Spending cuts I’d like to see – No 2

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, April 20th, 2011 - 4 comments
Categories: budget 2011, ETS - Tags:

The government’s books are tight. We shouldn’t borrow more, so there need to be reversals of the tax cuts and spending cuts. What matters is what is cut – all cuts are not the same. I’d like to see the $110 billion dollars of subsidies for greenhouse polluters under National’s Emissions Trading Scheme cut.

Right now, polluters have to pay a maximum price of $25 per tonne for their pollution and get half of it comped by us taxpayers. Treasury reckons it will cost us $110 billion over the 40 years to 2050.

What would you prefer to spend $110 billion on: subsidising companies to burn fossil fuels that are wrecking our environment or on vital public services?

running total of savings:

not employing scandal managers – at least $100,000 a year

no free carbon credit allocation – about $1 billion a year

total: $1,000,100,000 a year

4 comments on “Spending cuts I’d like to see – No 2 ”

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  1. seeker 1
    20 April 2011 at 12:09 pm

    “What matters is what is cut – all cuts are not the same.”
    Exactly. A Government is known by its cuts and prorities as to how loyal and effective it is for the wellbeing of all its citizens. On a scale of 1-10  this National government is rated minus 32 and sliding fast.
    (This rating was arrived at by ‘money trader’ and ‘bringing in ‘new zealand school standards’ type intuition and thus is as robust as the government’s policy making and governance decisions, especially those created under urgency.)

  2. Afewknowthetruth 2
    20 April 2011 at 12:15 pm

    The Emissions Trading Scheme is an elaborate scam, introduced by LABOUR.

    It’s purpose is to allow overseas financiers and speculators to make truck loads of money via trading,  whilst doing nothing to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, NZ emissions continue to rise.  

    As for this bit ‘Treasury reckons it will cost us $110 billion over the 40 years to 2050′, that really is a very sick joke.

    Global oil extraction peaked in 2005-6, we’ve been on the bumpy plateau for 5 years and are about begin the descent. The best analysis I have seen recently indicates internationally traded oil will be down very significantly by 2013 … after which it only gets worse. That will demolish whatever remains of the globalised economic system after the US dollar collapses some time soon.

    As I pointed out on the ‘Key’ tab, it’s not just oil we are getting short of. Practically everything the globalised economic system requires to fuinction is close to peak or past peak.

    It is truly surreal how economists manage to retain any credibility whatsoever  -especially Treasury economists – when their fanciful theories are so completely detached from reality. 

    ‘If you don’t deal with reality, reality will deal with you’  -Dr Colin Campbell.

    By the way, the CO2 content of the atmosphere is now just over 392ppm. That’s probably enough to trigger positive feedbacks that will render most of the Earth uninhabitable by 2050.   

  3. green jobs 3
    20 April 2011 at 8:42 pm

    To be fair Afewknowthetruth is correct. The ETS would never of worked because it is not focused on binding emissions cuts, it has a focus of making a carbon market. Big polluters lobby and get special treatment.

    A better focus would be to have feed in tarrifs and microgeneration and many different ways to build a low carbon clean energy economy. We can become clean energy leaders and get good at creating jobs that are low carbon. Makes more sense that having an ineffective and expensive ETS that doesn’t reduce emissions. We need to know how much to reduce emissions by 2020, by 2030, by 2050 etc. An ETS is not effective are REDUCING emissions, which is the whole point of climate policy.

  4. green jobs 4
    20 April 2011 at 8:48 pm

    The ETS is useless. We need an Emissions Reduction Scheme, not a trading scheme. NZ needs emissions reduction targets and goals, and to halt development of polluting industries like the proposed mining in Southland and Otago for Lignite. NZ needs to invest in clean energy, rail, light rail and all sorts of clean technology and low carbon Green Jobs. Nick Smith is constantly getting caught out. Bluegreenwash is at an all time high.

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