This is a copy of a letter I sent to the Dominion Post a few days ago (22nd December). It hasn't been published yet.



This week came the announcement by the present Labour administration that the proposed "Carbon Tax" due to be introduced next year is being abandoned. The reason's for this are very simple. First and foremost is Labour's own ambivalent attitude to global warming and the Kyoto protocol. Labour certainly seemed enthusiastic about signing up for this protocol, but their reasons for doing so were disingenuous and self-serving. Basically they had superficially looked at New Zealand's carbon dioxide emissions, and forest planting, and extrapolating from some 1990's figures, the ministry of energy had calculated that New Zealand might be able to gain several hundred million dollars worth of credits. This gain would at come at no cost to New Zealand, and in particular, with no effort required by the minister of energy or the Labour administration. But unfortunately the ministry, and the minister, Peter Hodgson (a man I have been critical of elsewhere on this site), have let their eye off the ball. In the meantime, large-scale immigration, a boom in the local economy, fast increasing oil imports, increasing use of fossil fuels for power generation and a major slowdown in forestry planting (in fact we are ripping down forests to convert to dairy farming) have all combined to make a major dent in Kyoto finances, to a deficit of perhaps NZ$500 million, or a turnaround of NZ$1 billion. This is what Peter Hodgson saidjust six months ago about the Kyoto protocol and the proposed carbon tax "Climate change is a direct threat to the New Zealand environment, way of life and economy. This government takes that threat seriously......If the world fails to act to limit the extent and impact of climate change, the potential impact on New Zealand will be serious or very serious......That is why it is essential that New Zealand plays its part in global efforts to limit emissions of greenhouse gases" To cavalierly discard so many years work in planning to reducing our carbon dioxide emissions via a carbon tax, and to have made this announcement just before the Christmas recess and only a week following the Montreal climate change meeting, takes hypocrisy to new heights. So much for the chumminess of Helen Clark and Jeanette Fitzsimons of the Greens we saw prior to the election. Helen treated her relationship with Jeanette like a well used piece of chewing gum, it takes little effort to spit it out. There was a hope with this election that the Greens would have some distinct input, but as with the Maori constituency, Helen Clark's principles extend only as far as to the end of her political nose.

What has to be understood that this turnaround is not the fault of Kyoto. This agreement has been in the pipeline for at least ten years. It has been well within successive government's abilities to take our Kyoto commitments (and our commitments to a healthy planet) seriously, and legislate policies that would make it easy for us to meet the Kyoto targets. (I explain on my homepage how if New Zealand can't do this, where else can it be done?) It would have included many of the things that I have mentioned elsewhere, restricting immigration, tree planting vulnerable landscapes, energy efficiency measures, renewable energy legislation, not subsidising fossil fuel use or exploration etc. So now that Labour has found itself in an energy and political pickle, it hasn't been hard for them to renege on their commitments and not proceed with carbon taxation. And for an unprincipled government, in particular an unprincipled Prime Minister, Helen Clark, there has been no difficulty at all in quickly casting off their previous friendliness with the Greens at the time of the election and leaving the Greens out in the cold. Whilst I have admired Helen Clark's stand on the Iraq war, her credit in this regard only lasts a certain time. I have several times remarked that Helen has many political similarities to John Howard of Australia, and I suspect she has been getting some private political lessons from this leader. The same sensitivity to opinion polls, the same political antenna detecting changes in the wind and taking the same wind out of the sails of the opposition are manifest in both leaders. With John it was forestry in Tasmania, with Helen it was the interest-free student loans.

Further reasons for abandoning the carbon tax regime are Peter Dunne and Winston Peters. Both men have a deep and disturbing antipathy to the Greens, indeed Peter Dunne has made it quite plain that he won't work with them. The open, fair-minded, family orientated and common-sense values that he sought to portray before the election were seen to be the veneer they were when, having lost quite a few seats for his party, he was seen as petulant and arrogant on election night. He continues to be petulant and arrogant in regard to the Green Party and unfortunately, Helen Clark can, with the support of Winston Peters, not have to take note of the Green Party in this matter. In addition of course, the National Party have been anti-Kyoto from the beginning, and in fact, though he doesn't admit it, Don Brash, National's leader, is really global-warming denier, making great play on how the science of global warming is doubtful, although he tries to have it both ways by making a watery admission that anthropogenic climate change might be real.

