Garth George: Our very own, lonely, trading scheme

You would think that men of the intelligence of John Key, Bill English, Nick Smith et al would have the wit to postpone indefinitely the emissions trading scheme which is due to come into effect on July 1.

But no: they seem to have been infected by their predecessors' childish wish to be a "world leader" in the reduction of so-called greenhouse gases.

The futility of this behaviour is increasingly embarrassing since more and more evidence is available that gases such as carbon dioxide and methane have absolutely no effect on global temperatures.

The idea was that New Zealand would develop a scheme to align itself with Australia's, but Australia has wisely deferred its emissions scheme plans sine die.

Our other major trading partners, China and the United States, show no inclination to develop carbon tax regimes, and France late last month abandoned its intention to introduce a carbon tax.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the move in the face of widespread public protest after French citizens realised that they would be carbon-taxed while the citizens of other countries in Europe were not.

And that is exactly what we should do, particularly since our emissions are infinitesimal compared with other countries. I suspect that the eruption of Mt Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland shot more gases into the atmosphere in five minutes than New Zealand would in five years.

The increasing scepticism over global warming throughout the world is not surprising after the shocking sub-zero weather which created chaos all over Britain, throughout Europe and in the United States in the depth of their winter.

There is increasing scepticism here, too, after one of the coldest winters in decades, which started early and finished late, afflicted much of New Zealand.

But the deception continues among the global warming scaremongers. For instance, in the Weekend Herald early this month an English academic began an article on predictions for the Pacific islands from global warming by saying that, in spite of being on maps for centuries, the tiny island of Bermeja, in the Gulf of Mexico, could no longer be found.

She also said that New Moore Island, in the Bay of Bengal, had disappeared. These, she said, probably resulted from rising sea levels.

The facts are that Bermeja, probably the victim of an undersea landslide, has not been seen since some time before 1844 and does not appear on the earliest satellite images; and New Moore was not an island but a sand bar, created in 1970 by Cyclone Bhola, and subsequently washed away.

I am not, incidentally, a "climate change denier" but I am certainly a global warming sceptic.

Climate has been in a constant state of flux since God created the heavens and the land and the sea and placed the sun and the moon in their orbits.

And I am persuaded absolutely that it is the sun, not the harmless, essential trace gas carbon dioxide, that drives climate change. So our emissions trading scheme will not just be a colossal waste of time and effort but an unaffordable waste of money.

In a speech in Parliament late last month, Act MP John Boscawen nailed it all down. He said all the political parties except the Act Party were part of "a huge fraud - this emissions trading scheme tax".

He said that from July 1 New Zealanders could expect an immediate increase of 5 per cent in the price of electricity and of 4c a litre in the price of petrol.

"The increased costs of electricity and petrol will flow through the whole economy. They will flow through the costs of food, housing, and clothing - everything ... Our families will pay, our businesses will pay, and our farmers will pay. This is such tragedy because our emissions trading tax goes further than any country in the world," Mr Boscawen said.

While farmers would not have to pay for the cost of their animal methane until 2015 they would be paying an ETS tax on their petrol and electricity which could cost much more than anything they would pay for their animals.

"We are now alone in our efforts to introduce an ETS and New Zealand businesses are now at a competitive disadvantage to all our major trading partners.

"We are fools to lead the world in implementing this new tax."

Mr Boscawen called for the Government to either scrap the ETS or delay it indefinitely.

But the powers that be - Mr Key, Dr Smith and co - seem determined to proceed in spite of growing opposition, not just from business and industry but from the public. Perhaps they have inherited, too, from their predecessors a contempt for public opinion.

Green Party co-leader and climate change spokesman Russel Norman reckons suspending the scheme would send a signal to business "that there's never going to be a price on carbon".

Now there's a wonderfully intelligent idea.

garth.george@hotmail.com