NRT: Climate change: Absolute madness

Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, August 25th, 2015 - 12 comments
Categories: capitalism, climate change, disaster, global warming - Tags: , ,

I/S at No Right Turn writes:

Climate change: Absolute madness

The government has recently set itself a patheticly unambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 11% on 1990 levels by 2030. Meanwhile, they’rehanding out tens of millions of dollars a year to big polluters as a direct subsidy for their emissions:

But in New Zealand, the Government provides a 50 percent subsidy to emitting companies that might otherwise leave New Zealand and set up shop in a country with no emissions controls at all.

Figures just released show the value of those state payments to big corporations.

They show the largest emitter, New Zealand Steel, received 1,073,489 credits: almost $7.3m at the current market price of $6.80.

Also getting lots of Government-paid credits was the Methanex plant in Taranaki, which makes methanol for export from natural gas, which picked up 777,432 credits, worth almost $5.3m.

Another big name is the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, which received 755,987 credits from the Crown, or just over $5m at current rates.

Fourth on the list is Fletcher Concrete and Infrastructure, which received 322,430 credits, which would value at over $2m.

Other big recipients were Pan Pac Forests, Norske Skog, Carter Holt Harvey, Holcim Cement, Balance Agri-nutrients and McDonald’s Lime.

Yes, the government is spending tens of millions of dollars a year paying these companies to destroy the world. It is absolute madness. If we want our emissions to actually decrease, ending this subsidy for pollution would be a good start.

(Of course, this is nothing compared to the hundreds of millions they effectively pay the dairy industry by excluding it completely from the ETS. That madness needs to stop too.)

12 comments on “NRT: Climate change: Absolute madness ”

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  1. b waghorn 1
    25 August 2015 at 5:27 pm

    http://corporateeurope.org/climate-and-energy/2013/04/eu-ets-myth-busting-why-it-can-t-be-reformed-and-shouldn-t-be-replicated
    I’ve always thought the ETS was a waste of time and it appears I’m not alone.
    I was a bit disheartened to see in the last email I got on labours future of work Robinson was still banging on about it.

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    25 August 2015 at 6:03 pm

    But in New Zealand, the Government provides a 50 percent subsidy to emitting companies that might otherwise leave New Zealand and set up shop in a country with no emissions controls at all.

    See, what we should be doing is putting in place all the necessary regulations and costs needed to curb GHG emissions and then banning all trade with countries that don’t meet those same standards. It’s really simple, really cheap to do and we don’t have trade agreements limiting our own sovereignty.

    We also ban trade with any company that does business in those countries that we’ve banned trade with.

    • b waghorn 2.1
      25 August 2015 at 6:29 pm

      Regulations and cost are all good if you can guarantee that the next government inline won’t gut every thing that has been set up. Good luck with that.
      A more effective way would be to put in place real on the ground methods to reduce emmisions.
      A tax on petrol/diesel to subsidise electric car tech and public transport ,things like that will be more effective.

    • AmaKiwi 2.2
      25 August 2015 at 8:58 pm

      Draco, this is why we wrote the TPPA. TPPA would outlaw all this anti-profiteering greeny nonsense. At least wait until I get my retirement bonuses. After that I don’t care what you do.

      /sarc/

  3. Corokia 3
    25 August 2015 at 6:56 pm

    Fee and dividend as suggested by James Hansen, a tax on carbon with funds raised being re-distributed back to citizens on a per capita basis.

  4. Corokia 4
    25 August 2015 at 7:04 pm

    National’s goals to continue to increase dairying and fossil fuel dependent tourism confirms they are completely mad.

  5. The Real Matthew 5
    27 August 2015 at 1:57 pm

    “But in New Zealand, the Government provides a 50 percent subsidy to emitting companies that might otherwise leave New Zealand and set up shop in a country with no emissions controls at all.”

    And there’s your problem in a nutshell. Companies move overseas. NZ emissions down, other country emissions up, world emissions the same.

    A global problems requires a global response. Going it alone will achieve nothing except higher living costs for New Zealanders.