Sent in by a couple of Concerned Kiwis
On July 1st New Zealanders became the first country in the world to pay for their carbon emissions, an all gases, all sectors ETS through a Government sponsored scheme.
The householders of this small country will pay dearly and suffer a reduced standard of living because they are being forced to pay this punitive tax. Householder bear half the costs while accounting for only 20% of the country’s emissions.
The country as a whole will suffer through reduced international competitiveness of its industries and farming when our acknowledged figure is 0.2% of global emissions in total.
Why on earth are we leading the world?
Nick Smith, Minister for Climate Change admits that our contributions will have no effect on future climate and that the scheme will not make any inroads into cutting New Zealand’s gross emissions.
We are led to believe that by paying this extra tax we NZ’ers are being good
global citizens and that without an ETS we could face penalties on our exports by our trading partners. What a deception, there is no sign of any country imposing any sort of penalty or tariff on internationally traded goods based on an ineffective or non-existent ETS.
As of today, July 1st petrol, and energy prices increase and that is just the start as these just compound throughout the entire supply chain.
Our National Government seems to want international bragging rights for leading the world, and national gratitude that they reduced the even more draconian proposal from the previous Labour Government. This article by Andrew Bolt reminds us of the backflip by the NZ Prime Minister John Key.
The major powers thumb their noses at a price on emissions and it is not really New Zealand’s place to lead the world in this issue when the science of AGW is in dispute and a long way from being “settled”.
It is an outrage that NZ households should be forced to pay, and pay dearly, where so obviously it will harm our standard of living and will not help us in our endeavour to be good global citizens.