9 May 1962 to 9 May 2012

I missed marking the actual day of 9 May 2012.

However, I dedicate David Bowie's song "Cracked Actor" from the 1973 Aladdin Sane album to the date 9 May 2012.

I've come on a few years from my Hollywood Highs

The best of the last, the cleanest star they ever had

I'm stiff on my legend, the films that I made

Forget that I'm fifty cause you just got paid

Crack, baby, crack, show me you're real

Smack, baby, smack, is that all that you feel

Suck, baby, suck, give me your head

Before you start professing that you're knocking me dead

Oh stay

Please stay

Please stay

You caught yourself a trick down on Sunset and Vine

But since he pinned you baby you're a porcupine

You sold me illusions for a sack full of cheques

You've made a bad connection 'cause I just want your sex

The zombie ETS infects the RMA with climate insanity

The Environment Court won't consider James Hansen evidence on coal and climate change in the appeal against the Escarpment opencast coal mine consents

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme ("NZETS") has become living-dead "zombie" legislation that infects other statutes with its own virulent climate change insanity. The example is a recent decision by the Environment Court that it can't consider climate change impacts of coal mining as described by James Hansen in the Forest and Bird appeal of the resource consents for the opencast 'Escarpment' coal mine.

The other week I saw the zombie genre film 28 Weeks Later on tv. The turning point in the film was when British actor Robert Carlyle kissed his wife and was instantly infected with the 'Rage Virus', which of course meant he had to turn into a homicidal-virus spreading-living-dead zombie who would then infect the rest of the surviving population of post-Rage Virus London. A great zombie movie movement!

For me, another much less amusing zombie moment, was last week's news from TVNZ, Radio NZ, the Otago Daily Times, and the Dominion Post, that the Environment Court had declared that climate change effects from coal mining will not be considered in Forest and Bird's appeal of the consents for the opencast coal mine the Escarpment_Mine_Project.

For background to the Escarpment Mine Project, including James Hansen's videotaped climate change evidence given to Jeanette Fitzsimons, and the conservation and biodiversity issues, see Claire Brownings Pundit post. And there is wildlife photographer Rod Morris' view that the mine proposal is simply ecological destruction on a massive scale. Botanist Alan Mark reminds us that the coal measure landscape of the Denniston Plateau is the only one left as Solid Energy have destroyed the other one - the Stockton Plateau.

According to the Dominion Post, Judge Newhook's decision was "that regulatory activity on the important topic of climate change is taken firmly away from regional government and made the subject of appropriate attention from time to time by central government by way of activity at a national level".

If we are at all unclear what that means, coal apologist and Stratera boss Chris Baker explains that this means the NZETS; "We have an emissions trading scheme, we are well ahead of our obligation internationally...".

The utter ill-logic of the "we have an ETS, more coal mining and exporting is okay" argument is that although the NZETS applies to all coal mined within New Zealand, all coal exported is exempted. Bathhurst Resources intends to export all the coal from the Escarpment Mine. So the application of the zombie NZETS to coal mining means that there will be no carbon price on the coal from the Escarpment Mine.

And this zombie effect of the NZETS in making coal "alive but dead" to a carbon price, then infects the application of our great sustainability-promoting externality-internalising Resource Management Act. The coal exports are "regulated" (in reality protected) by the NZETS. Therefore the RMA doesn't apply.

The consequence will be that the Environment Court will not be considering the effects of the Escarpment Mine on a level playing field. They will attempt to reach a broad overall judgement of what is sustainable. They will balance the economic effects of more export dollars and jobs on the West Coast against the many adverse environmental impacts on a unique coal measure ecosystem full of rare and endangered endemic species. But the scales of justice won't be fairly weighted, as the adverse impact and the externality of the greenhouse effect of the coal have already been taken off the adverse effects side of the ledger.

The NZETS is truly a ZOMBIE.

The Ministry has fallen

Is the Environment Court a bulwark against emissions-intensive projects such as open-cast coal mines that will provide the coal that will exacerbate climate change? You would think it would be wouldn't you?

You would think that our great history-making sustainability-promoting Resource Management Act would give a fair shake of the stick to the idea of considering climate change as some of the possible adverse effects of a proposal.

Especially if the proposal is an opencast export-oriented coal mine on protected conservation land, where adverse effects on biodiversity and on rare natural landforms would obviously be an issue.

Apparently not.

Bathhurst Resources Limited are a relatively new coal mining company in New Zealand. Bathhurst Resources would like to construct an open cast mine on an area of 200 hectares of conservation land on the southern Denniston Plateau, on the West Coast near Westport. Bathhurst would extract and export between one and four million tonnes of coal a year. Bathhurst call it the Buller Coal Project. Wikipedia calls it the Escarpment Mine Project. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society calls it the wipe out of the ecology of the Denniston Plateau. Bathhurst Resources and Solid Energy have successfully made a pre-emptive strike against the appeals of the council decisions to grant resource consents to Bathhurst Resources for their proposed open cast coal mine in the Mt Rochfort Conservation Area on the West Coast's Denniston Plateau - the Escarpment Mine Project.

