ETS EFFECT: What does ETS do? What’s the affect on farmers? City Dwellers? Communities? On Climate Change? What will the ETS accomplish? Does it go too far? Go far enough? Who’s paying for ETS? Should it be the emitters or the users? What about Carbon Credits—what do they do? Why do we want them?
THE COST & REAL WORLD CHANGES: Now that the ETS has been in effect since July 1st—have you noticed the cost? Is the cost of living more expensive? How can we make effective changes to help the environment? What are small changes can we make—is it about changing light bulbs and riding bikes? Or is there more we can do? And are there some areas the Government should mandate (i.e. Energy Saving Light Bulbs)?
LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 25th of August. 9pm TVNZ 7 Sky 97. Drinking from about 7pm The Panel: Roy knifer John Boscawen, Dr. Russel Norman just back from Holywood, Labour MP Stuart Nash, and National MP Craig Foss.
I love Russel Norman!
Free Tibet! 
!
Things are bleepin expensive ! 
GO Stuart!
The ETS sucks!
NO, don’t make people do stuff with light bulbs and bikes!
How about some green technology instead? Qualitiy of life with greenie goodness 
that will be an interesting one…
I see I am getting moderated each time tonight – is there an issue with my IP or have the rules changed and you are moding everyone – not trying to be difficult, just curious?
Think I’ve sorted. Trevor
Spud – it was your lot that pushed through the ETS without a mandate. NACT tidied it up but it should still be abolished.
Trevor – I note your adjective describing John Boscowan. If one of us said similar about a Labour member we would be banned.
Is that not a double standard?
Nope pdm – try treading Red Alert and you will find you can disagree without being offensive and telling lies. Try it and you will spend less time in moderation.
@pdm – I’ve never been of any ETS
I think clean technology is better 
Spud clean technology is but great isn’t making the people who pollute the most (ie use UNclean techonology) pay for the pollution they cause, and rewarding those doing good things, the perfect incentive to get them to move to cleaner technology?
Trouble is Nicola all costs just seem to be passed on to us, the taxpayer, consumer, ratepayer, resident, renter, bystander, voter, sucker and general all round impotent citizen.
@Richard that happens under National’s ETS. Under a properly-functioning one the greatest burden would be placed on those who pollute the most (sadly at the moment the ordinary taxpayer is just subsiding those big businesses to destory our planet though
)
“general all round impotent citizen.” Yeah those ones in particular have enough to worry about
Nicola – that is why the NACT one is worse, the polluters keep polluting and we end up paying!
Properly functioning ETS is damn near an oxymoron Nicola. We pay, we pay and then we pay again. Anyway why make such a burden for ourselves in NZ when we are responsible only for .2 of 1% of worldwide pollution. All very well acting all righteous and goody goody, we pay. And I don’t give a damn whose ETS it is. We don’t (underlined if I knew how to do it) need to be international trendsetters in this. Bah..it’s all humbug.
Uh, an ETS type scheme is needed because many company “profits” rely on not having to take into account their true cost of doing business, e.g. damage to the environment, to society etc.
This is the new international reality whether you accept it or not. NZ will start finding itself locked out of markets if it doesn’t have appropriate greenhouse gas limiting measures in place. Maybe that will convince you of its necessity if the environmental rationale does not?
Loota, a NZ scheme is farting at thunder. What would be the reaction worldwide if we decided to block trade with China, the US and Europe, using the justification that they are bigger polluters than we ever could be. We’d be laughed off the face of the planet. When those polluters get their house in order, then there may be a case. But all our current system does is preserve the profits of polluters by passing the costs on to you and me. We could make NZ clean and green tomorrow, by closing all factories and destroying all live stock. Sure we’d be clean and green , but also broke, bankrupt and about as useful to the world as Zimbabwe. Humbug I say, Humbug.
No point having an ETS is it does not stop polluting projects going ahead, like mega lignite coal projects (by state owned Solid Energy none the less).
On the one hand the Government is saying reduce emissions, on the other it is investing in the most polluting and high emissions industries it can.
NZ needs to transition to a low carbon economy, that means investing in clean energy, rail, protecting wilderness areas and investing in green jobs, not making a trading scheme that doesn’t reduce emissions.
How much will the ETS reduce emissions by in 2020, and what emissions reductions will it have created by 2030? Is these questions can’t be answered why would NZ have an ETS?
Richard – Should NZ not be looking at creating and then selling low carbon technology to China et al? rather than selling them coal and excuses.
The main place we sell coal to is India. Surely we should be helping such countries to develop in a different way to the West which is per capita the biggest for emissions.
Yeah and stop farming our jobs and farms out to them!
So is all the ETS scheme is basically going to do is subsidise big emitters and push up inflation to 0.4% and put place NZ exports at an unfair disadvantage.
I’m all for helping the environment etc, but someone tell me how this is going to really help cut emissions?
Key said the money is going towards planting trees costing 1.6 billion over 5 years.
This makes sense as deforestation is a major contributor in greenhouse emissions. The Amazon alone removes 1.8 billion tones of carbon a year from earths atmosphere.
But hang on a forestry scheme has been axed at the same time, because according to Keys- we don’t need it anymore because we now have the Emission Trading scheme. HUH?
How can we make change, well not to sure- coal based electricity infrastructure must be phased out.
Investment in wind farms and solar panels.
Focusing on geothermal energy perhaps?
An overhaul of the transport industry : Buses trains maybe. Bring on the electric car!!!
Roof gardens in the city (not as silly as it sounds), walking, cycling, eco home gardening, water tanks, using eco logs for heat, building warmer homes.
NZIER report 2009 – Border taxes: should New Zealand be worried?
Bleep me, I was just watching the house and Shearer said that most of our forests are foreign owned
Russ is on