Posts by Euan Mason
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Hard News: Bad Judgement, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The Greens new plan for cheap long term government loans for solar panels .....
How does this relate to the issue being discussed here? Should we regard your post as spam?
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Note at present there is simply nothing (absolutely nothing) a farmer can do to reduce sheep and cow burps other than reduce the number of sheep and cows. Essentially this isn’t an incentive to do anything other than reduce the national herd…..
I genuinely don’t understand how you expect to have the same standard of living if you cause our export earnings to drop significantly.
This isn’t true. Better fertilisation regimes to reduce nitrous oxide emissions and afforestation of eroding or otherwise unproductive land are both easy options.
Note also that if dairy farmers had to purchase credits for all their emissions then at some 600-700 kg milk solids/tonne CO2-e they could do so even at $20/credit with a negligible effect on their gross margins. All this talk about sabotaging our exports if farmers were in the ETS is hogwash IMO.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
"for the doubters here’s a question: how much would a carbon tax put up the cost of fuel or fertilizer? 3%? 5%?
how much is that actually going to change behaviour? households absorb that cost every year with minimal grumbling."
The point is that any tax or ETS requirement that provides enough value to those who reduce emissions or sequester carbon from the atmosphere will ultimately change behaviour. A carbon price of around $15/tonne, for instance, would see a substantial increase in afforestation in NZ. That same carbon price would have a tiny impact on dairy gross margins, but the trees would still get planted if dairy farmers were required to purchase credits.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
“so let’s work that thru for a second. this implies that reforesting >35% of what humans have deforested could return CO2 to below pre-industrial levels.
but the problematic atmospheric CO2 is primarily taken from subterranean sources.”
There is roughly twice as much carbon in the biosphere in organic form than in the atmosphere. If we chose to then we could largely solve the problem by increasing organic storage. It’s likely, however, that the best financial solution will be an increase in organic storage coupled with changes in our emitting behaviour, with the latter ultimately predominating.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
"(more trees = less carbon in the atmosphere, which ignores that you could cover the entire globe in trees and it won’t be enough to take out the carbon we’ve already put up there. at best it is a way to change behaviour, but it waaaay too slowly to stop the change already underway. at best it’s a finger in the dike)."
This is mistaken. According to FAO figures on mean forest carbon storage, reforesting approximately 35% of what humans have deforested would return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels.
If NZ established just 9% more of its land area in plantation then we could be the first nation on earth to be completely greenhouse gas neutral for between 60 and 100 years. We could do this on eroding land.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Russell Brown,
"Given the extent to which the ETS has been compromised, I’m thinking a straight-up carbon tax would have been more effective"
The ETS has been compromised, but it could be fixed:
http://euanmason.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/why-our-emissions-trading-scheme-is.html
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Rob Hosking,
Rob, thanks for the link. That's a great song.
What I remember most from that dramatic day in Hamilton is a comment from one of the Springboks' coaches, "If this was South. Africa we'd send in the police with batons and teach them a lesson they'd never forget" . Kinda highlighted what we were marching for.
As for Mandela, what a graceful human being. So glad he lived.
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The Christchurch City Council, in its wisdom, has just specified hot blue LED lighting for all new street lights, and so expect to encounter many more sleep-deprived Cantabrians.
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Good stuff, Megan. I hope it's a huge success. We need it.
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Thanks Graeme. Good to know that the legislation is rational.