Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, November 26th, 2008 - 56 comments
Categories: climate change, economy, john key, national/act government -
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The UK has announced plans to increase departure tax from its airports for flights outside Europe to pay for offsetting their carbon emissions. This is part of the worldwide response to climate change – countries are making emitters pay and even aviation, which is excluded from Kyoto, is now being targeted (quite rightly too, it is one of the fastest growing emission sources).
Of course, that’s bad news for New Zealand tourism. Over quarter of a million people visit New Zealand from the UK each year. Adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of their ticket will decrease their numbers and leave them with less to spend here.
So, what should we do about it? Our one bargaining chip is a clean, green image. If we could show that we have a strong emissions reduction programme, we could argue that tourism to New Zealand is overall very low on carbon – people might burn a lot of fuel getting here but little once they are here. It’s kind of like our argument against food miles – sure, it means burning some fuel to transport our lamb around the world to Britain but we emit less greenhouse gas producing it than UK farmers and, overall, we’re more environmentally friendly. Of course to make that argument, National/ACT would have to show they are committed to tackling greenhouse gas emissions. Since they are going to have a select committee to investigate whether everyone else is wrong and climate change is (in Key’s words) “a hoax”, that will be a difficult argument to make.
So, our one shot at some kind of exemption from this tax has already been sabotaged by Key’s incompetent handling of climate change; his failure to understand it is now a foreign relations and trade issue, not just a way to shore up support from ACT, the farmers, and business. But then he’s gone and made it worse. When you are a little country and you want a big country to not do something bad to you, you have to remind them what a good little country you are, what good friends you are (like Clark did last year when our special visa status was under threat). What you don’t do is mouth off that you worry it will have a “contagion effect“, as if British policy is a virus that might infect other countries, as if countries responding to climate change is the new communist domino effect. And you don’t have your spokesperson call it “protectionism“, one of the dirtiest words in international relations.
Those inept comments have sunk any slim hope we might have had of getting an exemption from the departure tax.
Test number 2 for Key, fail.
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Scoopit!
The answer is simple. Visitors travel to Dublin/Amsterdam/Paris/etc., etc., and go from there to New ZEaland. QED and I’m sure the major airlines that fly to Australia and New Zealand will quickly pick up on this and make it work!
WHy fret when you can resolve?
ffs, we spend thousands of dollars to send Key to the other side of the world to meet his half brother. As a side issue he gets time with the Brit PM – on the day after this news breaks – and what do we get for it?
Well, he met his half brother. – oh, and the queen.
Money well spent I say.
Observer. I already thought about that. It’s not worth the time and expense to get from the UK to Paris for a flight to NZ (Paris is the closest airport outside the UK from which you can fly direct to Singapore or another hub on your way to NZ). Basically, if you’re going to be put off coming to NZ by the extra departure tax, you’re also going to be put off by having to go to Paris to avoid it. And, either way, you’ll have less money to spend here if you do come.
Of course, we could get serious about climate change and ask for an exemption on that basis at the same time as lessening our Kyoto liability and, oh yeah, reducing anthropogenic climate change.
Mr Key: “I am worried that this protectionist tax will undermine our tourism industry.
Mr Brown: “Well we are realigning our tax policies in a more progressive direction, and this tax is the first step towards implementing a polluter pays principle.”
Mr Key “Gee Mr Brown… that’s not fair.”
Mr Brown: “Well look here, seeing as how you are new at this Prime Minister thing, I’ll see what we can do to improve the targetting of this tax to reduce the impact, if you can give me something to work with, like … hey … how about tthat all new, all gases, all sectors ETS scheme you guys have been working on for the last 6 years or so? That might do the trick!”
Mr Key: “Ahmmm.. errr… let me get back to you.”
Sheesh.
Ha
I’m sure Key is feeling suitably whipped now that you’ve failed him twice.
