ACT feeds the NZ Climate Denial Tea Party

ETS price fears stir up grassroots Nats
National's grassroots supporters are joining a chorus of opposition as price rises caused by the Emissions Trading Scheme begin to kick in. Prime Minister John Key confirmed there was an ETS protest vote at a party conference last weekend. "There certainly was a remit and they certainly did vote against wanting the ETS, they did vote to delay it." Agriculture Minister David Carter has sought to stem caucus concerns by emailing MPs to assure them that claims by ACT about the ETS were just "misinformation".

ACT feeds rural ignorance that global warming is a Greenpeace myth to manipulate the ETS debate by radicalizing grassroot National support. Excellent.

Global warming IS happening and it is happening because of man made pollution, the more ACT whip up rural ignorance that the entire thing is a hoax the more bitter and more irrationally angry they will seem, just like the Tea Party supporters.

ACT are deeply indebted to the anti-global warming movement, indeed ACT changed their policy on Global Warming after receiving a large donation from the anti-global warming Alan Gibbs.

The price of a policy
In the run up to last year’s election I devoted a lot of coverage to the ACT party’s descent into climate denial, and in particular to the outrageous statements of its leader Rodney Hide. It wasn’t clear to me at the time why Hide was ditching the party’s carefully constructed “Smart Green” positioning on environmental policy and spouting standard climate crank nonsense, but intriguing hints are now emerging thanks to excellent detective work at Canadian blog Deep Climate. Hide’s repositioning coincided with a major donation to ACT by Alan Gibbs, a wealthy NZ businessman best known here for his Aquada (a sportscar that thinks it’s a boat) and for his generous patronage of modern art. Gibbs, however, also plays a prominent role in climate crank organisations. He is on the “policy advisory board” of the International Climate Science Coalition (with such luminaries as Monckton, Bryan Leyland and Owen McShane), while his daughter Emma is listed as a director of the ICSC. In its election spending return to the Electoral Commission, ACT reveals that on April 9th 2008 Gibbs paid $100,000 into the party’s coffers. Within weeks, the party’s new climate denial line was being pushed to the press.

Come on Rodney, whip your farmers up more, get them angry, tell them those awful greenies want to steal their daughters and force them to eat tofu, because the angrier you get these rural mindsets, the more trouble this causes the Government and more out of step with reality the far right in NZ seem.