The NZ Kyoto experience could be repeated here

You are a working family and right now you are doing it tough. Things seemed to be better with a Coalition Government in Canberra. You have three children. Everything seems to be going up in price. Rudd has made lots of promises but it doesn’t seem like he’s delivering very much. He talked a lot about doing something in the area of childcare but the fees for your youngest have just gone up 10 per cent.

Petrol prices are through the roof, yet his four most senior economic advisory departments have warned that the one paltry step he has taken on petrol – FuelWatch – will actually increase prices.
The economy is drifting dangerously out of control, while Kevin Rudd preoccupies himself with becoming another Keatingesque global statesman.

So at what point is your working family willing to hand over five thousand dollars in cash to the Billionaires Club that is the Russian mafia?

It’s a fair bet that your answer is somewhere well past never.
But you would be wrong.

If the Australian electorate re-elects the Rudd Labor Government, then the results for working families could be catastrophic if the example of our trans-Tasman cousins is anything to go by.

New Zealanders have had a complete gut-full of their Labour Government, and if the polling repeats the trends from Australia last year, they look set to elect the conservative National Party.
Which is hardly a surprise; and a reason why Australian voters should be extremely wary of re-electing a Rudd Labor Government.

The Rudd Government has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. New Zealand’s Labour Government did the same thing in 2002. And for our poor kiwi cousins it is already bearing fruit. The main road between Auckland, the main city, and Wellington, the capital, is currently (July 6, 2008) blocked by snow.
Just like Australia, New Zealand’s economy has continued to grow since 1990, and as a result the New Zealanders have not been able to reach the mandatory Kyoto target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels.

And just like Australia will have to do if we fail to cut back to 1990 levels – something that the latest state-based figures from New South Wales indicate is virtually impossible – New Zealand has had to purchase carbon emissions credits from countries that have not only met their targets but have some to spare.

And, by a quirk of history, those countries are the nations of the former Soviet Union.

The 1990 implementation date of Kyoto coincided with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Bloc. The industrial machine contracted and as a result so did carbon emissions. Suddenly, one of the dirtiest and most polluted places on the planet became the most Kyoto friendly – to the detriment of New Zealand, which is one of the cleanest and greenest places on earth.

The New Zealand Treasury Department says that they already have to pay over 700 million dollars. It is estimated that by 2012 – which would be midway through a second Rudd Labor term – New Zealand will have paid the Russians an incredible 4.2 billion dollars.

In an Australian context that amounts to paying the Russians 21 billion dollars, or one thousand dollars for each and every person living in your household.

And that’s before we even start counting the cost a carbon emissions trading scheme will impose on the already high price of petrol, diesel, gas and electricity – and as a result just about everything else.

So much for helping working families.

The above facts are not secret or unknown.

So why has the New Zealand Labour government persisted?

Because they have this anti-Copernican belief that New Zealand is the centre of the universe. The world “takes notice” of New Zealand. My mother once said to me that the world took notice when New Zealand banned nuclear-powered US warships. My reply was that some people “noticed”, but the world did not “take notice”. No other country followed the example of New Zealand, while the cost to the New Zealand economy was huge.

The disastrous Helen Clark-led Labour Government in New Zealand is quite happy to hand over 4.2 billion dollars to the Russians to stop something which may not actually be happening, when, if it did happen, it would make New Zealand a better place for kiwis to live.

New Zealand contributes just 0.2 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. With China building power stations at the current rate, New Zealand could vanish from the planet tomorrow and by the end of this year global greenhouse gas emissions would be higher than they are now.

The same is true of Australia. We produce just 1.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Even if Australia was able to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 50 percent, global emissions would still be 99.25 percent of what they are now. And that’s not even counting the inevitable increases in emissions from the likes of China and India.

Which brings us to the matter of Australian working families’ payments to the Russian mafia.
Russia has the highest per capita number of billionaires of any country in the world, including the United States.

Can anyone say they trust the Russians to direct this Kyoto-mandated money in an open and transparent fashion? These billionaires have become rich off the back of the commercial activities of the post-Soviet era. There is no reason why making money out of carbon trading will be any different. They are currently milking our kiwi cousins to the tune of billions and we could well be next.

Already there are foreign-owned carbon bandwagon companies operating in Australia which are poised to make a killing out of the Rudd Government’s emissions policy. These companies intend to charge enormous brokerage fees to sell carbon credits to Australia.

So if you want your hard-earned wages and salaries diverted from paying the rising cost of petrol, diesel, electricity, gas, groceries and housing costs, and instead increasing the wealth of Russian billionaires, re-elect a Rudd Labor government.

Or don’t.

The flatulence surrounding global warming
By Mark Henderson

Hidden in the debate about global warming is the role of methane.

Along with carbon dioxide, methane is considered to be a major greenhouse gas.

Landfills are the primary source of methane, so anything we can do to either reduce landfills or harvest their methane emissions – which is happening – is a good thing. Local councils are already playing their part with things like recycling bins.

In the natural world, the biggest emitters of methane greenhouse gas emissions are wetlands. The second biggest emitters are termites, which feed on fallen logs. Elephants are right up there as the biggest emitters in the rest of the animal kingdom. The world’s elephants emit 665,000 thousand tonnes of greenhouse methane emissions annually.

If the Greens were consistent, they would advocate draining all the world’s wetlands, felling old growth forests, and culling the elephants. Pigs might fly.

Methane is considered to be a more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide because of the length of time it stays in the atmosphere.

So, tackling one part of the greenhouse gas issue – carbon dioxide – without taking on methane would seem to be precisely half-hearted.

So what did the Labour Government in New Zealand do about methane?

Quite rightly, industries affected by taxes on carbon dioxide emissions asked why nothing was being done about methane emissions.

The biggest sector producing methane in New Zealand is agriculture. To put it bluntly, farm animals pass wind on a regular basis (which hardly makes them unique!).

So Helen Clark’s Labour Government acceded to introducing a levy of more than one thousand dollars a year on the methane emissions of farm animals.

At which point you are quite right in thinking that this is far-fetched. Except it is not.

NZ farmers were to be required to monitor, or at least report, on the methane emissions of their flock of farm animals. How you would measure that became a good question. Unsurprisingly, it was quickly dubbed the ”F__t Tax” and got laughed out of parliament before it got to first base.

But Helen Clark and her Labour Government were right for once. There is no point in doing something about one half of the greenhouse gas equation – carbon dioxide – unless you are also willing to tackle methane.

With the Rudd government keen to control so many aspects of our lives, it would be quite consistent if they issued us all with ”f__tometers”.