I’m also almost certain upon returning to NZ he’ll be announcing his immediate resignation and urge the country to look to SP for guidance
HS,
No, I’m sure he doesn’t give a shit. After all he’s got what he wanted – why just look at his CV!
Or is this a tax, dressed up as some way to adress climate change, but in fact is a way of paying for the cut in vat from 17.5% to 15%
[without even looking at the figures I can tell you there's no way a few hundred pounds tax on long-haul flights out of the UK could pay for even a minute fraction of the cost of cutting sales tax by 2.5%. SP]
That analysis doesn’t really work. The cost of the ETS (once fully implemented) far exceeds the cost of any lost tourism due to our clean green image being tarnished. Now I am by no means against an ETS – however it would be naive to close our eyes to other options without exploring them first.
No-one’s claiming the ETS is just to protect our tourism industry.
Isn’t our clean green image just that, an image. Going back to my varsity days, I remember being taught that we’re predominantly clean and green due to our low population density. Our Industry wouldn’t actually be able to cut it with European standards. I remember something being mention about the ISO140002 (?) standard.
So basically, it’s going to cost us no matter what to bring NZ up to speed with the rest of the world’s standards towards emissions.
Why do we need to worry about global warming? I thought the temperature was dropping again and we’re back to the same temperature as the mid 90′s. I guess that as long as we ignore all research from the year 2000 onwards then we should still live in fear. The left like that, helps control the population.
Strathen, no its not the temeperature is the same as the mid 90s, its the policies.
Strathen. Climate change is over? Quick! Tell the IPCC!
Steve Pierson
The hell of Paris is well known, especially CdG Airport which is one of the places most hated – by me! (I used to fly an intercontinental every week day.) However, Schiphol is closer to the majority of UK Airports, has wonderful transit facilities, and has frequent flights to Singapore, Hong Kong, and other way-points that could be used, as well as to Los Angeles and Frisco; going west is by far the preferred approach when dealing with UK:NZ travel, it makes the time changes easier to take.
If Scare New Zealand were to make an arrangement with an Amsterdam Hub airline and use Schiphol as its European port, it would have more overall traffic in my view, and WE would be able to visit friends and family in Bighty without paying the $250 surtax.
OAF
It is snowing in Yorkshire and East Lancashire right now! The first time it has snowed there in November in over 40 years. My daughter (Lancashire) says can we send some global warming over as her ass is freezing off and as a good tree-hugger she doesn’t want to use the coal fire yet!
MR Brown.
I’m sure that you would never take advantage of a business trip to spend time with friends and family in the countries you visit!
Oh! What’s that? You have no friends and your family have disowned you! Ah, that explains your jealousy then!
“like Clark did last year when our special visa status was under threat”
Indeed. Britain has no reason to care what NZ wants. We’re nothing. It’s only effective lobbying that can make a difference. For the last nine years, we’ve had that.
Feb 2008 (TVNZ):
“The Prime Minister is promising to take up the case of hundreds of New Zealanders who could lose their right to live and work in the UK.
Helen Clark says she’ll talk to the British Government about its plan to downgrade the status of Commonwealth citizens, by getting rid of the ancestry visa.”
July 2008: UK drops plan to abolish visa, after Clark intervenes personally with Gordon Brown.
Now John Key – “the great negotiator” – has a chance to show he can command the same respect, and get the same results. Right now he looks less like an international leader and more like a wide-eyed kid from Waipukurau on his first OE.
Steve, the IPCC has been informed apparently. (I wish I kept the report I read this in as it would be mighty handy) Although the new data doesn’t sit with their message. The IPCC is being accused of unfairly dismissing recent results from tests they have used in the past from their fellow scientists. I’ve just found their website and it’s going to take me a while to get through their information. Chapter 2 is a 32 page pdf alone, so it will take me a while to find the information I need to support my posts.
Can one suggest that the IPCC needs climate change to be a reality so as to maintain the increase in funding they have experienced in recent times? Even tree huggers like to earn more money once they have the bug.
