The months of flatlining at the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) should be a hint to the rest of the world that carbon trading is dead. Time to take it off life support. Even at 10 cents a ton, nobody wants it. At it’s peak in July 2008, it traded for $7.50 per ton of CO2.
See who is on the CCX advisory board here
From ACM:
Token Gesture Alert as the government of New Zealand, unable to think straight thanks to years of green environmental propaganda, brings in its emissions trading scheme.
New Zealand emits about 0.1% of global CO2. So even if New Zealand reduced its emissions to zero overnight, AND it were demonstrated that the climate sensitivity is large enough to notice (which it hasn’t been), it would make not the slightest bit of difference to the climate.
Not only that, but I hardly think that China and India are going to look at New Zealand, and, wracked with guilt and remorse by the plucky little country’s valiant efforts to save the planet, stop their coal fired economies in their tracks. Not on your life. China and India are far too busy building their prosperity and lifting their populations out of poverty. It’s only wealthy countries can afford the luxury of pointless environmental gestures like this.
So the only result will be higher prices for poor Kiwis. Everything will cost more: electricity, petrol, groceries, consumer goods – everything – since everything (virtually) requires energy for its production or transportation. As the ABC reports:
New Zealanders are bracing for higher electricity and fuel prices with the introduction of an emissions trading scheme (ETS).
From today New Zealanders will pay around three cents a litre more for fuel.
Electricity bills are set to increase by up to 5 per cent as companies pass on the costs of buying carbon credits to consumers.
Environment minister Dr Nick Smith says New Zealand had to act because its greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 25 per cent over the past 20 years. [So from absolutely tiny, to slightly less absolutely tiny]
“It’s actually about New Zealand starting the path, starting the change to a less carbon intensive economy,” he said. (source)
Good luck with that. Just watch your industries move offshore, and your economy decline for no purpose whatsoever.
Speaking as a Kiwi (who travels to Australia every week to work for almost twice as much as I get paid in NZ)…..
New Zealanders have been brainwashed by this tripe for almost a decade. We eventually dumped our last Prime Minister ‘Dear Leader’ (as she was affectionately known by people who wanted to actually get ahead) and the CO2 situation was just one of many of her ‘agendas’. (someone else mentioned that she now works at the UN)
I don’t believe that John Key (or many of his caucus) buy the scam. I believe that this rubbish has been forced upon us because they need to get re-elected and John Key doesn’t have the charisma to do anything other than keep the status quo.
So now we have the ETS……..
Around 65% of our Electricity is derived from Hydro / Wind / Geothermal. (Watch the wind fall profits to these companies as they raise prices in line with the remainder of companies generating power using Natural gas / Coal / Methane)…….. can you say ‘RORT’?
Gas went up ANOTHER 4c/L yesterday and is due to go up another 5c/L in a few months if my memory serves me correctly…
I think that based on current figures, the tax payer is propping up the farming sector in order to ‘ease’ them ‘gently’ into the scheme. (the government is borrowing $1B per month to fund this amongst other ‘entitlements’). But in the end, the average farmer will have to farm another 150 sheep worth of profit every year to cover costs….
We have already had almost a decade of out of control spending on programs that did nothing but make the poor just as poor and everyone else poorer…..
Why change the habit of a lifetime?
I’m extremely lucky that I can work in Australia AND live in NZ….. just about everyone else I know that wanted to get ahead packed up and moved to greener [sic] pastures
I believe Margaret Thatcher put it best when she said that the only problem with socialism was that eventually you run out of other peoples money to spend….
As a New Zealander living (temporarily) in London, I am unsurprised by NZ’s newly-introduced ETS as John Key has consistently espoused some of the Brit former Labour Government’s nuttier economic policies, such as Private Finance Intitiatives for building schools. Nothing the man says can surprise me as he was a successful merchant banker before entering politics and therefore comes from a different planet from most of us. He makes much of his very ordinary start in life, as if this is some form of massive acheivement rather being closer to the norm for Kiwis of his generation..
An embarrassing time to be a New Zealander, but then like half a million of my fellow countrymen I now live in Australia. No doubt soon to be joined by a lot more.