Bathhurst Resources and Solid Energy have successfully obtained a declaration from the Environment Court that climate change effects from the combustion of the coal cannot be considered in the appeal of the resource consents.

Dominion Post - Miner eyes fast-track option for Denniston

TVNZ Climate change ruling irresponsible

Forest and Bird - Court decision ignores serious threats of climate change

Otago Daily Times - Court will not consider climate change.

I am left wondering if the judge concerned bothered to attend one of James Hansen's talks last year.

It seems that the Environment Court is a bit like the Ministry of Magic in the Harry Potter novels. It denied that Voldemort had returned. It then weakly opposed him and then "The Ministry has fallen" under control of the Deatheaters.

Hasta la vista Greenhouse Policy Coalition

Hasta la vista Greenhouse Policy Coalition, your work here is done - the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme really is now completely stuffed.

or , alternatively,

Hasta la vista Greenhouse Policy Coalition, so long and thanks for all the Clayton's climate change policy.

What would be one certain sign that New Zealand's climate change policy and its emissions trading scheme are both fatally flawed? Say you had a hypothetical pet lobbying body that has advocates for the big greenhouse gas emitters. It has been dedicated (largely successfully it seems) to making New Zealand's climate change and emissions trading policies emitter-friendly and emissions-friendly. If there was such a lobbyist, wouldn't we know their work was done when they stopped?

  

I just spotted this statement on the index page of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition of New Zealand.  Yes, it really does say

"The Greenhouse Policy Coalition wound up its operations on 31 March 2012. No changes have been made to this site since that date".

I guess they won't be commenting on behalf of their member company New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ Ltd winning the 2011 Roger Award for "milking the NZETS".

Helter smelter - NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ wins the 2011 Roger Award

Robin Johnson's Economics Web Page reports that NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ have just won the 2011 Roger Award for Worst Transnational Corporation operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand "for milking the NZETS".

Every year the group Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) awards a Roger Award for bad multinational corporate behavour.

Past winners have been Warner Brothers for the Hobbit film employment law change and British American Tobacco.

Readers may recall I wrote some posts about the excessive allocation of free emissions units from the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme to NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ.

I concluded that in 2010 the Rio Tinto Alcon NZ received 135% more emissions units than it needed for its greenhouse emissions, as an undisclosed amount of units were to compensate it for undisclosed ETS-related electricity costs.

In other words, Rio Tinto Alcon NZ would pay a higher 'carbon' price if it was exempt from the NZ ETS, as they would at least be paying some 'carbon' price as a 'downstream' electricity user.

I rewrote the analysis from those posts and wrote to CAFCA nominating NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ for a Roger Award.

Well, the winner was announced on Saturday and it is..........NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ! I quote from the judges report.

1. New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd (NZAS) has effectively undermined the purposes of the carbon emissions trading scheme...
2. NZAS has already been secretly compensated for any electricity price increases associated with the emissions trading scheme...
3. NZAS were provisionally allocated 423,047 New Zealand Units for 2011...
4. the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the emissions trading scheme.
5. NZAS has, effectively, abrogated any responsibility to mitigate the incidence of anthropogenic global warming... a major transnational player within New Zealand materially benefits from its non-compliance with a strategy to reduce global climate change...

And,

Of course, this raises fundamental questions about the efficiency of emissions trading, as compared to a tax-based model directed toward the largest CO₂ emitters.

I couldn't agree more. This is only a summary. The whole 26-page Judges report (PDF) is well worth a read. It includes a seven page history of the 'Comalco' smelter company that includes details of NZETS lobbying. There is also a ten-page analysis by Sue Newberry of the NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ finances and multinational corporate structure.

I leave the concluding point to the Judges.

With both Labour and National governments in thrall and with Greenhouse Policy Coalition lobbyists closely involved in the design and implementation of the ETS, it was only to be expected that Comalco/RTA would be at the head of the queue for its free handouts of emission units...Its milking of the Emissions Trading Scheme is entirely in character.  

Helter Smelter!

James Hansen and Te Radar part 1

Yes, I know. The combination seems a bit incongruous. Well, here are Dr James Hansen and Te Radar talking at Auckland's Town Hall at an event called "Festival for the Planet - A People's Assembly On Climate Change" held on 21 May 2011. This was James Hansen's final public appearance on his 9 day tour of Aotearoa.

The Science is Clear - new James Hansen talk from TED 2012

I have just found this recent 2012 TED talk by James Hansen. It has been on-line since 7 March. The number of views on youtube was 13,473 when I watched it. I bet that rises.



The talk is very polished. Hansen reads from a script and has obviously run through the talk several times. Hansen discusses the natural greenhouse effect, the Earth's energy imbalance caused primarily by fossil fuel combustion, sea-level rise, species extinctions, impacts on agriculture and the need to act for the benefit of future generations as represented by his grandchildren.