Nelson/Marlborough Farming Column
December 2005
The appetite of Dr Cullen and this Government for more taxes is legendary, 43 new and increased levies and taxes have been introduced. The latest is the carbon tax. It will add 6c per litre to the price of petrol, 7c per litre to diesel, 6% to all power bills and put the price of coal and gas up by 9%.
This week National launches the axecarbontax.co.nz campaign. The new finely balanced Parliament gives us the opportunity to send the carbon tax the way of the fart tax.
The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.
Labour Ministers may take pride in being toasted at International Climate conferences for being so bold and brave, but there is no justification for New Zealand going out in the cold by itself on this issue.
Submitted by climaterealists on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 17:01
John Boscawen MP, ACT New Zealand
Press Release Thursday, April 8 2010
Submitted by climaterealists on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 16:59
John Boscawen MP, ACT New Zealand
Speech on Third Reading, Dairy Industry Restructuring (Raw Milk Pricing Methods) Bill, Wednesday, March 31 2010
Submitted by climaterealists on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 16:55
Press Release by Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern) at
11:15 am, 08 Apr 2010
The introduction of the Emissions Trading Scheme must be delayed, the
Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern) says.
"The New Zealand economy is in no state to lead the world with an
emissions trading scheme covering the entire New Zealand economy," said
EMA's chief executive Alasdair Thompson.
"In these circumstances EMA recommends the government legislate to align
the entry of our industry sectors into the ETS with those of our trading
partners, once they have their schemes in place.
"Our financial situation is far too fragile to absorb the extra $255
million the government calculates the ETS will cost all of us.
"The cost is effectively another tax that will impact on every family.
"It will come on top of changes to GST, and also higher ACC levies which
are cutting into the take home pay of all employees right now.
"The ETS will also hit hard the competitiveness of many of our leading
industries, including all our major food producing exporters.
"They will face cost increases that their competitors overseas and in
the New Zealand market do not face.
"It will cost jobs.
"New Zealand is the only country in the world to be introducing an ETS
that covers all sectors and all so called greenhouse gases.
"It was disingenuous of Minister Nick Smith to say on Radio New Zealand
this morning that the EU has an ETS in place - theirs covers only four
percent of EU output; ours covers 100 per cent of output.
"His main reason for proceeding now was that not to would lead to
perverse outcomes in the forestry sector. However forestry could be
incentivised to keep planting under a low level carbon tax which could
be used to give them a credit though not part of an ETS.
Submitted by climaterealists on Sun, 18/04/2010 - 22:12
BACKGROUND
United Nations countries belong to an organization called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which publishes a report every six years. Often referred to as the "climate bible" these reports are relied on by governments around the world.
The latest was released in 2007. Sometimes called the AR4 (the Fourth Assessment Report), it contains 44 chapters and is nearly 3,000 pages long. Written by people organized into teams - Working Group 1, 2 and 3 - it consists of three smaller reports bundled into one.
The chairman of the IPCC has repeatedly said the report relies solely on peer-reviewed literature to support its findings. He has said research that hasn't appeared in peer-reviewed journals should be thrown "into the dustbin" (see the last line of this newspaper article). But our audit has discovered almost 5,600 non-peer-reviewed references in this report.
In elementary schools in the United States, students are assigned grades ranging from an A to an F, based on the mark they've achieved out of 100 (see Wikipedia's table here). Most parents would be alarmed if their child brought home a report card similar to the one received by the IPCC.
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