I do not understand why National will not commit to a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas levels by 2020 as an attempt to combat climate change. As the Greenpeace ad on tv says “it just makes sense really”.

The Green party spell it out really well over here:

http://blog.greens.org.nz/2009/08/05/nick-smith-doesnt-get-it/

The Government has relied on macro-economic analysis about emissions prices instead of analysing opportunities. Smith had made it clear that it was up to NGOs and volunteers to work out how to meet a target, not the job of the well resourced government departments he controls.

…he attacked the idea of reducing farm animals by a third. That would mean reducing dairy farm stocking rates from 2.83 cows/ha which is the current average to 1.86. Our proposal was to reduce them to 2.3, which is the intensity that research has found is most profitable for the farmer if milk prices are below $5.50. The current price is $5.20, which is also the average price (inflation adjusted) over the last ten years. The extra return from additional animals per hectare just doesn’t pay for the huge increase in urea, bought in feeds, off farm grazing of animals not in milk and animal health costs that are needed to cram more animals on to the same land. Dairy farmers could be making more money and reducing emissions.

So the greens are releasing ideas, good ideas, factual ideas. And how does the Government respond? Like This: Greens want to shoot the cows

…a reduction from the business as usual case of 57%, and that to do this one would need to ban every car, bus and truck in NZ, close down every fossil fuel power plant and on top of that hire vigilantes to shoot every third cow.

…the little fruitcakes are serious. They do want us to shoot the cows. They just use the nice Orwelllian term of “de-stocking” instead.

In 1999 we had around 3.5 million cows. So the Greens policy is to exterminate around 700,000 cows.

I encourage you to read both articles and decide for yourself who is playing scare tactics.

The other really strong part from the Greens blog was this:

Then, he set about rebutting things we had not said – like proposing 100% renewable electricity, which he said would raise power prices 30%. That’s the reason we didn’t propose 100%. When I was leadng EECA’s work under the last government, we had some robust analysis done by EECA and MED  to determine the costs of various levels of renewability in the electricity system. We found 90% renewable by 2025 was entirely achievable and hardly raised prices at all, as there is a lot of low cost geothermal and wind energy waiting to be built.

Going to 100% is costly because you have to build a huge amount of capacity which just sits around unused until there is a very dry winter, given that people don’t like power cuts. Much better to have a couple of gas peaking stations that are cheap to build and only run a small proportion of the time. The greenhouse gases are negligible in the scheme of things and the saved capital is much better used to make significant reductions in transport or agriculture which are a much bigger worry than electricity.

So it is really aparent that the Greens are playing with facts while the Nats are playing with fire. Liar liar pants on fire politics.

Visit http://www.signon.org.nz to sign on.

P.S. Don’t tell political activists like Keshia Castle-Hughes to stick to the acting, unless you also want to stick to the currency trading.