Voxy reports:
The Government’s announcement today that it is to weaken New Zealand’s climate reduction target by half is a disgrace, the Green Party said.
The National Government had previously issued a greenhouse gas reduction target of 10-20% of 1990 levels by 2020. Today they have announced a weakening of this target to 5%.
Thanks Fred for being among the very few on this planet that realise that life as we know it starts with CO2, being the building block along with water and power from the sun to drive photosynthesis. Enhanced levels of CO2, along with continued supply of both water and sunlight, simply mean that the velocity of all plant life will increase – bringing with it a more robust environment for all living things – why is something so basic and simple to understand completely missed by all the ‘so called’ experts in our world ?
The energy savings stuff goes overboard though. For instance 20 years ago Consumer Reports couldn’t find much difference between washing machines. Consumer Reports was also the lead lobbyist group to convince the government to force energy savings on clothes washers. Now none of them get top marks.
But wait there is more. The cheapest HE clothes washer is 650 bucks. Similar standard clothes washer is 300 bucks. The new machines are twice as efficient – using about $12 of energy per year instead of $24 – but over the 10 year life of the machine, not only am I getting poorer performance, but I also will not recover the energy costs. Paying $350 for $120 in energy savings.
Is this really a good plan? Seems to me if I am losing over 200 bucks in the process, by going green, that I am actually doing more damage to the environment buying the efficient machine.
“This month the Environmental Protection Agency released figures that show an increase in credits submitted to deforest pre-1990 forests from 231,000 to 8,169,000 tonnes of CO2e, an increase of over 34 times between this year and last year’s reports.”
It took some reading to figure this out but it seems that you have to pay emissions fees for cutting trees planted before 1990 and you might get paid for having trees planted after 1989. So, what happens if you cut and replant as is done in most forestry farming operations?
No wonder this thing is failing. Sounds like it was developed late at night after long hours in a bar. And this is supposed to save the planet? We are more in need of being saved from folks like this.
I believe that they are wanting to give the impression that they still back AGW simply to take pressure off the ‘food miles’. Our country stands or falls on the sale of our farming production – the majority of which is exported to the four corners – you can understand the desire to protect one of our major sources of National income!
I always thought that for NZ to be greener we need more CO2 than we have now to feed the trees. Keep driving your SUVs boys your doing the planet a favour.
Then the best answer is to announce that AGW seems to be a fraud and to skip the whole emissions-goal kabuki thing.
There are other areas of environmental concern, some more valid than others I believe. Energy efficiency is a good idea in general — some specific applications turn out to be false economies. But carbon emissions are safe and any policy that wants to reduce them is presumptively fraudulent or erroneous.
See the entire Obama environmental agenda, which has the same solid grounding as his economic policy.
I get a red face from embarrassment when this idiot Australian starts pontificating about our NZ environmentalism – I believe we are right up there with all those who are genuinely serious about our country and its image – this guy does not deserve to step foot in our country. Our Government is simply being pragmatic, because at the end of the day, they do not really believe the warmist’s gospel!