John Key attacking our reinstatement of agriculture in the ETS to fund R +D is predictable enough for a former? climate change doubter.
But contrast him saying agriculture can only come in when others bring it in with his good friend, British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
Last week, the Conservative government unveiled the UK’s fourth carbon budget, announcing it wanted to be the “greenest government ever” http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn11_41/pn11_41.aspx , positioning the UK as a leading player in the global low-carbon economy, creating significant new industries and jobs.
The UK is now on course to cut emissions to 50 percent of 1990 levels by 2027 (the National Government’s target is 20 percent by 2020.) And it vows to reduce emissions by at least 80% by 2050 (National’s target 50% by 2050.)
This from an economy once built on coal and heavily reliant on North Sea oil. The point is that the Brits are committing to make changes to the difficult to tackle sectors of its economy and focussing on a low carbon economy and high-tech future.
David Cameron is effectively making a mockery of John Key’s promise of the National Government being “fast followers” in responding to climate change. The Conservatives in the UK have laid out an actual plan on how they hope to transition to a green economy. Meanwhile we are stuck with a government that has no real idea, no real plan, and continues to kick the climate change can down the road for the next generation to deal with.
John Key says he’s been in touch with David Cameron every week by phone or text since meeting in 2009. You have to wonder if he ever questions Cameron’s commitment to address climate change or is that just reserved for domestic politics?
“wanted to be the “greenest government ever” ”
I notice our PM’s defence to not doing many things is that we don’t want to do it before anyone else. What happened to being aspirational, or does he think that’s the stuff that dribbles down Gerry’s face during cabinet meetings?
Did I hear some farmer lobbyist dude on the radio news claiming that the Labour plan would cost every farmer $45,000 a year? Can this be correct?
Jennifer, I understand that to be the average figure being bandied about, some will pay more some will pay less. I have invested in forestry back in 1990 and 1987 and I am hit by the ETS so why not farmers?
It just gets worse for Key. Stuff reports that “Dairy farmers are on a roll with industry giant Fonterra announcing a bumper opening payout forecast for the new season”. If these poor devils were forced to pay the same tax as every other SME, and forced to pay for pollution like every other SME, they would all go broke, for sure!
Is that what you want Jennifer? Surely not.
I understand we rely heavily on agriculture but that is also a reason for finding ways to rely less on it.
I also wonder about diverting water for otherwise drought regions to run dairy herds? And why taxpayers ought to directly or indirectly foot this bill? That will make us even more dependent on dairying and in a very risky area, prone to only small changes.
Diary where it makes sense to dairy and not where it doesn’t and certainly don’t expect the tax payer to step aside and/or pay the way for you to fight common sense.
We’ve seen time and again that industries that do not have a stick held over them are slow or don’t at all, change their behaviours. Yes, dairying is cleaning up its act but no matter how clean it gets its very existence supposedly impacts the climate/environment negatively.
I indirectly grow trees. TREES. The best friend of the CO2 emitters. I will have to pay under the ETS and now, not later, despite my trees being planted long before anyone thought of the ETS, so why not farmers?
@ Richard, it’s not about what I want, unless that happens to be an honest Prime Minister? If Key would just come clean and admit these dairy farmers can well afford to pull their own weight and pay their fair share of taxes, and can afford to pay for their own pollution themselves instead of every other taxpayer picking up the tab, then maybe, just maybe? Strangely no mention lately of the $380 million a week we are borrowing? Seems to have gone quiet? I wonder why?
Richard: Its about farmers paying their share. No more, no less.
I don’t subscribe to the “science is settled” argument on CC and the fact that few country’s have jumped on board with ETS’s in a meaningful may also indicate that this is not a unique view.
That any robust debate in this country on the validity of anthroprogenic climate change is shut down is highly suspicious so to introduce any taxation based on it is reprehensible.
Wonder if Cameron also aims to be the world’s first truly sustainable nation, carbon neutral, 90% renewable, to catch the knowledge wave, or jump a few places in the OECD ladder? Wonder who promised that and how did they do?
““science is settled” argument on CC and the fact that few country’s have jumped on board with ETS’s in a meaningful may also indicate that this is not a unique view.” I’m not convinced that the lack of belief in CC is necessarily why few governments have jumped on board. IT’s that they don’t want to pay the price of CC.
@J Edgar the science is settled,
Do you know what a Hadley cell is? Start there and work your way back to increase in part million of Co2 over last 200 years, it is now considered elementary. Pentagon believe it and is going low carbon – link is a bit long winded but eventaully gets to the point
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/8/gwynne_dyer_on_climate_wars_the
Germany the most successful of the industrial develop economies has been pursing the 40-50% carbon reduction for the last couple of years. We are way behind the leaders
richie,
the problem is that for every paper, website etc you quote for, there is countenance against.
