04 September 2008

Nats do little to ease ETS burden

So the Nats, according to the NZ Herald, will introduce a "forestry offset scheme to reduce the costs of changing land use from forestry to other purposes". So this effective attack on private property rights is barely changed at all.

The Nats will "put the fishing industry on the same level as other trade-exposed industries, and "grandparent" it for 90 per cent of 2005 emissions" except it wont be on the same level as the competitors in other countries.

The Nats will "allow small and medium-sized businesses to get involved in the scheme. Lower, or potentially remove, the 50,000 tonne threshold an emitter must meet in order to be eligible" which does beg the question as to the extent that such businesses could benefit from this, at all.

The Nats will "write a 50 per cent reduction of 1990 emissions by 2050 into the legislation as an objective". To what end? How will this benefit anyone in New Zealand?

Nick Smith has long been one of the most statist, anti-freedom National MPs. He is one of the key reasons the Nats wont seriously confront the RMA. It's about time he joined the Green Party and stopped infecting the Nats with his worship of the climate change religion. The bottom line is NZ does not need to damage its economy over this.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Key should get up and say 'we'll relook at Kyoto and CO2 emissions first, question the science behind global warming, not give into this hysteria and then decide if we really need to do anything at all - before we bankrupt our country'.