Strategy to cut NZ emissions to net zero in tatters after confidence in Emissions Trading Scheme collapses; Yesterday's auction for new ETS credits failed for 1st time ever; Govt policy changes blamed
Kia ora Bernard, was working on an essay on the ETS for uni and this is just more proof that our climate change plan is deeply flaws in its current state.
Also is this one open to the public? Just think it's so important in our current political climate. Thanks for another great peice, as usual.
Anyone consider that the ETS was always a fundamentally flawed scheme? It was only ever going to be a paper/money shuffling regime that achieved nothing to reduce emissions. Capitalist thinking behind this policy has been exposed for the scam it is. Time to get real and do the hard yards to achieve a substantive (real) reduction in emissions. Yes, it will be painful. Yes, it will require substantive change and yes, there will be winners and losers. But global warming will not be curbed by more of this mystical thinking. The days of chasing continuous growth on a finite planet are firmly behind us.
The ETS, like EVs, is just another middle class, feel good, greenwash fantasy. We will not escape the need for actual change. Question is how many time we will get mother nature prove to us she is stronger than anything we come up with until we actually change our belief that money is more important.
On the SVB bailout, I like this from Adam Tooze a couple of Days ago
“
SVB’s depositors were in no regular sense, depositors. They are badly run and ill-advised businesses that for obscure reasons parked huge cash balances in a highly vulnerable bank. As Matt Klein remarks in his brilliant post at Overshoot the real problem at SVB was that its depositor was base was so “low quality” i.e. extremely prone to run with influence exerted by a small group of VC advisors. This was not so much classic large-scale bank in which mass psychology played its part on a grand scale, as a bitchy high-school playground in which the cool thing to do was to bank with SVB until it no longer was. As Klein puts it: “this was more a case of a “bank-run by idiots” rather than a “bank run by idiots”.
The Emissions Trading Scheme Is likewise a con job that enables the rich to skim off profits from public investment in miserable attempts/ whitewashing by the state to counter climate crisis. Yesterday’s “thanks but no thanks” by investors/ vultures shows the paucity of the scheme and the state getting its comeuppance from its real bosses.
Inevitable and for so many good reasons. What’s being charged? Where does it go and meanwhile large swathes of the country are in struggle street, if they’re lucky and have a street left as oblique schemes and funds keep taking and taking. Just not sustainable. These people just live in their own heads and bubbles doing crappy things to the ones doing the real work, who are then expected to pay the costs of THEIR poor decisions. I think the other thing that is inevitable is that our RBNZ and Treasury will have to secure and hold the countries public and private debt and seek stable low returns only mit keep facilitating trashing all social licence they and all the complicit agencies have in where we all are now, which by every metric and common sense was getting worse and not being assisted or providing ANY benefit to the public or even maintaining any reasonable standard over a VERY long time. Lose lose for the planet AND the people. Nice try again lads. They clearly expected our masochism and their sadism to go unchallenged and remain unaccountable. Probably still do. Money isn’t actually really, it’s more of a transfer of a few rich folks and their enablers MOOD 😂😂. All very Harry Potterish. Why we don’t collectively make it work for good and us I cannot fathom. Other than being brainwashed into “belief”. I guess that’s what happens when money becomes a God. As if humanity hasn’t been warned about that.
I did have hope for the ETS but I think ever since the fuel excise tax cut I realised that no politician would ever be able to stomach the price of carbon increasing.
Since it depends on market mechanisms the ETS really needs to be administered independently by the Climate Commission, like the RBNZ, setting the cap wherever it needs to be in order reach the goal laid out in legislation. But I fear that it could now be too late for that now. Why would a carbon trader ever trust soundness of their credits?
The ETS is a good way to price emissions and incentivise sequestration. The problem is politicians ignoring climate change commission advice instead pandering to a populace not ready to make a sacrifice to moderate future climatic impacts.