*Pre civilisation CO2 levels in polar ice cores higher than at any stage of industrialisation
*Evidence of greater prehistoric climatic fluctuations
*Data discrediting the Hadley Centres published statements on global climate trends (especially in the face of the Russian Economic Institutes claim of data cherry picking)
*Glaciers that continue to grow
There is simply too much evidence to the contrary and as I stated originally, the lack of balanced, rational debate is of great concern.
And just why do you not believe the people who’s job it is to research these things all of whom say that we are the cause of climate change?
No it’s not. There is no debate left to have, the science is 95% sure.
And what debate would you have on it? Are you a climatologist? No? then you have no right to debate it.
The only way you can debate science is through more science. Period. It certainly isn’t through wishy washy “debate” especially when the people who are denying the science don’t use science to do so. They can’t because, quite often they’re not scientists or, even worse, scientists in unrelated fields (FFS, I’ve seen economists trying to dispute anthropogenic climate change) and so don’t know WTF they’re talking about and all the research done proves them wrong any way.
EDIT:
No there isn’t. What there is is a lot of people lying saying there is.
“There is no debate left to have, the science is 95% sure.”
No its not Draco.
That the earth is undergoing a period of climatic change is not the issue. That human industrialisation is the cause, IS THE ISSUE.
No I am not a climatologist (are you Draco?) but I don’t blindly put my faith behind science unless there is robust argument.To suggest that any countenance is “just lying” is pure zealotry.
The same thing Galileo faced with his “wacky” geocentric view of the universe.
@jedgar,,,”that human industrialisation is the cause is the issue”… wrong.. do your research properly this time.
the ISSUE is that “human industrialisation is EXACERBATING the process…. in other words, we are helping to speed the process along, NOT cause it.. try to get a rational perspective.
Oh, I’m sorry, the IPCC 2007 report only has it at 90% probability that we’re causing accelerated climate change. Of course, things have changed in the last four years including research coming out that shows the IPCC report was far too conservative.
So, if you don’t know WTF you’re talking about then how are you judging if the argument is robust or not?
See, I’m not a climatologist and so I know that I don’t have the skills or knowledge to debate what climatologists say about the climate. Therefore I believe them when all 30+ thousand of them tell me what’s happening. They’ve done the research, they’ve tested what the theory predicts against what’s happening and it pans out. Their argument is incredibly robust.
No it’s not, it’s the truth. Every single piece of information that has been brought forward by the deniers as proof that we aren’t the driver behind climate change has been proven wrong. The deniers know that and yet they keep bringing out the same arguments. This means that they are lying.
You really aren’t trying to have a “debate”, you’ve made up you’re mind that anthropogenic climate change is wrong and you’re going to continue to believe that no matter what evidence is placed before you. A perfect example of someone denying reality because it doesn’t fit there beliefs.
J Edgar
“Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).” wikipedia on confirmation bias
bbfloyd, my understanding is also to what wextent we are contributing, speeding rather than the only cause
@bbfloyd
So following a rational perspective, are the human records of climate which only date back a 100 or so years more important than the empirical scientific evidence that dates back thousands of years? Also, given that there is contradictory contemporary evidence should there not be more discussion?
That we need to care for our planet is without dispute. That we need to impose economic penalty for what may prove to be an unpreventable natural phenomenon is questionable.
The records go back hundreds of thousands of years because humans have recreated them using, you know, science. They then use this data to help determine what’s happening in the contemporary climate. It all supports Anthropogenic Climate Change.
No, there isn’t.
It’s not natural, that’s already been proven to 90% probability and there will be economic penalty one way or another it’s just that if we don’t do what we can to minimise the damage that we’re doing then it’s going to be a hell of a lot higher.
Na we are pretty much the cause of global warming this time around we had a fairly stable climate for 10,000 years, no changes that would cause major species`extinction.
The palentologists have proven it in the methodical way they do.
The dinosaurs died out due to an astroid, solved, the iridium layer in some clay around the world and the big impact creater in the Yuctan in Mexico. So what explained the other big species die off over the last 100 million years – volcanoes they know the actual ones, big baslt outpourings. This leads to increased co2, raise temps, change ocean oxgenation currect seas go acidic and the big die off happens, there about six or so over the couple hundred million years
Guess what, we are the volcanoes this time, but if we melt the ice that holds in the siberian methane then it probably to late to do anything in the way of reducing carbon.
J Edgar, why wait to be less pollutant than we are? We’re supposedly intelligent and innovative, let’s reduce pollution/impact because that’s part f the “deal” of living in a society, you wanna make a profit from something? Great, but you contribute to any downsides too. My children and their children dont want to have to pay for the damage (if repairable) once the company has long gone. Example Dow Chemicals.
@J Edgar
Here is a little something from Princeton University on Hadley Cells and Global Warming…not the flat earth witch burnin luddite rubbish you believe.
http://www.atmos.berkeley.edu/~jchiang/Class/Spr07/Geog257/Week10/Lu_Hadley06.pdf