NRT: Climate change – Locked out

Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, February 23rd, 2013 - 15 comments
Categories: climate change, economy, ETS, International, national - Tags: , , ,

I/S from No Right Turn describes another brick in National’s wall of stupid.

Climate change: Locked out

Its official: New Zealand will be locked out of the international carbon market in retaliation for our refusal to sign up for Kyoto’s Second Commitment period:

In December, the COP 18 meeting voted to exclude New Zealand, Canada and Japan from access to the units after all three countries said they would not sign up to the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the time, Climate Change Issues Minister Tim Groser described commentary by Carbon News and others that the decision would exclude New Zealand from international markets as “ill-informed”, saying that New Zealand emitters would continue to have access to them until the end of 2015.

But now officials in the New Zealand Emissions Unit Register have confirmed that New Zealand will be barred from trading in almost all Kyoto credits generated under the second commitment period, New Zealand’s specialist carbon market information service, Carbon News, reports today.

“As of 1 January, 2013, only countries that have taken an emission limitation and reduction commitment under the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period (2013-19) may trade in CP2 Kyoto units,” a statement on the registry website says.

Unmentioned: the fate of our expected CP1 Assigned Amount Surplus. This is currently expected to amount to 35 million tons, but thanks to the lockout we won’t be able to sell any of it. Given the crash in global carbon prices, that’s not exactly a great loss – but it will be if they recover.

Reading the background documents on FYI, the government’s clear aims were to avoid commitment while retaining access to the international carbon market. In that context, the lockout can only be viewed as a major foreign policy failure. And judging from the lack of the passive voice in the documents (particularly here [PDF]), that failure should be owned fairly and squarely by Tim Groser.

15 comments on “NRT: Climate change – Locked out ”

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  1. RJLC 1
    23 February 2013 at 9:27 am

    Don’t expect msm to make anything of this.

  2. BLiP 2
    23 February 2013 at 10:53 am

    .

    Remind me, why didn’t Labour impose a carbon tax?

    • Draco T Bastard 2.1
      23 February 2013 at 10:59 am

      Because the farmers got upset about having a “fart tax” and so Labour caved in to the minority position against the facts yet again.

      • BLiP 2.1.1
        23 February 2013 at 12:33 pm

        .

        Yep. National Ltd™ and its Federated Farmer mates totally pwned Labour on the issue. The “fart tax” framing complete with stunts like Shane Adern and his tractor exposed the beligerent ignorance of those opposed to any climate change solutions, and yet Labour still took the do-nothing option. I do like to ask the question, though. The answers can be kinda humorous. One Labour MP told me the ETS was about “inclusion”, the idea being that the scheme would generate wider understanding and support for the whole climate change issue by bringing business and private investors on board. Another one told me Labour wanted a carbon tax but was held to ransom by Peter Dunne and Winston Peters. A third gave me some spiel about how the scheme would “equalise costs” across the economy. Waffle, of course, and not surprising any more. I learned all I need to know about Labour’s concern for the environment and commitment to truth just before the 2002 election with the release of Nicky Hager’s Seeds of Distrust: The Story of a GE Cover-up.

  3. Colonial Weka 3
    23 February 2013 at 11:27 am

    How big a portion of the carbon credit market is the Kyoto one?

  4. Bill 4
    23 February 2013 at 12:15 pm

    Reposteing this link thatAMCC put up yesterday on the ‘Nat’s Fossil Fuel…” post. http://qz.com/55276/china-worlds-largest-emitter-of-greenhouse-gasses-will-tax-carbon/

    If China is taxing carbon and Europe is discussing it, then hopefully the entire farce of ‘cap and trade’ is about to become history.

    • Colonial Viper 4.1
      23 February 2013 at 12:24 pm

      When the Central Committee of the Communist Party wants something done, it happens.

      Oh by the way, for you China watchers out here, this is a must-see Al Jazeera documentary. The wealthiest people in the Communist Party hierarchy are billionaires with 10x-20x more wealth than their richest American congressional counterparts.

  5. Colonial Viper 5
    23 February 2013 at 12:26 pm

    Kudos, I/S.

  6. Rogue Trooper 6
    23 February 2013 at 4:51 pm

    yes, that’s a Gross FP backfire indeed!(The colour of sulphur fragrance comes to mind)

  7. Grumpy 7
    23 February 2013 at 7:25 pm

    So, what do you guys make of the IPCC’s about face then?

    No warming in the last 17 years and bugger all for the next 17.

    Looks like only mugs are paying carbon tax – eh?

    • Colonial Viper 7.1
      23 February 2013 at 7:36 pm

      Warming appears to have plateaued (at record highs) over the last 5 years. But warming is just one part of the picture: climate volatility is another.

      http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/science-to-win-on-climate/story-fn59niix-1226583866039

    • RJLC 7.2
      23 February 2013 at 10:29 pm

      Exactly what “about face” is that Grumpy?
      According to “The Australian”

      THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend.

      And the UK Met office states
      http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/

      The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

      As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

      Do you understand this graph Grumpy?

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47

    • RJLC 7.3
      26 February 2013 at 1:26 pm

      And it appears that The Australian can’t provide an interview transcript to support the statement they attribute to Pachauri, and in any case their claims certainly misrepresent his viewpoint. Not for the first time do they misrepresent climate science and climate scientists.

      Did Murdoch’s The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming? :

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/australian-pachauri-global-warming.html

  8. georgecom 8
    25 February 2013 at 6:51 pm

    And from what I have gathered, it seems that the ‘highly credible’ climate change deniers society are sponsoring another speaking tour of Lord Monckton shortly. The side show distraction continues it seems.