Thanks for today’s column Bernard. A suggestion: could we have a bullshit-buster resource for the current election cycle? Wayne Brown’s recycling of the gnarly old myth that government budgets are like household ones still has sufficient Street credit with voters to make it worthwhile for politicians to keep trotting out what they know are lies. We need an elevator-pitch ( one paragraph/100 words/30 seconds/ graphic) rebuttal that anyone over 10 years old can understand. Time to get down and dirty.
Deep sigh. The ETS was never set up for success, too much mucking around with the settings, excluding agriculture and giving free units to Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed industries like Tiwai Point Smelter. It is devilishly complex, a colleague who worked on it for three years said he still didn't understand all the intricacies. Given it has never actually reduced emissions, is politically unpalatable to let the price rise enough to do the job, and we are now questioning the merit of planting pine trees everywhere to generate cheap units, it seems about time to ditch the scheme entirely. It was just a money go-round to avoid having to reduce emissions. Let's just cut the BS and make plans to cut all sector emissions pronto.
Maybe the ETS collapsed because incentivising and monetising human behaviour is a flawed concept. What happened to doing something because it is the morally right thing to do, and because the future of humanity depends on it ?
Thank you for providing clarity to the subject of the ETS which had seemed to me with my vague understanding, simply a game of avoidance for money players. So glad it has hit a wall.
Also I was captivated by Paul Keating on AUKUS so thanks heaps for including that too.
This article refers to the lack of understanding of ministers. What I also wonder about is the competence and motivation of the officials drafting the Cabinet papers that form the basis of the discussion in Cabinet. If ministers don’t understand issues, shouldn’t the officials who discuss the issues amongst themselves, discuss with and advise the relevant ministers and then draft the Cabinet papers have to take a major portion of the blame? I wonder if, as in Yes Minister, they at times advise and draft in a less than clear manner on purpose?
Kia ora Bernard, was working on an essay on the ETS for uni and this is just more proof that our climate change plan is deeply flaws in its current state.
Also is this one open to the public? Just think it's so important in our current political climate. Thanks for another great peice, as usual.
Labour not only kicks the Can down the road but then runs over it with a Roadroller!
Patrick Medlicott
On the Auckland cost cutting https://www.newsroom.co.nz/back-on-the-razor-gang
Tripping over their shoelaces and walking into the doorframe while their pants fall down...
Anyone consider that the ETS was always a fundamentally flawed scheme? It was only ever going to be a paper/money shuffling regime that achieved nothing to reduce emissions. Capitalist thinking behind this policy has been exposed for the scam it is. Time to get real and do the hard yards to achieve a substantive (real) reduction in emissions. Yes, it will be painful. Yes, it will require substantive change and yes, there will be winners and losers. But global warming will not be curbed by more of this mystical thinking. The days of chasing continuous growth on a finite planet are firmly behind us.
The ETS, like EVs, is just another middle class, feel good, greenwash fantasy. We will not escape the need for actual change. Question is how many time we will get mother nature prove to us she is stronger than anything we come up with until we actually change our belief that money is more important.
Thanks for opening this up Bernard.
On the SVB bailout, I like this from Adam Tooze a couple of Days ago
“
SVB’s depositors were in no regular sense, depositors. They are badly run and ill-advised businesses that for obscure reasons parked huge cash balances in a highly vulnerable bank. As Matt Klein remarks in his brilliant post at Overshoot the real problem at SVB was that its depositor was base was so “low quality” i.e. extremely prone to run with influence exerted by a small group of VC advisors. This was not so much classic large-scale bank in which mass psychology played its part on a grand scale, as a bitchy high-school playground in which the cool thing to do was to bank with SVB until it no longer was. As Klein puts it: “this was more a case of a “bank-run by idiots” rather than a “bank run by idiots”.
https://open.substack.com/pub/adamtooze/p/chartbook-201-venture-dominance-the?r=d56cc&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The Emissions Trading Scheme Is likewise a con job that enables the rich to skim off profits from public investment in miserable attempts/ whitewashing by the state to counter climate crisis. Yesterday’s “thanks but no thanks” by investors/ vultures shows the paucity of the scheme and the state getting its comeuppance from its real bosses.
