Looking back over last year, the emission trading scheme (ETS) stands out as our biggest screw up.
In the beginning I was confused about global warming. Arguments for and against seemed credible. They came from scientists – people we normally trust. Both sides sounded plausible, each referencing seemingly convincing scientific data. Trouble was there was no way I (or most of us) could verify this data and the arguments based on them.
A couple of years ago, still stumped by the opposing messages, I began looking at the messengers instead.
Those scientists for global warming [including our own Niwa types] generally seemed to be the institutionalised, wet, sycophantic and politically cunning sort of academic whose income, more often than not, depended on there being global warming. Those against were more the independent sort of scientist, who seemed to have integrity and who did not stand to gain financially from the global warming argument.
Those for global warming approached it with a religious fervour – and a religion is what it became. In an increasingly agnostic world, many of us have no religious conviction to sate a need for belief and a cause. Coupled with that Western need to feel continually guilty about something, global warming neatly filled a gap.
Like most religions it had its puppeteers lurking behind the scenes waiting for the coming bounty of riches and power as their mass of believers swelled.
Historically, humans have always been self-centred enough to believe we caused any force of nature that we didn’t understand. Guilt then pinned it to our waywardness.
As ever, the solution is sacrifice. Killing first-borns, sacrificing virgins, self-flagellation and hair shirts are out of fashion, so what better penance than hitting ourselves in the pocket? And who more willing to help than an ever tax-greedy government?
Hence the beauty of the ETS. Unfortunately it instantly cost all citizens, and, by making New Zealand less competitive, promises ever decreasing wealth in years to come.
In early 2010, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was caught cooking the books in favour of global warming. What seemed like an isolated case of fraud spread to a systemic invention of facts to fit their pre-determined global warming theory; and denial of those that didn’t.
Undeterred, our gallant, true-believer government pushed on. Copenhagen, where major greenhouse gas producing countries (including all our trading partners) backed down from previous targets, served to spur them on, heroically. Although we produce only a tiny fraction of the world’s greenhouse gases, we were to show the rest of them how it’s fixed.
In implementing ETS we have gone further, faster on a road to nowhere than any other country. Rather than being the admired leader, New Zealand is the naive fool. We fired the first shot for the cause neatly through our foot.
The idea that we do something can make us feel better. Should we do anything at all? Yes, a sensible insurance policy for the unlikely event of climate change being man-made, and for which we pay low premiums; but our ETS – definitely not.
Y’all feel better now? Or like me – poorer, mystified and just a little stupid?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/