Lastly, New Zealand business leaders, especially the so-called "Business Round Table" have been very busy behind the scenes lobbying the Government against the carbon tax and the Kyoto protocol. Alasdair Thompson is the Northern head of the New Zealand Employers and Manufacturers Association. He regularly appears on radio and TV new programmes as the mouthpiece of business in New Zealand. Recently he has been interviewed in reponse to the government's reneging on the carbon tax. Needless to say he welcomed this move. However he was being dishonest with the audience. He didn't tell them, and the reporters don't mention this either, that Alasdair Thompson is an out-and-out global warming denier. I mention this elsewhere on my web site, but to remind you in an article in the Listener, he states, "There is no point trying to tackle global warming .......Along with evidence of Kyoto's impotence, we could also suffer a greater loss: respect and care for the environment would likely diminish as misrepresentation surrounding climate change increases our levels of cynicism.. It is entirely dishonest of him to represent himself as someone who can dispassionately debate the pros and cons of a carbon tax, as against any other global warming amelioration measure, as Alasdair would automatically be against them all. Big business has a lot of clout and a lot of money to pursue their self-interest. I have elsewhere explained my antipathy to the Business Round Table - I have stated that like their namesake, the Knights of the Round Table, they should be confined to the realms of dusty history books, where they belong. Business in New Zealand (not all, by any means, but a good amount, especially the big players) has been one of the main problems in advancing economic progress in this country. Every attempt to improve our society or worker's rights have been vociferously resisted. Perhaps the best example was the maternity leave provisions. Despite the fact that almost every advanced nation, most of which are wealthier than us, have generous maternity provisions and have done so for about fifty years, the opposition to this measure was strenuous and unremitting. We have had similar campaigns against holiday pay, minimum wages, four week's holiday, environmental protection and the Resource Management act. In addition companies like Telecom and Contact have abused their near monopoly for many years, and have strenuously resisted any move to open telecommunications to meaningful competition. Business opposition to the Kyoto protocol has similarly been unremitting and forceful. This opposition is a purely self-centred and a cynical exercise in thoughtless exploitation of the world's resources and our planet's atmosphere by very wealthy people who don't care much for the rest of us. The end result is a shameful and unprincipled abandonment of something of vital importance - our humanity's stewardship of the world. As I explain on my homepage, New Zealand has the opportunity, and indeed the duty, to take a leadership role. This country's continued failure to take this role is a pathetic indictment of our political and business leaders, and unfortunately too, the New Zealand public.

I am presently reading a book about global warming, with this very title, by John Houghton (Global Warming - The complete third briefing, Sir John Houghton, Cambridge University Press 2004). This book, though not cheap, at NZ$90, is a good introduction to global warming, the science and the consequences. The chapter I am reading now is called "Why should we be concerned?" If you can afford the money, please purchase this book, or at least borrow it from your local library. Without John's permission, I enumerate some of his points from this chapter.


For me, this is the simplicity of dealing with global warming. Don Brash and all the other global warming deniers or doubters continue to go on about the economic cost of ameliorating global warming. But I would say to Don, what set of scales do you possess that can measure the health of our planet against a temporary monetary or economic inconvenience? I am as certain as I can be about anything that there is no set of scales in existence, or that could be devised, that can make this measurement. The attempt to make this measurement is doomed to failure, and is the recourse of the intellectually bereft and and the morally bankrupt. Don, you could sit at your desk in front of your computer looking for the answer to global warming in the profit and loss figures, the black numbers and the red numbers, your Excel spreadsheets, with their additions and formulae, the rates of exchange, the marginal utilities, the percentages and the discounts and all the other myriad of dry, inconsequential and boring detail that economists so live their lives in, you could sit in that seat for a thousand years, until your body metamorphosed into some fossil-like relic, and you still would not find the answer to the question.

To find the answer, this is what you should do.When you go home one evening, and you can put aside the burdens of office, you should sit in your favourite armchair, and on the mantelpiece you should place some pictures of your children and all those other people important in your life, perhaps even Helen Clark, and pour yourself a nice glass of wine. Nothing cheap, something like a Te Mata Coleraine red, something to savour, to appreciate. Light yourself a Romeo y Julietta, if you like cigars, and turn on the stereo. I don't know your taste in music, but Bach's Goldberg Variations might be best. Relax your muscles, feel the weight of your feet on the floor, the body on your chair, be aware of the sounds around you and the smell of the room and the patterns on the carpet and the breath on your face. Don't think of anything at all, let the present moment be the entire compass of your universe. Then, and only then, Don, will you find the answer to your question. It will come to you with no sounding of the trumpets or ringing of bells, there will be no need for maths or statistics, economics or politics, no need for rancour or argument. All these will be irrelevant. The answer will come as gentle as babe's quiet breathing, but with the overwhelming force of a violent tempest. It will come with the realisation that you, Don Brash, are a child of the universe, and everything else in your entire experience is but a momentary shadow compared to this fact. Furthermore as a child of the universe you depend utterly on the universe you were bequeathed, and all future children of the universe will depend utterly on the universe bequeathed to them.

