms of reference were very widely drawn they gave me scope for a submission that tries to put the ETS into a wider climate policy context, and so I’ve taken the opportunity to make some fairly wide ranging suggestions.

[Update: No Right Turn notes that the deadline for submissions has been extended to Feb 27th. Good. But I wish I’d known earlier…]

Continue reading “Someone took the words away”

This better be good

Memo to self: finish polishing submission to the Emissions Trading Scheme Review committee, because it has to be delivered by Friday. It’s mostly done — I know what I’m saying — but it has to be put into proper form. I’ll have edited highlights up here on Thursday (with luck) after delivering the submission by email, but don’t let that stop you, dear reader, from making your own submission. The terms of reference are here, the guidelines on making submissions here, and a list of committee members here. I imagine the cranks will be out in force, and Rodney Hide angling to get them heard, so it makes sense to let the committee know that there’s a substantial body of opinion backing strong climate policy. Don’t delay, do it today!

[Update: The committee secretariat don’t seem to want PDF/email submissions, but will accept submissions postmarked Friday or earlier.]
[Fountains of Wayne]

Tell it like it is

NZETS.jpgThe select committee established to review the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is now accepting submissions, and controversy over the precise interpretation of the terms of reference is already looming. As I noted last year, the terms were drafted by ACT and adopted wholesale by the government, with the exception of the removal of a review of the science of climate change. That was replaced by this clause:

• identify the central/benchmark projections which are being used as the motivation for international agreements to combat climate change; and consider the uncertainties and risks surrounding these projections

The Standard considers that this opens the door to Rodney Hide and his mates in the ranks of the cranks, while David Farrar at Kiwiblog leaps to its defence:

So when you hear people rail against the considering the uncertainties and risks of projections, they are actually railing against people understanding the science, and reading the IPCC reports.

No, David, they are railing against the use of that clause to introduce a review of the underlying science — which is what Hide is adamant he’s going to do, and committee chairman Peter Dunne is equally certain he’ll veto. However, the precise wording of that section is so vague that it is capable of multiple interpretations. Time to pull it to pieces…

Continue reading “Tell it like it is”

Tear-stained letter #2

pottypeer.jpg Some summer reading for NZ prime minister John Key: Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (“I’m no potty peer”) has penned another of his dippy epistles — an “open letter” in the next issue of Free Radical, an NZ libertarian publication. His last, to John McCain, was a triumph of hilariously overblown climate crank nonsense. This looks to be no more succinct, but has the publishers of FR chortling with excitement. From Not PC:

This is pure gold; the world’s leading climate ‘skeptic’ explains to NZ’s new Prime Minister that the apocalyptic vision of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is a lurid and fanciful account of imagined future events that was always baseless, was briefly exciting among the less thoughtful species of news commentators and politicians, and is now thoroughly and scientifically discredited.

Thoroughly and scientifically? How exciting. Let’s take a look.

Continue reading “Tear-stained letter #2”