The good news is you’re not losing your BBQ.
There has been quite a lot of coverage on the Climate Commission’s interim report on what it is we need to do to get our climate act together.
I mean, it’s not like we haven’t had reports before, and lots of them. And it’s not like we haven’t signed deals before making a lot of promises that were never going to come true.
That’s the great failing of big issues like climate change: we are fully on board with the furrowed brow and deep concern, just not so much when it comes to the doing.
It’s why Kyoto got replaced by Paris and all the stuff we signed up to in Paris isn’t going to happen.
Hence we need a special climate committee to write more reports and admonish us.
It also suits people like the Prime Minister, whose great gift is talking a lot and doing not much.
Her line was “we are not going to hold back”, which sounds important but says nothing.
Once again, farmers are fearful as to what all this means for them, and we should be equally fearful of what it means to farmers given we only do a couple of large scale things in this country: tourism and farming.
And given we are one of the cleanest lowest emitters in the world when it comes to cows and land, one can only conclude if we were to follow up on any of these recommendations, it would mean fewer cows.
And that means less income. That is where traditionally the rubber has hit the climate change road.
All for doing stuff, just not at a price we can’t afford.
A headline grabber from this report seems to be around gas cookers. And that really is the ultimate issue, isn’t it? Rightly or wrongly, at the nutty end of the climate change spectrum there is always a certain amount of thinking from outside the norm, or indeed this world.
To make change, you need buy in. To get buy in in this country, you don’t mess with farming, and you don’t talk about banning gas cookers because it’s stupid.
They also might like to put a number on it, a bill for all this upending and reform. The nearest we’ve got is somewhere between $2 and $11 billion or even more. No one does business on ropey numbers like that. No one takes a guess seriously.
So a couple of predictions: combustion engines aren’t getting banned and your BBQ is safe for a myriad of summers to come. You can relax, it’s just another report.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.
3 comments:
This is more about Jacinda going to the next COP meeting in whenever Covid decides and rubbing shoulders with all her mostly leftie mates in Europe...and now the US, and saying how much she's doing to fight climate change.
In fact, since NZ accounts for about 0.1% of global CO2 emissions, we should really be doing nothing at all because China will replace our CO2 savings in about, wait for it, yep now! It will cost our economy a shitload of money and for absolutely no environmental gain.
Silly of me to bring logic and realism into the argument because this is all about woke politics and looking virtuous.... and principally securing JA a good chance of getting a top job at the UN after she's finished making NZ the kindest nation on Earth.
The other night, I heard the P.M. say on TV that this was the most significant thing she had done. (referring to her climate change action)
Well - of course !! Much more significant than child poverty, housing shortages, child abuse statistics, and other lesser priorities.
The point that DeeM makes is a very important one. Which is whether or not one agrees that humans are causing the gradual, fits and starts, global warmings is irrelevant.
The salient point is that New Zealand's emissions are totally insignificant. (Last I heard - about 0.17% of global emissions. That is, roughly 1/600 of total global emissions).
Clearly it is totally impossible for any reduction in NZ emissions to have any effect at all on the overall climate change scenario.
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