Last Friday, the New Zealand Climate & Health Group made their views on the Emissions Trading Scheme public. In the Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association (the article is viewable if you have a subscription), the group conclude that any changes that benefit polluters over everyone else will jeopardise public health.
Dr Jamie Hosking, who helped write the article, suggests that a well-designed ETS could lead to:
1. Reduced emissions and thus a reduction in climate change and its negative health effects
2. ‘Recycling’ Government revenue from emissions pricing into strategies with health co-benefits
3. Promoting behaviour change that has both emissions and health benefits, such as energy-efficient housing and more walking and cycling
4. Gains in health equity and fairness
The scale of National’s proposed kickbacks to big polluters is not lost on these doctors:
“This is not the best use of more than $754 million dollars of taxpayer resources”, says Dr Hosking. “It would be more than the annual budget of most of the District Health Boards (DHBs) in New Zealand, and would pay for the combined DHB deficit (at $150 million at the end of 2008) five times over.”
This is not a fringe group. They understand that if Kiwis don’t create a fair and comprehensive approach to solving climate change, then we all lose.
Boy. These medicos are so serious about climate change that they deny the information to anyone who won’t pay them money. Time the docs woke up to the Internet era and at least published a summary for the rest of us. The resulting desire for more details might just encourage more people to subscribe. But then it wouldn’t be an exclusive wee club anymore i guess.
Clean technology, and look after our water.
I heard the other day a suitable solution to carbon emissions. Given that the main cause of global warming appears to be the effect of the ever-increasing world human population and given that there is also an issue with methane emissions from meat-producing farms, the solution is that meat-eating humans eat the world’s population of vegetarians rather than eating beef and mutton. Two birds with one stone.
LOL
That’s genius, and it’d save the poor pigs, you know pork is supposed to be the nearest taste to human flesh. Why eat a pig when there’s people aplenty? 