Posts by Euan Mason
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Decade:
War on terror
Climate change
Going forwardYear:
CERA
EQC
EQR
Earthquake -
Hard News: Environmental league tables…, in reply to Sacha,
emissions per capita wouldn’t solve the problem
Because the world simply does not care how many people are sharing the pollution. Carrying capacity is absolute, not relative.
Thanks, Sacha, you put it much more clearly that I did.
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Hard News: Environmental league tables…, in reply to Farmer Green,
“The result is that NZ is not changing”.
It is obvious to Farmer Green that agriculture is changing, but fails to see the opportunity that this change presents to it.
Farmer Green sees absolutely no evidence of change in urbanity; only finger-pointing and heel-dragging.With restrictions on imports and a better NZU price, there would be clear opportunities for hill country farmers to plant their eroding lands (thereby sequestering CO2), very likely with minimal destocking, and they’d make higher returns on their farms while reducing siltation problems for dairy farmers on the flats. However, for this to occur we also need agriculture to participate in the ETS, IMO.
Urbanites are paying more for their power, apparently, at $25/credit if the media is to be believed. I’d really like to see some credible sources on the electricity credit swindle, though. Anyone have access to one? Said urbanites placed their hopes in the ETS I suspect.
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Hard News: Environmental league tables…, in reply to Farmer Green,
Sorry that was ambiguous ; I meant that discussion of population levels appears to be a taboo subject. It is the very obvious elephant in the room isn’t it?
Yes, you have a point. However, expressing targets for emissions in terms of emissions per capita wouldn't solve the problem unless we also had targets for population growth, and so it's more efficient simply to set targets for absolute levels of emissions. I guess if population growth arose from immigration then there would be some merit in considering a transfer of emissions targets from one country to another, but each level of complication seems to make the solution less feasible and more open to gaming.
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Hard News: Environmental league tables…, in reply to Farmer Green,
and a rapid expansion of our population during the last 15 years has made it difficult to control our GHG emissions,
Taboo!
New Zealand is fortunate that the Kyoto Protocol apparently allowed us to keep our net GHG emissions at 1990 gross emission levels between 2008 and 2012. In fact our gross emissions have grown by 19.8% since 1990, the sixth largest increase among developed countries, while our net emissions have grown by 59.5% since 1990, the second greatest increase among developed nations*. Had we been required to stabilise either our net emissions to net 1990 levels or our gross emissions to gross 1990 levels then we would have failed utterly.
Meanwhile, our weakened ETS is a farce, with the latest spot price for NZUs at $2.80. Unlike countries with more enlightened understandings of international credit trading, we allow virtually unrestricted imports of credits, many of which may be Russian hot air AAU credits laundered as ERUs#. The result is that NZ is not changing. We are dead in the water with our response to climate change.
*http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2012/sbi/eng/31.pdf See page 9
#http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/linking/docs/ji_track_en.pdf -
Hard News: Environmental league tables…, in reply to Farmer Green,
and a rapid expansion of our population during the last 15 years has made it difficult to control our GHG emissions,
Taboo!
Taboo?
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Some responses to Joy's comments, those that sought to shoot the messenger, were shameful. Residents in Dunsandel have been advised not to drink their tap water. We have severe erosion where we've massively deforested our hill country in parts of the North Island, so severe that we taxpayers were asked to bail out farmers in the Wairarapa when they were overwhelmed with silt several years ago. We have an ineffective ETS that has recently been weakened to the point where our only hope to avoid penalties is to withdraw from the second commitment period of Kyoto. If you have a look at NZ's stats on the UN Climate Change Secretariat's website then you can see why this is so.
A mature, positive response to Mike Joy's comments would be to say something like, "Yeah, expansion and intensification of our dairy farming over the last two decades has brought up some issues, we do have serious erosion in our deforested hill country, and a rapid expansion of our population during the last 15 years has made it difficult to control our GHG emissions, but we are working hard to solve these problems.", and then actually work hard to solve them.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to DexterX,
in reply to Euan Mason, About 2 hours ago
Web
“The culture is underpinned by a moral responsibility to preserve their environment, and a knowledge of how to do that, which I find to still be largely absent amongst the majority of New Zealanders I know.”
NZ suffers from Moral Hazard – A predisposition to take risks as the costs and harm that result are not met by the people profiting from the risk taking.
Where can I go with old paint?
Actually that was Rod’s comment about Germany. It applies to some NZers too, thankfully, but perhaps not enough of us.
People riven with an individualistic philosophy following the revolutionary 1980s tend not to acknowledge externalities until they are on the receiving end of them. For some “community” is a dirty word.
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.......and Sméagol emerged from the water clutching the ring. Unfortunately this was a New Zealand river and so after suffering severe bouts of Diarrhoea, Encephalitis, Gastroenteritis & Giardiasis, he took to bed and died. End of story.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Graeme,
Recent legislation that weakened the emissions trading scheme makes it easier to pollute. We now have a Clayton's scheme, which is perhaps a other piece of "just marketing".