It seems I was way out of line to suggest that the Feds were OK with the ETS. They didn’t challenge the PM directly (anyone know why?) but at the very same conference, Feds Pres Don Nicolson (left) described the ETS as “a tax from the cradle to the grave”. In fact, it drove him to Obama-style oratary/poetry, with a Kiwi twist:
Its a tax on young families struggling to make ends meet
Its a tax on retirees who watch every penny they spend
Its a tax on students huddling aroung a single bar heater in a Dunedin flat
Its a tax on everybody from a newborn infant to a funeral home
The ETS is a tax from the cradle to the grave
I wish it was a tax. That would have given business much more certainty than having to guess what the carbon price will be, and would therefore have stimulated the making of business decisions. Instead, the effort that should have gone into figuring out how to respond has been diverted into rent-seeking lobbying for special treatment.
But even though its not a tax, the point of the ETS is still to change behaviour. The reality is that NZ signed up to the deal, and that as a consequence we have liabilities (an unpleasant surprise). Now we need to pass those liabilities down to those of us who generate them. Otherwise we will just make things very much worse.
This is a new reality, faced by all Kiwis irrespective of their proximity to cradles/graves. Denial won’t work.
Farmers (me included) need to take a good look at the systems being sold to us. Why have Waikato dairy farms been losing soil carbon at the rate of 700kg/ha (Doesburg, NZH, 9/7/10)? Is it just possible that farming methods that put more emphasis on organic/biological issues could actually be more efficient overall? How confident are we that the agricultural business models that have already devastated Nauru are not going to get us in the end?