Tag: economics

Paint it, black

Paintitblack.jpg Interesting to see how one opinion poll can say different things to different people. Over the weekend, Fran O’Sullivan in The Herald referred to a survey commissioned by the NZ Institute of Economic Research (they of the mostly useless recent report on the economics of the ETS). Here’s what Fran noticed:

The detailed survey shows extraordinary ignorance by New Zealanders. It indicates only one-third of the country believes in climate change in the first place. Only 13 per cent strongly support the ETS, with less than half the country aware of the scheme’s existence until prompted by surveyors.

The usual suspects have been trotting out a similar take on the survey. But it seemed fishy to me (and to No Right Turn). The results don’t seem to square with other online polls on the subject. So I downloaded the survey results and had a look [PDF].

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Friday on my mind (once more)

coccolith.jpg Before you ask, the picture shows the shell of a coccolithophore, and it’s in trouble. We’ve been adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and a good chunk of it has ended up in the oceans. The water is getting more acidic, and some sea creatures are finding it harder to build their shells – which has the potential to disrupt the entire oceanic food web. We know it’s a problem, we know it’s happening, but we didn’t expect it be happening as fast as a recent research programme has found [Herald, Telegraph]. According to one of the scientists involved, “the coastal ocean acidification train has left the station, and there’s not much we can do to derail it.” Another excellent reason to cut carbon emissions, if one was needed.

More on methane: research on a rapid release of methane hydrates 635 million years ago hints that modern warming could trigger a similar cascade of gas release, with catastrophic results for the planet’s climate [Science Daily News, Wired]. Wired also has an excellent backgrounder on methane hydrates, discussing how they might be turned into a source of energy, while the BBC reports that the recent rise in methane in the atmosphere looks as though it is coming from thawing wetlands in the Arctic. In better news, NZ scientists have completed deciphering the genome of one of the methanogens that live in the rumens of cattle and sheep (Stuff, Yahoo/xtra). With luck and a lot of hard work, this might lead to methods of cutting methane emissions from livestock, and eventually play a key role in reducing agricultural emissions around the world.

Some light reading for the weekend: Yale’s environment360 is a new web site from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, launched this month with some interesting and challenging articles from writers like Elizabeth Kolbert, Bill McKibben, and Fred Pearce amongst others. Worth checking out.

For those with more than a few minutes to spare, I can recommend The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity review [PDF] released this week. It’s an attempt to put a rational value on the services nature provides, to allow a Stern Review-type of cost benefit analysis of losing or retaining biodiversity [Herald, BBC, Guardian]. Climate change is only one contributor to biodiversity loss, but it could rapidly become the most important, and it’s the world’s poor that will suffer most.

White light/white heat

NZETS.jpg 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 forum – the great and the good of the business world – announced that it supported the broad outline of the ETS with some caveats (announcement, Herald), only for Business NZ to promptly withdraw its support. Then the Sustainability Council of NZ published a report [PDF] criticising the way that the ETS transfers revenue from consumers to key industries – especially agriculture – and warned that it wouldn’t do enough to reduce emissions. Not to be outdone, the NZ Institute for Economic Research produced its own report [PDF], warning that the scheme would do little good and cost the economy billions, and advising that we shold do nothing except buy Kyoto compliance on the world market. ACT leader Rodney Hide then announced that “the Government’s ETS is a crock and should be dumped.” There are now rumours that the government is running scared, and might delay implementing the petrol and fuels part of the scheme to avoid frightening consumers in the run up to the election. So, who’s right? Is Rodney’s incisive analysis on the money?

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Something 4 The Weekend

Bali continues to make headlines. The rough positions are becoming clear. China’s playing hardball – no mandatory cuts, West has to cut first and most deeply. The New York Times‘ Andy Revkin has a couple of good Bali posts on his blog: the first suggests that the IPCC may have to revise its goal for the next report – updating AR4 for the conclusion of the post-Kyoto process in 2009, while the second looks at what’s going on around the negotiations. Meanwhile, 200 scientists from around the world, coordinated by the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, issued a statement calling on the conference to aim for emissions cuts of at least 50% by 2050 [Herald, Globe & Mail (Canada)].

Meanwhile, there’s lots more below the fold (as they say on the broadsheets)….

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Blah, blah, blab, Blaby (*)

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 more time with his family” (coining that phrase as he did so), but in recent years he has reinvented himself as a climate sceptic, a vociferous opponent of the Kyoto protocol and a scourge of what he terms “eco-fundamentalists”. Clearly, the Business Roundtable has brought in a wise elder statesman to provide much needed context to the climate debate, to better inform its members about the need for emissions reductions. Sadly, Lawson is far more likely to serve up a rousing speech packed with half-truths, distortions, and advice so bad it amounts to dangerous folly, if reports in the Sunday Star Times and Dominion Post are to be believed.

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