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Recently we saw 10,000 delegates attend the Montral round of climate change negotiations. I had thought to make my own comment here - despite the rhetoric, nothing of substance was in fact achieved. The intransigence ot the American delegation and its attempt to wreck the meeting was the lowest point, and some commentators have seen something positive in the rest of the world's refusal to allow America to run the show. The host, Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, excoriated America for its refusal to entertain meaningful action in regard to global warming. But the Americans riposted, with some justification, that Canada should look at the mote in its eye. Canada is up there among the worst offenders in global warming, along with Australia and New Zealand. In Alberta, the so-called oilsands are being extracted with appalling local pollution concerns. Whole rivers are being diverted to the process of extracting the oil from the sands, and natural gas, which is a relatively clean resource, is being used inappropriately in vast amounts to fuel the process. The Canadian environmental minister, Stephan Dion, is recently quoted as saying that the oil sands are so valuable that no environment minister in the world would be able to stop development. So much for environmental protection. (It would be worth revisting this matter again as an article in itself but in the meantime download this excellent overview and environmental assessment from the Pembina organisation.).

Also I can't help thinking 10,000 delegates is a lot. Assuming they flew to the destination from all over the world, we can roughly assume that 10,000 delegates flew let's say an average of 6,000 kms, a not outrageous guess. The average jet aircraft uses about 0.17 kg carbon, which makes up about 85% of aviation fuel, per passenger kilometre. This is equivalent of about 0.5 kg carbon dioxide. Doing the maths 10,000 x 6000 x 0.5 = 30,000,000 kg CO2, or 30,000 tonnes. I am surprised that a conference on global warming had so many delegates, and that much better use was not made of video conferencing to the save our petroleum resources and reduce the stress on our atmosphere.

But rather than commenting on the proceedings myself, I have chosen to refer to the excellent site, The Heat is Oline, and this article by Ross Gelbspan, the founder of the site. I had thought to copy the article directly to this site, but you only have to click here and it will take a few seconds to load. Once at The Heat is Online, please take time to browse the contents. For a more dispassionate overview, visit this page on the Pew Climate Change site. In addtion there isthis letter from the Sierra Club in the US, to the environmental web site Grist painting a more positive picture of Montreal. Some of this I do accept, particularly the point that the US is not George Bush, and that there is a increasing undercurrent of concern and willingness to look to a more sustainable future there in their young people, certain state legislatures and religious groups. But I still fail to find a concrete proposal in regard to greenhouse emissiones. It is all very well talking about Kyoto ll when Kyoto l is still almost universally being honoured in the breach. (There is hardly a single country anywhere that is even close to reaching its presently binding agreements to Kyoto l) I cannot help but recall that the final communique was a diluted down version, in which Washington agreed to join the open-ended dialogue only after Canada and the European Union watered down the text and spelled out that it would not lead to formal negotiations or commitments or the type of emissions caps enshrined in Kyoto."The text that was adopted recognizes the diversity of approaches," said US climate negotiator Harlan Watson. ie, no firm commitments in regard to carbon dioxide emissions from anyone. More talk, no walk. I agree with Ross Gelbspan. It might also be pertinent to mention why didn't the New Zealand delegation announce at the Montreal meeting the imminent demise of the carbon tax? Wouldn't that have been much more honest? After all, the information contained in the treasury report suggesting that the carbon tax wouldn't do much to reduce emissions, is important, and it would have been useful to convey that fact to all the other delegates, just in case they were thinking of doing the same thing. Also isn't it strange how this Treasury report about the carbon tax was accepted by Labour without demur, in fact, positively welcomed, yet the recent Treasury report on reducing taxation was dismissed as an "ideological burp" by our finance minister, Mr Cullen. It's nice to be able to pick and choose.

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(Added 22/4/06. I originally posted this information on my homepage). If you direct your browser here you can read an article which first appeared in last summer's edition of the Pacific Ecologist. Peter Barrett is professor of Geology, Victoria University, New Zealand. His article is an extremely good, and a very worrying review, of what 3 degrees of global warming could mean to our planet. He says that we will be well on our way to the sort of climate last seen on the Earth about forty million years ago, when the Antarctic was ice free and covered with forest, and sea levels were 70 metres higher than they now are. He is not predicting this will happen within one hundred years, merely that we have put in train a climate event that will continue to have its effects for hundreds of years, with much increased sea levels, and major damage to the planet's vital ecosystems. This warning was published six months prior to James Lovelock's Revenge of Gaia, about which I will say more later.