Inevitable and for so many good reasons. What’s being charged? Where does it go and meanwhile large swathes of the country are in struggle street, if they’re lucky and have a street left as oblique schemes and funds keep taking and taking. Just not sustainable. These people just live in their own heads and bubbles doing crappy things to the ones doing the real work, who are then expected to pay the costs of THEIR poor decisions. I think the other thing that is inevitable is that our RBNZ and Treasury will have to secure and hold the countries public and private debt and seek stable low returns only mit keep facilitating trashing all social licence they and all the complicit agencies have in where we all are now, which by every metric and common sense was getting worse and not being assisted or providing ANY benefit to the public or even maintaining any reasonable standard over a VERY long time. Lose lose for the planet AND the people. Nice try again lads. They clearly expected our masochism and their sadism to go unchallenged and remain unaccountable. Probably still do. Money isn’t actually really, it’s more of a transfer of a few rich folks and their enablers MOOD 😂😂. All very Harry Potterish. Why we don’t collectively make it work for good and us I cannot fathom. Other than being brainwashed into “belief”. I guess that’s what happens when money becomes a God. As if humanity hasn’t been warned about that.
I did have hope for the ETS but I think ever since the fuel excise tax cut I realised that no politician would ever be able to stomach the price of carbon increasing.
Since it depends on market mechanisms the ETS really needs to be administered independently by the Climate Commission, like the RBNZ, setting the cap wherever it needs to be in order reach the goal laid out in legislation. But I fear that it could now be too late for that now. Why would a carbon trader ever trust soundness of their credits?
The ETS is a good way to price emissions and incentivise sequestration. The problem is politicians ignoring climate change commission advice instead pandering to a populace not ready to make a sacrifice to moderate future climatic impacts.
Thanks for today’s column Bernard. A suggestion: could we have a bullshit-buster resource for the current election cycle? Wayne Brown’s recycling of the gnarly old myth that government budgets are like household ones still has sufficient Street credit with voters to make it worthwhile for politicians to keep trotting out what they know are lies. We need an elevator-pitch ( one paragraph/100 words/30 seconds/ graphic) rebuttal that anyone over 10 years old can understand. Time to get down and dirty.
Deep sigh. The ETS was never set up for success, too much mucking around with the settings, excluding agriculture and giving free units to Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed industries like Tiwai Point Smelter. It is devilishly complex, a colleague who worked on it for three years said he still didn't understand all the intricacies. Given it has never actually reduced emissions, is politically unpalatable to let the price rise enough to do the job, and we are now questioning the merit of planting pine trees everywhere to generate cheap units, it seems about time to ditch the scheme entirely. It was just a money go-round to avoid having to reduce emissions. Let's just cut the BS and make plans to cut all sector emissions pronto.
Maybe the ETS collapsed because incentivising and monetising human behaviour is a flawed concept. What happened to doing something because it is the morally right thing to do, and because the future of humanity depends on it ?
Thank you for providing clarity to the subject of the ETS which had seemed to me with my vague understanding, simply a game of avoidance for money players. So glad it has hit a wall.
Also I was captivated by Paul Keating on AUKUS so thanks heaps for including that too.
This article refers to the lack of understanding of ministers. What I also wonder about is the competence and motivation of the officials drafting the Cabinet papers that form the basis of the discussion in Cabinet. If ministers don’t understand issues, shouldn’t the officials who discuss the issues amongst themselves, discuss with and advise the relevant ministers and then draft the Cabinet papers have to take a major portion of the blame? I wonder if, as in Yes Minister, they at times advise and draft in a less than clear manner on purpose?