Jeanette Fitzsimons also says forget tinkering with emissions trading scheme scrap it

Jeanette Fitzsimons has written a great article in the New Zealand Herald. (Photograph courtesy of the Green Party of Aotearoa via Wikimedia Commons)

Forget tinkering with emissions trading scheme scrap it!

Here are some excerpts.

The ETS should not be amended, but withdrawn entirely. It fails on every count and is in fact counter-productive.

The Government's discussion document admits that in its seven years, the ETS has not reduced NZ's climate pollution; in fact, emissions are expected to rise to 96 per cent above 1990 levels within 15 years.

Many suspect the design of the ETS, with no price floor and no emissions cap, was never intended to make a real difference to our climate-changing emissions. It was intended to provide a trading platform for speculators, which it has done.

Any further public time and expense tweaking a broken system will send good money after bad, and use resources that would be better used on measures that will actually reduce emissions.

Jeanette's conclusion.

The ETS should be abandoned and replaced with a simple and gradually rising price on carbon through a carbon charge, the proceeds distributed equally to all New Zealanders.

But you really need to read the whole article

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