To all those saying negative things about the New Zealand economy potentially collapsing because of the ETS and cracking jokes about how naive the silly New Zealanders are I’d like to point out a few things.
1. OUR banks and financial markets didn’t collapse recently.
2. OUR economy is still healthy.
3. OUR government isn’t instituting austerity measures.
4. OUR unemployment rate remains unexceptional and falling
5. OUR currency is stable.
6. OUR people aren’t rioting in the streets.
Yes the ETS scheme is an expensive drain on our economy- so what! Just watch us kiwis as we tie one hand behind our backs and STILL beat the tar out of the rest of the world in economic terms. We are extremely used to being handicapped economically in New Zealand. We live in a tiny country about as far away from the main centres of population as you can get without jumping off into space. We live at the wrong end of all the equations about economies of scale and fixed costs of government and infrastructure and the size of capital markets and political trade blocks and all the rest. Our main exports are agricultural products which we produce with completely unsubsidised farmers competing against massively subsidised farmers in the US and Europe, sheltering behind their trade barriers collecting their payouts and dumping subsidised product below cost on the world markets. Don’t talk to us about economic handicaps because we know all about them.
Yet despite all that we still manage to maintain a high standard of living with all the perks. And we do it with just 4.5 million people. How do we get away with it? We do it because New Zealand is EFFICIENT. You guys just wouldn’t believe how efficient we are. Most of you live in very inefficient places which get by simply by being big. You all have nothing to teach us about running an economy. NOTHING! In fact most of your economies are basket cases right now. You would be bankrupt if the Chinese were not bailing you out. I hope you are all suitably grateful. I suspect you are not. I exempt my mates in Australia from this most unkind analysis, but they don’t have to be efficient because they can always just dig up and sell off a bit more of the outback. Lucky bastards.
The point is that we know in NZ that the whole carbon castle is collapsing. We know that what NZ does has minimal impact on climate. We are not stupid. We did it mostly to head off having our exports shut out of world markets by fool ideas like ‘food miles’. It was cheap insurance compared to the consequences to having our main exports shut out of our main markets in Europe and the US by yet more agricultural protectionist legislation masquerading as environmental concern.
We did it because the rest of the world seemed about to do it, and seemed in the mood to punish those who abstained. Now that seems quite unlikely to happen and indeed the science is now looking distinctly shaky. The smell of a new paradigm is in the air. At the moment the government is just watching because things are very uncertain right now. Lets not act in haste until the situation clarifies. However realise that we can get rid of our ETS just as fast as we brought it in. That is because we have a government capable of reacting quickly to changing events and actually getting things done in a timely fashion. Mostly.
In the meantime the ETS is just one more minor handicap to our economy compared to the other much larger handicaps we already labour under. Don’t worry about us here in New Zealand. We are tough. We can handle it. At least for a while.
John from New Zealand says:
June 30, 2010 at 11:54 pm
The introduction of the Emotions Trading Scam really pisses most Kiwi’s off. I can’t understand how Nick Smith (Minister of Climate Change Conjobs) can say we have the highest CO2 output per head of population …
_____________________________________________________________
It is because of all your SHEEP New Study Reports 51% Of Global CO2 Emissions Attributed To Livestock “a new study finds that livestock (cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc.) are the single largest single source of CO2 emissions on the planet.”
So you can next expect you suicidal government to take a leaf out of the UK’s book of “Idiotic Political Moves”
“A new report, published today, which features input from 13 universities and 12 research bodies, including the University of East Anglia, urges the new government to break this country’s “fossil fuel addiction”.
Switching from petrol or diesel powered vehicles and cutting the number of short haul flights are key policies together with cutting livestock numbers, which generates 82% of green house gases in the agricultural sector…” click
NOW you understand why the UN/WTO has been pushing countries to ear tag and track livestock. It had nothing to do with “tracking disease” it has to do with eradicating livestock.
WHY??
VITAMIN AND MINERAL SOURCE
Because meat is an essential part of a babies diet during weaning if you want optimal brain growth. “…reinforces the fact that lean red meat is not only an appropriate weaning food but should be considered an essential food during the critical stages of brain development…” click
Study finds vegetarians have smaller brains
“Scientists at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain – with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.