Admittedly I use to think that the claims of their being no climate change and it all a hoax, a hoax themselves. Although the voice is getting stronger, and as observer related a story of snow in Europe, we had snow in Dunedin, almost to sea level within the last few weeks. According to people that are pro climate change, this is an impossibility. Well, I saw the impossible, and I’m a believer. You can tell me it ain’t snowing, but when flakes of snow land on my head, settle on my car, etc. I can tell you it snowed here, trust me, I’ve seen it.
Recently I was in Queenstown and it snowed a couple of times and settled. I spoke to a local (30+ years living there), he and his wife both told me that snow that low, this late in the year was extremely rare and hard to remember.
Perhaps it’s just NZ and England that climate change has skipped…
So what happens when Key’s “contagion effect” spreads to the European mainland – just keep moving the hub east until we hit what, Outer Mongolia?
Oh, and global warming is a long term effect, a year’s or decade’s worth of data doesn’t show the trend. Get your head out of the sand.
Strathen:
You’re talking crap. I’m unsure what localised set of temperatures you’re referring to, but we’re talking global changes. Perhaps linking to whatever report you’re referring would be useful. Then I’d happily show exactly how much of a credulous fool you are.
But here is the short word (I’m trying to make it as simple as possible for you). When someone says in global terms something is getting colder or hotter, it does not mean that happens everywhere at the same time. Climate is complex and not really susceptible to ‘common sense’ of the scientifically illiterate.
For instance in a glacial period you can expect that polar and temperate regions to get chillier. However you will also find that the equatorial regions get a lot hotter in continental areas. Now I’m sure that this is making you feel uncomfortable with ambiguity, but the science is obvious.
Glaciation locks up a lot of water vapour. With diminished water vapour, there is less precipitation on equatorial regions. That tends to cause them to lose biomass which then tends to diminish their local precipitation and you get a nasty drop in ecosystem sustainability. Eventually that causes deserts, which tends to raise the average daytime temperatures without the plants and water systems soaking up heat.
If you look at the history of the current ice age which started about 45 million years ago, the geological record is extremely clear about the desertification of the tropics during glacials.
Guess what the same kinds of counter-intuitive effects happen in local areas whenever there is climate change. Then like a rule of nature scientific morons like yourself start applying the stupidity of ‘common-sense’ and selective cherry-picking of research to support for your pre-determined outcome.
In short, if you want to look like an idiot, just come and peddle that kind of psuedo scientific crap around me. I’ll help to educate you
Bill – Yes I know. Does the IPCC?
Of course to make that argument, National/ACT would have to show they are committed to tackling greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course you mean like the last nine years, where all the talk and rhetoric has been backed up by the enormous success of growth in NZ’s emmissions by the third fastest rate in the developed world!
Strathen made a good point first up – our green ‘image’ is exactly that; an image. Nothing more. Perhaps we’ve gotten so good at lying to the rest of the world we’re starting to believe the marketing spin at home too?
—-
As GS points out above, it took 5/6 months for Helen to get the visa issue dealt with.
Key’s started the ball rolling a few days after the announcement, and yet Steve has already decided to call it a faliure.
‘Word around the town’ is that it’s just another premature conclusion from SP.
“‘Word around the town’ is that it’s just another premature conclusion from SP.”
Perhaps he should consider dapoxetine ?
Over and over the same silly, disproven arguments against man-made climate change. It really is like arguing with someone who insists that the earth is flat, and it’s… turtles all the way down. I promised myself I would quit wasting time and energy on this ages ago… but one last time:
The CO2 infrared absorption spectrum has been known since some time in the late 1800′s. (The main peak is at 1.8 microns, I know for sure since I spent many years calibrating moisture sensing instruments that directly use the effect.) You cannot dismiss this fundametal science.
