How about polluter pays?
Interesting piece by Brian Fallow regarding the submissions from the forestry sector and the farming sector on greenhouse emissions. The issue revolves around the projected increase in agricultural emissions of 38 million tonnes CO2 equivalent from 1990 levels during the 2008-2012 period of the Kyoto Protocol.
From a political perspective, what is interesting is that it seems that Labour may want the foresters to effectively pay for the emissions from agriculture by using the Kyoto credits generated by the forestry sector carbon sinks (roughly the same order as the increase in agricultural emissions) to cover the dramatic increase in emissions from dairy since 1990.
National on the other hand wants the taxpayer to pay for the Kyoto emission credits to cover the increase in emissions in the dairy sector since 1990. This would cost $570m at a conservative $15 per tonne CO2 equivalent. Funnily enough National doesn’t headline its policy as “A $570 million transfer from taxpayers to the dairy industry” but that is actually what it is.
As the OECD report said: how about polluter pays, like the Green policy.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Wow, a surprisingly good article.
And this was an excellent catch :
A May 2000 Cabinet paper from then-Foreign Minister Phil Goff talks of “allowing the owners of sink credits to trade them freely on the international market”.
“New Zealand made it clear during the Kyoto negotiations that we do not intend to use the sink credits to in effect cross-subsidise our emitting sectors, allowing them to avoid taking action.”
Yet with the exemption of agriculture in 2002 and the scrapping of the planned carbon tax in 2005, that is exactly what has happened.
I’m interested in this de-nitrification business, anyone know anything about it?
April 17th, 2007 at 3:43 am
I just wish they’d pick up that National’s policy is even worse and shifts the cost onto tax, ie. mostly onto income tax and GST, meaning that even people buying the bare essentials will effectively be subsidising farming that’s not always as environmentally conscious as it could be.
April 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Good enough to go against the public wishes to ban smacking, how about a tax on petrol and diesel?