The study involved tests and brain scans on community-dwelling volunteers aged 61 to 87 years without cognitive impairment at enrolment, over a period of five years. When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.
Vegans are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish.
This study confirms other findings, covered in Trick and Treat, which shows that overall human brain sizes have reduced by an average 11% since we adopted an agricultural diet based on cereal grains rather than the meat-based diet of our Palaeolithic ancestors.
Vogiatzoglou A, et al. Vitamin B12 status and rate of brain volume loss in community-dwelling elderly. Neurology 2008; 71(11): 826-32.”
Importance of DHA (Docosahexaenoic Acid)
text
The Deception and Danger of Grain Based Foods
ESSENTIAL FATTY ACIDS
This study is interesting. It states:
” Infants supplemented with DHA and ARA yielded significantly higher MDI scores at 18 months than infants in the control group. No significant differences between groups were observed among the three groups regarding the PDI or the Behaviour Rating Scale. Infants were tested at four years of age for Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Verbal IQ in the control and DHA-supplemented formula groups was significantly lower than in the DHA plus ARA group.“
YET the study by the France Government found Docosahexaenoic acid andarachidonic acid addition to infant formulas had no effect.
“On the basis of the data presented, the Panel concludes that the data presented are insufficient to establish a cause an effect relationship between the intake of infant and follow-on formula supplemented with DHA at levels around 0.3% of the fatty acids and a ratio ARA:DHA between 1.4:1 and 2:1 and the contribution to normal brain development in infants and young children from birth to three years of age.”
I guess the UN and EU wants brain dead serfs, they are easier to handle.
Yesterday New Hampshire’s Public Radio local talk show, the Exchange covered some shenanigans with RGGI, the northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
RGGI takes the proceeds from CO2 auctions and doles it out to the various states to invest in various conservation initiatives. Some almost make sense, at least to big government non-libertarian types, e.g. helping a failing paper mill convert their process heat source from oil to wood.
Like most states, our legislature is looking to balance the budget and is raiding, err, diverting some of the RGGI plunder to the general fund, something they said would never happen. Highway fuel taxes are harder to divert since our constitution mandates they go to highway maintenance. Apparently the Highway Patrol police are highway maintenance….
At any rate, the “hope” (that was the word on the program) was that auction prices would keep going up and that energy providers would make themselves more efficient so that energy rates would not.
However, auctions to date are going in the unhoped for direction:
Jun 2010: $1.88
Mar 2010: $2.07
Dec 2009: $2.05
Sep 2009: $2.19
Jun 2009: $3.23
Mar 2009: $3.51
Dec 2008: $3.38
Sep 2008: $3.07
See, hear at http://www.nhpr.org/node/33092
Slightly OT, but it’s seems a coincidence that on the day NZ launches it’s ETS, Al Gore finds himself in hot water.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/gore-crazed-sex-poodle–investigation-reopened-20100701-zoqm.html
When you have bank heavyweights such as Goldman Sachs in on carbon trading and carbon derivatives, cap-and-trade realization is only a matter of time.
And here’s a link that shows Maurice Strong listed as a director of the CCX:
http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/content.jsf?id=67
Never mind cutting back on short haul flights, if these lunatics get their way we won’t have ANY domestic air travel:
http://www.zcb2030.org/
And, if the island of Eigg is anything to go by, we won’t have any electricity to power our “emission free” cars either:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1291040/Will-eco-island-sink-green-dream.html
“Carl Chapman says:
July 1, 2010 at 12:05 am
Sorry Geoff, I have to disagree about it being good news for Australia. We have an agreement with NZ that when people move from one country to the other, they can go straight on the dole in their new country. Where will the Kiwis go when their industries fold?”
This is untrue. NZers now enter Australia as temporary residents and have done so since Feb 26th 2001 on a special category 444 visa. Helen Clark gave in to pressure from John Howard, and Australians and the perception that NZers just went to Aus to go on the dole, to agree to this. NZers are entitled to “benefits” after two years, but most work. Even while working, 444 visa holders are not entitled to, for example, full TAFE course funding even if they are working taxpayers. Thanks to Helen Clark.