Humans have disrupted the natural carbon carbon cycle, extracting billions of tonnes of fossil carbon, rapidly raising the CO2 level in the atmosphere in a clearly measured and quantified manner, that has never occured before in all our planetary history. You cannot dismiss this fact,
The effect of this is to change the energy balance in the atmosphere, that lead to a prediction of how the temperature profile of the atmosphere is altered in response. The science of this is basic first year thermodymanics and again has been known for more than 100 years. The measurements exactly confirm the prediction.
It is now clear to us that even if humans had never burned so much as a single chunk of coal, the planet’s climate would show significant variation. There are many factors contributing to this, plus we continue to learn how they all interact. It is a very complex system. It is impossible to write down a deterministic model that describes it’s behaviour. Climate is a statistical (or stochastic) beast. It is the sum total over time and geography of what we call weather. Both the mean and the variance of all those weather signals can and do change over time. Climate change will likely mean not only a change in the mean of the weather data (ie it generally gets warmer over a long period of time), but that the variance of the weather could increase (ie we see more extremes of temperature, wind, storms and the like.)
What is indisputable is that humans are intervening in this system. Only the really obdurate deniers cannot accept that. The real question is how much? Now if the planet was a simple deterministic system, like say a pendulum, then if you added a few grams to it’s weight, then a fifth former should be able to tell you how it’s period will change. But stochastic, multivariable, interacting, non-linear systems are generally a much harder, if not impossible problem to solve like that.
In general the only workable approach is to gather as much historic data as possible (which is usually of poor quality), observe what has happened and try to deduce from that what might happen. Everyone who has seriously attempted such a study has come to the conclusion that what humans are doing, pouring billions of tonnes of fossil CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere, is going to affect the climate in ways that vary from bad to outright catastrophic.
In the meantime the weather and the climate (which is just weather summed and averaged over a time period of interest) is going to keep on varying as it always has done. When you toss a coin, you don’t know if the next throw will be heads or tails, but you do know that in 1000 tosses near 500 will be heads. I don’t care if there is a frickin Ice Age next week… eventually all that CO2 is going to exert the effect that the undeniable science states that it will.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold prediction. The next test that SP sets for John Key will also result in a FAIL.
I will further predict that John Key won’t feel at all disturbed by failing SP’s test.
I don’t think there are many that deny that humans have an effect on the climate RL – it’s just as you point out that we really have little idea how much of an effect we’re having, what the nature of the effect is and what’s the best way to address the effect that we have on climate change.
“Glaciation locks up a lot of water vapour. With diminished water vapour, there is less precipitation on equatorial regions. That tends to cause them to lose biomass which then tends to diminish their local precipitation and you get a nasty drop in ecosystem sustainability. Eventually that causes deserts, which tends to raise the average daytime temperatures without the plants and water systems soaking up heat.”
So if glaciation ends, maybe we can get some water and lower temperatures back to the deserts
and start growing more food.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Lots more flat land in the deserts than at the poles.
Roll on global warming…….
HS,
If a medical researcher came to you and said, “I’ve got this brand new drug I want you to try. The lab tests suggest that it is toxic as hell, but we’re not sure what the effect on a real human is. Nobody has ever tried it before, and we don’t know what effects it will have, how severe they may be, nor when they may occur. And if something does go badly wrong, you’re on your own. Here sign this disclaimer form please”.
Would you be keen? Or would you think that what the hell, it might just be a sugar pill and nothing bad is going to happen to me? Not being able to predict the next toss of a coin, does not preclude you from knowing what the result of 1000 tosses is.
Humans are ignorantly tinkering with a hugely complex machine we barely understand. In my experience, ignorant tinkering almost always has a bad result. An especially bad result when our lives as we know it are utterly dependent on the continued smooth function of said machine.
Stupid thing about this tax is that emissions from international airline flights are exempt from inclusion in national carbon accounting under Kyoto, so it is just a tax for tax sake and climate change is an excuse not a reason. the Dutch are only charging about $100 for theirs.
