New Zealand sacrifices to save the world 0.04 per cent

Completely pointless madness: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had it right the first time, in 2005: I rise on behalf of the National Party to give the good news to the people of New Zealand—that is, the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill is a load of rubbish and the National Party will not be supporting it, for very, very good reasons indeed… Yet here we are down in New Zealand, a very little country with about 0.2 percent of the world’s emissions, putting a self-imposed straitjacket on our businesses, and waving a huge flag that says: “Foreign investment, don’t come anywhere near us. Australia is over there—the West Island. Go over there to pour your dollars in.” To the Chinese we are saying: “Come in and buy as much coal as you like from our West Coast. We’ll sell it to you and you can burn it without a carbon charge—but, by the way, to those back here in Aotearoa New Zealand we will be slapping on a carbon charge and you won’t be able to operate."… This is a complete and utter hoax, if I may say so. The impact of the Kyoto Protocol, even if one believes in global warming—and I am somewhat suspicious of it—is that we will see billions and billions of dollars poured into fixing something that we are not even sure is a problem. Even if it is a problem, it will be delayed for about 6 years. Then it will hit the world in 2096 instead of 2102, or something like that. It will not work. Five years later: The world’s second national carbon trading scheme ramps up from Thursday with the inclusion of sectors covering half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, but anger over the scheme could hurt the government. Rising electricity prices and higher fuel costs have worried some voters, farmers and businesses, which fear the higher costs could hurt their competitiveness. New Zealand’s impact on world greenhouse gas emissions: New Zealand’s impact on global emissions, a mere 0.2 percent... New Zealand’s sacrifice means it could cut global emissions by up to 0.04 per cent by 2020.

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