By passing Emission Trading Scam, Hone is actually helping the white mofos rape and rip off the land

Goff: Iwi tree deal little help to Maori
A deal worth up to $50 million with five iwi to gain Maori Party support for the Government's emissions trading scheme has been criticised as giving special treatment to some tribes and doing little to help Maori households. The Maori Party yesterday gave its support to passing the revised emissions trading scheme into law after securing the iwi deal and other gains. The scheme is expected to be passed under urgency in Parliament this week, before ministers travel to Copenhagen for UN climate change talks. Part of the deal allows Ngai Tahu and four other iwi to plant trees on 35,000ha of Department of Conservation land and keep profits from the carbon credits. The deal will last for 70 years and is valued at $25 million to $50 million, depending on the price of carbon. The agreement also allows for more Crown/iwi partnerships in tree planting on conservation and Maori land. The Government has also agreed to include a Treaty of Waitangi clause in the bill, securing specific rights of consultation. Labour leader Phil Goff said the concessions the Maori Party had gained would give Maori companies preferential treatment which other forestry companies would not get.

The very brilliant Idiot/Savant notes that this scam is being rammed through under a ANOTHER misuse of urgency, even National Party Svengali Richard Long calls the law a dog.

Disciplined Smith weathers the storm
The measure of that erosion were remarks made by Richard Long, a former National Party chief of staff. The politically astute one-time press galley journalist had described National's emissions trading legislation as a "dog" which, resulting in part from a race-based deal and lacking across-the-board backing, was akin to Labour's death-rattle, the Electoral Finance Act.

Here are my objections:

The right wing try and pretend that if polluters were forced to pay for their pollution that the big polluters will pass that cost onto us, so we shouldn’t force big polluters to pay for their pollution. Here’s the problem…

1: We are already bloody well paying for these big polluters with an additional $110 Billion now, that $110 Billion should be going into health, or education or job creation or a myriad of other social programmes rather than National’s big polluter corporate mates.

2: If the polluters are forced to pay for their pollution, they will be forced to cut back and look to redesign their production methods and there is an incentive to allow new players to come in and provide cleaner products. Even if the polluter passes that cost to the consumer, we have the power to decide if we should pay for that product putting the power back with us the consumers.

3: The Government amendment means that we will be subsidizing big polluters to the tune of 55% till 2050, that is atrocious (the Arctic is predicted to be ice free by then) and shows the kind of greenwash National have always bee suspected of. Their concern is for their big business donors, not the environmental well being of the planet. National and ACT (who changed their environment policy to climate skeptics after skeptic Alan Gibbs donated $100 000 to them) are in denial over global warming.

And why should we try and stop climate change?

New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend of the earth

Because if we don’t want to be seen as eco-hypocrites, we have to make clean and green real, not just a slogan.

This Emissions Trading Scam does nothing to stop climate change, ends up paying big polluters to keep polluting and has managed to pass because the Maori Party have sold out to their corporate whanou for a measely $50 million.

If you aren’t angry, you haven’t been paying attention.