Real Climate Priorities
New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, the people that lefties love to hate, have pointed out the real “elephant in the room” in the debate on climate change. They report that reducing greenhouse gasses is a low priority for New Zealand and there are much more important environmental issues we should be paying attention to [Full PDF Here]. Environmentalists, of course, will attempt to say that both are important and should be given equal weight. Unfortunately, in the real world environmental spending goes where the incentives are. Currently, those financial incentives are not pointed at saving the Kea or preserving our pristine waters, they are pointed firmly at reducing our output of carbon dioxide. And this despite the fact that, even if New Zealand reduced it’s carbon dioxide output to zero, it would make absolutely no difference to climate change at all.
It is hard to argue with the true priorities pointed out by NZIER:
- Improving urban air quality
- Protecting biodiversity and ecosystems
- Water demand management and water allocation
Interestingly, they suggest low priorities to be not only emissions reductions but:
“Waste reduction and waste management business support should also be a low priority because “landfill space and the employment pool have high substitutability and limited externalities”.”
Which is NZIER-speak for “we have a lot of space to dump our junk and it doesn’t require a lot of expertise”. I’m not sure if I agree with either parts of those statements, unless they are merely trying to suggest that recycling is not a priority. As we appear to have exceeded our capacity for recycling already, this is probably true.
The report does not discuss the most obvious effect of our carbon dioxide obsession, that of our increasing reliance on unreliable sources of “sustainable” energy generation such as wind farms to the exclusion of the far cheaper coal and oil fired energy sources. Currently there is a perverse incentive to reduce cheap hydroelectric production in order to maintain a high electricity price, to preserve the viability of expensive wind farms.
Apparently environmental stupidity knows no limits.
Related posts:
- Forever is a Long Time I see that the latest Global Whining Warming news is...
- Carbon Guessing I note that our Kyoto liability estimate seems to have...
- Climate Control David Farrar has produced this lovely piece of satire: The...
- Rule of 48 In Michael Chrichton’s novel The Andromeda Strain, one of the...
- Funding Bias The Dominion Post has an article breathlessly telling us that...
Nov 5 09 7:27 pm
So I know how to interpret your reportage, not having dropped by before, is climate change (i) still under serious scientific debate, (ii) a myth propagated by eco-terrorists and left-wing intelligentsia, (iii) real but no fault of our own, (iv) real but there’s nothing we can do about it, (v) good for us, or something else? I took the liberty of not suggesting (vi) scientifically settled, though not politically, as a serious threat to people’s well-being across the globe.
Nov 6 09 7:56 pm
Daniel:
I would be coming from vii) Serious scientific debate is being suppressed by political imperatives.
I think the phrase "the science is settled" should mean "We have definitive evidence to prove our theory" rather than "all differing scientific opinion is crushed".
I am not a climatologist, but even I can see that having your computer models produce answers wildly at variance with the observed facts is hardly a "settled" science.
Nov 9 09 8:48 am
Yes, I can see how political imperatives affect people’s interpretation of science.