By Viv Forbes, Carbon Sense Coalition

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for Sunset Clauses to be inserted in all past and future Global Warming legislation. The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that even though the Ration-N-Tax Scheme is on ice, Governments are still wasting billions of dollars to create an artificial global warming industry.

“As an example, the Australian government is spending $800 million per year on climate change research and probably more on carbon geo-sequestration. And every state has its own bloated climate change and energy bureaucracies. Next we are promised the “Mother of all Renewable Energy Schemes” to cost untold billions. There is no doubt that some enlightened or distressed future government will have the distasteful job of taking the well chewed subsidy bones off these greedy and unstainable industry dogs.”

“There is no evidence that man is causing global warming, no evidence that the natural warming we have experienced is dangerous or even unusual, and no chance that politicians can control the climate. It is thus essential that every piece of global warming legislation is subjected to an annual cost-benefit analysis and a sunset clause which triggers repeal within five years, or sooner once it becomes obvious to all that man-made global warming is not a problem. Such a cautionary clause is needed to warn investors and promoters relying on subsidies, market mandates, tax benefits, ethanol subsidies, carbon credits, renewable energy targets or research grants that unsustainable industries are high risk and can only create sub-prime assets. As we have seen with the government roof insulation disaster, it is easier to inflate an artificial industry balloon than it is to let it down gradually.”

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Comment on the New Zealand Climate Coalition on the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)
By Dr. Bob Carter

“The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it.  It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.” Nick Smith - Friday, 25 November 2005

On the 1st July, 2010, New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is to implemented. The ETS is effectively a new tax that will affect most sectors of the New Zealand economy, raising prices for all New Zealanders. It can be estimated it will eventually cost the average New Zealand household about $2500 - $3000 in higher prices (worsened by any increase in the rate of GST). In addition, Sheep and Beef farmers will become liable (at $25/tonne CO2) to $5,200, while Dairy farmers will pay over $10,000 each - with 75% of these levies commencing in July 2010. And then there is the jump in prices of EVERYTHING, followed by higher interest rates!

For what?  For no measurable changes to CO2 levels and climate!  There are no positives, only negatives for the people of New Zealand.

We join the business and farming communities in calling on the Government to defer the implementation of the ETS given:

- that it has just become known that Australia is deferring the implementation of its ETS scheme until 2013,

- that no other country has put in place any similar scheme,

- that its implementation will severely disadvantage NZ against its trading partners,

- that it will cause unnecessary hardship for a very large number of New Zealanders.

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Five new videos - ‘The Emissions Trading Scheme: The Really Inconvenient Truth - For New Zealand’ - are now on YouTube

They can be found at the following links:

Barry Brill, Former Member of Parliament, Minister of Science, and Minister of Energy, and now Chariman of the NZCSC, overviews a brief history of the ETS and addresses its downsides.Barry Brill - 7 mins.

Professor Bob Carter from James Cook University (Queensland) provides a 20 minute interview about his new book - Climate: the Counter-Consensus * - in which he distinguishes three different aspects of the public discussion of climate change as corresponding to science reality, virtual reality (computer models) and socio-political reality. These distinctions have important scientific and policy implications, yet until recently they were absent from the public debate. Prof Bob Carter PART 1 - 10 mins. Prof Bob Carter PART 2 - 10 mins.

Dr Jock Allison, Former Director of the MAF Invermay Research Centre and critically involved in recent improvements to the NZ sheep industry, addresses the effect the ETS will have on Agriculture. Dr Jock Allison - 10 mins -

Bryan Leyland, is a consulting engineer specializing in electricity generation and transmission, and speaks to the effect of the ETS on the power industry. Bryan Leyland - 6 mins.

Please watch the videos and spread this message far and wide! Forward it to all who will be interested…and even those who are not! If they live in NZ, they will be affected by the ETS! Or...’Cut and paste and pass along’...to all and sundry.

If you are concerned about the imposition of this totally unnecessary tax on the people of New Zealand, be sure to contact the National Government Caucus through a web page such as this one and let them know in no uncertain terms what you think. It is very very simple to email all National Government members through this webpage. 

See also this John O’Sullivan story on KIWI as a Carbon Copy of Climategate.