The Gisborne Herald of 12 January, 2011, carried the following letter from my good friend Neil Henderson, founder of Climate Realists, and who has kindly consented to this republication. We might all learn from Neil’s wonderful political instincts. I could mention that the 23% Neil mentions, by which our present emissions exceed our 1990 emissions, match the population increase we have experienced since then. Nick Smith doesn’t mention it, though.

ETS ‘game’ achieves very little

THE terms of reference for the 2011 review of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) have been announced. The need for an ETS in the first place is not up for review, so one must ask “why bother having a review?” If Minister Nick Smith and his colleagues are so convinced the science is settled on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), then why do they not get on with the action instead of fluffing around?

Neil Henderson

Let me illustrate with an analogy. Suppose river flow experts told us that the Waipaoa river system was changing in such a way that the present flood protection system would allow Gisborne to be flooded so often in 50 years that the city would be unsafe to live in. They further calculated that to maintain the present level of protection the stopbanks would need to be raised two metres. It is obvious that if we decide to only raise the banks by half a metre, our city would be in grave danger of regular flooding.

The “experts” advising on AGW argue that we need to restrict warming to no more than another two degrees. Reducing emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 is considered by them to be the minimum action required to achieve this. Our Government accepts the need to hold the temperature rise to two degrees. Why then are they procrastinating about the action required?

Our emissions are currently 23 percent above 1990 levels, so according to these “experts” we need to reduce our current emissions by half.

Remember, the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the houses we live in all have an energy content, which causes emissions. It is not practical to reduce these emissions by large amounts. Private and public transport amount to only 10.5 percent of a household’s total energy consumption, according to an Australian Conservation Foundation study. Cut all that out and we only reach one fifth of the target!

It is absolutely unachievable without a return to subsistence agriculture! Our leaders know this. That is why they are not following the IPCC recommendations. They are playing games that give the appearances of acting, while actually doing very little.

They get away with this because the vast majority of the people in favour of action have no concept of what action is required. Paying a small ETS charge helps them believe they are saving the planet.

But the real reason for an ETS has nothing to do with actual, real climate change. Our leaders are fully aware of this. On the eve of Cancun, a lead author of the IPCC report, Ottmar Edenhofer, stated:

“The climate summit in Cancun is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War … one must say that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

To my knowledge, only ACT, the Kiwi Party and the Libertarianz have spoken out against this extreme socialism. The Green Party openly supports it. The rest are playing political brinksmanship by seeing how far they can go to look good on the world’s political stage without destroying our nation.

With this ETS review, coupled to an election later this year, the time is right to force our major parties into the open on this issue.

If a post-Kyoto agreement is signed along the lines of the Copenhagen Accord, we can wave goodbye to the life we know. The times of our grandparents will suddenly look prosperous compared to the austerity forced on us by so-called climate change policy.

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