...my poor old fashoned baby...sang the Rolling Stones (and the Ramones) in the 70's. If Mick, Keith or anyone else chose to re-launch the song these days, they could dedicate it to a carbon or emissions trading scheme. Any Western political enthusiast for such a dingbat scheme has to sell the fact that it will cost billions or trillions and it will have a negligible impact on the global environment. They also have to explain - very patiently to a cynical and fed-up and over-taxed electorate - that their country must be seen to be pulling its weight internationally. Not leading the international pack of course, but not shirking from an international obligation to inflict severe economic pain on themselves.Such a political balancing act is getting more and more laughable, and more and more difficult.
The Spectator (Australia) looks at ETS's and carbon trading internationally and observes...Nonetheless, Ms Gillard and her senior ministers keep running the intellectually bankrupt argument that Australia...is catching up with other nations that are decarbonising their economies. So...start with North America (which has) given up on implementing either a carbon tax or an ETS...the overall impact on reducing US net emissions is negigible...It's the same story in Canada...where Stephen Harper's government increased its parliamentary majority...after promising not to legislate a carbon price. Check out China, where carbon emissions are steadily increasing...if Beijing really is an environmental leader why...in Kevin Rudd's colourful language, have its diplomats "ratf***ed global efforts to reach a genuinely global deal"? The answer is that China's leaders recognise that decarbonising the economy is a costly venture. Then there is the 27 member European Union: simply put, carbon pricing there has been a disaster...more here...
All this of course leading to the question, where does our ex-international currency trader, Prime Minister John Key see NZ heading ? With a population of just over 4 million, and carbon emissions that make up less than 0.01% of the world's total we are an environmental irrelevancy. Is John Key really so slavishly adherant to ex-PM Helen Clark's ideology and her employer that he would hobble our very fragile economy ? Has he in fact become a lemming trader ?
