National are scaremongering emission cut costs
Parties joust over climate targets
The Government has deliberately overstated the costs to households of cutting emissions, Labour says. Labour yesterday accused the Government of using "dubious and misleading tactics" to divert public attention from a "cop-out" over its pollution reduction target. The Government has announced it will set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of between 10 and 20 per cent below 1990 levels at climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany. Prime Minister John Key says that target will cost every New Zealander about $1400 a year, or about $27 a week, in lost income by 2020, and if the Government had opted for the 40 per cent reduction Greenpeace had wanted, the cost would have been far greater. Labour climate change spokesman Charles Chauvel said yesterday that the Government's calculations were wrong. He said the cost of the emissions target would not be absorbed in one year, 2020, but spread over the next 10 years. The cost for each person would be about $145 a year, or about $2.80 a week. "Kiwis need to ask why the Government is setting out to frighten them," Chauvel said.
Nick Smith has been holding greenwash meetings around the country to look like National are pretending to care about listening to your concerns on Climate Change, and announced 10% before the ‘consultation’ process was even complete meaning the entire thing was just an attempt to look like National were listening. Smith announced that a report on cutting emissions showed that the Greenpeace call for a 40% cut would cost every NZer $60 a week, however on second glance, it seems Nick either misread the report or manipulated the costs. What the report actually said was that the $60 per week cost would only occur if we did nothing to reduce the emissions after agreeing to a 40% emission cut, it even asks that the data not be interpreted in the exact way Nick ended up misusing it as. Stupid or malicious, well seeing as the press release was entitled, ‘"New reports help inform climate change policy”, we can safely rule out stupid.
National are purposely misrepresenting the costs because they are the party of the farmers and big business, they refuse to make those industries pay for the pollution they create and National gutted the agricultural tax rebate for research necessary to create the technology to cut emissions. ACT have polluted National’s climate change because ACT are taking huge sums of cash from climate deniers like Alan Gibbs. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and we are losing our clean green image.
Again, any activists reading this from overseas – start boycotting NZ agricultural products, we have a Government pretending to be environmentally conscious and rather than having the balls to lead are whimpering behind the rest of the world. How gutless and pathetic of Nick Smith.
posted by Bomber @ 7:09 am
2 comments
2 Comments:
The agricultural sector have asked the government to spend $88 million dollars a year on researching how to make their industry cause less polution. $88 million?
NS
This whole thing is starting to piss me off. Its so political one cannot get straight answers, everything is so blurred it is fricken redicolously hard to work out exactly what are the costs, the expected impacts, realistic timeframe etc.
On the one hand we have the deniers / kiwiblog mob who refuse to believe burning redicolous amount of shit per year has any impact on earths athmosphere, but on the other hand we get all these 'extremist' stories published by papers, as extreme stories sell, which oversell the potential immediate impacts.
What I want to know is this.
- what can we actually do to reduce methane from cows (I understand this is 40% of our emmisions, twice that of our entire transport output). Surely this has to be our focus. The Greens suggestion of slaying 20% of our herd is reactionary, we need something tenable that can be done, and it needs to start now as things take time.
- how can we increase our renewable resource energy generation to meet future demands. This talk needs to be comprehensive. Further foreign nations should be encouraged to uptake nuclear power production. I understand for NZ this isnt an option (our size, geographical unstability / proness to earthquakes, lack of infrastruture). But countries like the US, China, Australia should be proceeding down this route, and doing so now. Nuclear power stations take 10 years to build, build them now. Yes they leave waste that takes 100,000 years to break down, however the relative quantity of this waste is pretty darn minimal when one takes everything into account, and surely preferable to burning fossil fuels in such quantities.
- the cost of inaction needs to be accurately calculated in a non controversal / worst case scenario way. Sadly enough humans are inherently selfish. They need to see the cost of doing nothing exceeding the cost of doing something and they need it in a $ sign.
- climate change needs to be seperated from other environmental causes. Each needs to be sold on its own merit and one shouldnt be hijacked to help another.
From my reading the 40% emmisions target is pretty hard, but I get such conflicting figures. I read some places its a 60% reduction. Considering 50% of our power is clean, and transport is unlikely to decrease this makes it pretty darn difficult, especially due to our reliance on argiculture. So basically I want some clear, unbiased figures to know exactly what is needed to achieve etc.
Not proffessing to be any sort of expert in this field, I know jack, like most, but I just want to know the clear facts and you cant get them because it has been politicised beyond belief (by both sides of the debate as well mind you)
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