Red
Busy at the moment but I’ll try to address those questions tonight as it’s an interesting comparison.
If the UK departure tax is a good idea (polluter pays) then NZ should not be complaining about it.
The whole idea of making exceptions to the rules is the reason why NZ has not implemented anything of its own yet. Everything that results in a direct cost to consumers (voters) gets thrown out or postponed into a future election cycle.
Interestingly the UK govt decided against against making the planes (as opposed to travelers) pay the tax as that could harm the aviation industry. Hmmm…
Any govt that tinkers with New Zealander’s access to cheap petrol and cheap dirty imports will need a huge amount of political staying power. The public resistance will make the s59 repeal look mild by comparison.
Kiwigirl you really are an embarrassment to Kiwis and girls.
Red – You’ve lost me a bit there, which really highlights how little I know, and how uneducated my comments towards this topic are. Probably also explains why my leanings very much depend on the last article I read. Think I’ll leave global warming to others.
Although this in itself is fraught with danger as it appears these changes for the climate are going to be completely unavoidable for a layman like me. I’m not referring to my purchases becoming more expensive, or having to get rid of my gas guzzling automobile, etc. I am concerned that these changes could come right down and effect the way I will be required to think. Selfish, probably. I can only envisage a major cultural change for the entire world. Yes, they may well be needed, but will they be embraced? (Once again, these thoughts are from an ill informed person)
A thought for another day; Will these new standards breed new criminals?
strathen,
much as I read with interest your
self-effacementin regard to information supposedly received on climate change, allow me to assist you in your patent dilemma—climate is what you expect: weather is what you get.As true in queenstown as anywhere else. On the globe.
I agree with SP that Key has totally mishandled the situation and the discussion with Brown was a failure. It couldnt be anything less given Keys confusion on the matter. He stated to Brown that the tax ‘ is a significant concern to NZ’ then goes on to state that ” this is a small issue that needs to be kept in perspective.’ Significant concern or small issue? It cant be both. Tim Cossar statement that ‘ just a few percent [tax] could be worth many millions of dollars for NZ, is likely to reflect the gravity of the situation. That aside good on Britain for taking measures to deal with carbon ommissions. Brown would no doubt have been briefed over the Nat/Acts position re ETS and climate change generally. In that context Key’s pleadings for fairness will have fallen on deaf ears.
I think there are questions to be answered as to how much the flight tax will actually help alleviate climate change. Nevertheless, I think it’s a good idea to try to encourage fewer international flights, especially long haul ones. Maybe it could also involve making sure there are fewer flights that are not full. Are there any stats on how full most flights are?
Also, perhaps our minister for tourism could be more proactive and encourage more tourism between NZ and countries closer to NZ than Europe. In the long term this re-focusing on tourism or local eco-tourism may be necessary and important.
Other alternatives are to take NZ more to other countries, as an alternative to the tourist industry – eg exhibitions and community events in Europe.
Alexandra: “Key has totally mishandled the situation and the discussion with Brown was a failure.”
Codswallop. What would you expect? Brown has not indicated that flights to supposedly “green” countries will receive a discount. It’s all about the distance – and that is how it should be.
A passenger on a return trip from UK to NZ probably uses more fuel than they would in a year’s worth of typical motoring. The food miles comparison is silly and completely invalid.
Food miles is about the carbon footprint of milk produced in UK vs that produced in NZ and shipped to UK. Apparently the NZ produced milk has a lower carbon footprint even when shipping is included. If that is true then very good.
The same can not be said for 40,000km of discretionary air travel. There is no way that a traveller would cause the same (or greater) carbon output if they holidayed in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Even if they only intended to ride bicycles in NZ.
Felix
November 26, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Kiwigirl you really are an embarrassment to Kiwis and girls.
Oh, wonderful. I’ve achieved something today, then.