“Chris W says:
July 1, 2010 at 3:23 am
In fairness to Mr Key, he had a fairly sound reason for the ETS, a scientifically flawed as it is. NZ is completely upon trade and tourism and leans heavily upon a clean environmental image; John Key’s position was that to fail to have an ETS would be bad for business and he was even worried there might be trade retaliation. NZ has been the victim of unjustified and unethical trade practices by the USA and Europe, on equally spurious grounds in the past, so this is not a fantasy.
If you smug know-it-alls from the USA, Europe, Britain and Australia would please make more of an effort to persuade your own countrymen of the folly of AGW, instead of wasting your time chuckling at poor, vulnerable New Zealand, we would all be better off.”
The issue for NZ started when the UK entered the EU in the 1970’s and significantly reduced it’s demand for NZ produce. NZ should not have had it’s eggs in one basket. Given the fact that politicians (Like removing import tarrifs etc) have systematically destroyed most industry in NZ, it’s only going to get worse. Aus seems to be a bit of a “me too” country, after all, it did copy NZ’s GST albeit at only 10% currently but not applied to every good and service. In NZ GST rose from 12.5% to 15% recently, and is applied to everything. Food, power etc etc. So NZ has already had a tax increase on goods and energy, and it’s going to get so much worse.
Already there are some ~40,000 NZers entering Australia evey year. In fact when Labour, under Helen Clark, won the election that number increased.
Bad day for NZ and Aus IMO.
I don’t really have much to add, Chris W and Ian H pretty much got it right I think.
I don’t think we in NZ are as propagandised as some of you seem to think, most of us are fully sick of AGW and had no support for the ETS (minus the Greens and a few other brainwashed). Our farmers are pretty much all against it thanks to the ACT party, who know AGW is a fraud and have been educating them. I think Joe Public, who knows next to nothing about the ETS in general, is about to find out just how much it’s going to whack them in the wallet..
Fleecing the flock
The Regional Greedhouse Gas Initiative is to take money and hand it to friends that peddle solar, wind and other projects.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=494460
Looks like the millions are going to general budget deficits. Guess what, the spending binges have a high price. The consumer picks up the tab. It is doogood works. They just don’t do what they say they will with the money. No green jobs out of these false promises.
The other massive lie was that the RGGI was going to lower energy costs to the consumer. They knew it wouldn’t and it hasn’t.
to Kramer above,
to Gail Coombs
to Jack Simmons, and not least to mikelorry.
brilliant, all of you.
Gail I think you have cracked it! apart from head taxes(normal) and possible tracking for requisition when martial law/war hits, I was wondering what use RFID was, as its pretty useless as our Aussie farmers Know:-(
No more use for disease than a bill of sale was.
Ian H says:
July 1, 2010 at 4:45 am
Hey Ian, you might want to thank John Howard for all that… he set the Aussies (and by proxy, us) up pretty well to survive the financial crisis.
Then they voted him out…….
One nice thing about the Rudd government ‘stimulus’ package though, was that quite a few Aussies spent Stimulus money on Holidays in Queenstown:)
Good thing it still snows there….. what with all that global warming that’s been going on…..heh…..
But it’s not just the cost of the ETS that’s a PITA, it’s the red tape PC rubbish that has crept into every little thing.
Here are just some of the questions you are required to answer in order for a small business to tender for anything to do with central government / local government.
Excerpt:
Climate change is recognised as one of the most severe and pressing issues we face as a civilisation. Organisations, as contributors to the level of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e) emissions, have a significant role to play in reducing these emissions and as such, measuring and reporting on these is the first step towards achieving significant reductions. The report must be based on the ISO: 14064 or the Green House Gas Protocol (GHGP) standards and cover both Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions (direct emissions and energy purchased emissions).
A copy of the most recent Carbon Footprint report, for at least a 12 month period, clearly showing both Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, must be supplied to gain these points.
Points for things such as:
-Do you have Hybrid cars in your fleet?
-Do you run Diesel vehicles using Bio Fuel?
-Do you have on site Micro wind turbines?
I waited around for a change of government…..nothing much has changed. For a country with a population of 4m we are still borrowing $250m per week. Nick Smith and his ETS are the last straw. GO AND JOIN THE GREEN PARTY NICK!
paulhan says:
July 1, 2010 at 2:44 am
It will be interesting to see how this fails, because fail it will. The whole idea of these instruments is to reduce their number over time, thereby limiting CO2 emissions, but I wonder how many people have really thought it through.
We are told that we have to lower our emissions by 80% from current levels, i.e. from 30 gigatons to 6GT. Our current emissions from breathing out are about 2GT and that will rise to nearly 3GT when our population inevitably grows to 10BN. That leaves us just 3GT to emit for all other activities, such as feeding, clothing and shelter, and that simply can’t be done. We wouldn’t even be able to build windmills to power ourselves at that rate. Even “government” would be impossible, we’d be back to feudal times. Feudal law might have “worked” when there was only a 100million of us, but with 10 billion?
Paul Hanlon.
Not to worry (LOL) ! Feudalism will work for 500 million people (or less) about as well as it worked for 100 million. Hey, it’s all about ‘sustainability’ and the Earth is supposed to be sustainable if you only have 500 million around. I guess they forgot to mention there’s no room anymore for the other 6 billion or so around today and that every area and occupation needs to be reduced.
It is scary to contemplate the Gore/Pachauri exhcange going belly up. We have recently had too many mental images of the Goracle lying belly up while getting a massage.
In his next porn novel, Pachauri simply must include a scene with a crazed sex poodle. If Big Al is by then impoverished due the failure of his eco-schemes, he can start a new acting career playing himself in the movie version of Pachauri’s book.
Instructions come with your new roll of ETS shares: Don’t squeeze the charmin.
Pete Hayes:
“Does this mean I will have to pay more for my N.Z. lamb and butter?”
Only if the sheep and cows fart 😉
The Carbon Exchange systems of the world do nothing about CO2. They’re just giant money scams. Championed by Enron, as I recall. Impervious to reason or fact about the science, they’re looking simply like the workings of a green mob.
Girma says:
June 30, 2010 at 11:53 pm
The effect of human emission of CO2 on global mean temperature is nil.
That’s the truth!
Look at this graph (on page 50)
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf
And…about NZ…nothing than a long geological process couldn’t explain: Just one of the last remnants of lemuria about to sink down forever into the abyssal waters of the south pacific. Run lemmings run!
Ian H says that Kiwis are not rioting in the streets. Well it’s not a thing we have in our culture (unlike, say the French) but maybe it’s time to think of this as an option. Alternatively, we can sit back and let NZ go down the pan.
The next runner up?….some big country?
@Gail Combs:
Off topic: Sorry, Gail, but your anti-vegetarian propaganda doesn’t pass the smell test (or the factual veracity one). Every vegan or vegetarian that has a brain knows that there are important vitamins to supplement as they are of the few that are insufficient in plant based foods, especially if you are raising kids with the same diet. If you go to the actual study about brain size, you will find there is no reference to vegetarians or vegans in the study description, only to B12 levels. There is no basis for your assumption (or repetition, I would guess) that any of the elderly community whose brain deterioration was studied was vegetarian and the study only has any bearing on effects of B12 deficiency increasing that deterioration. Yes, there are negative consequences to vitamin deficiencies, shocker! Basically the same could be said for the article about red meat, pointing to it being a source of a number of nutrients and pointing to vitamin deficiency as a negative in childhood development. Obviously one needs sufficient sources of nutrients and vitamins!
It’s funny, I followed the trail of evidence from the parroted conclusion (about vegetarian brain size) from your post, to “The Healthy Skeptic”, to “Support for ‘Trick or Treat'” (a site promoting a nutritionist’s book), to the actual study where I finally discovered that the false title and speculation has just been tacked on a real study to support a preconceived notion. I hope the rest of your copy and paste post has more merit and efficiently uses your great brain size, but someone else can waste their time on that if they so choose.
Obama and Jarrett were involved with the initial funding of CCX, see: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/WhiteHouseDeception.htm
More details of the CCX are provided here: Carbon Monetization
Meanwhile NZ continues with the No Warming Trend it has shown over the last 40 years.
John Key used to work for Merrill Lynch. He’s a bankster(amalgam of banker and gangster). He’s just delivering a money making opportunity for his friends.