Climate Change Bills

Liberty Scott examines the bills put forward by the Greens on Climate Change. While tactically they are a good idea to expose Labour’s empty rhetoric, they have gone so extreme it seems that they are probably not worth even taking to select committee stage (and generally I think most bills should get to that stage).

Go read what Scott says in full, but a couple of extracts:

* Requiring airlines to cap their current emissions. Now this will mean Air NZ (as a NZ company) will be affected by this and prices for their flights will increase significantly. Their competitors though will stay competitive on international routes so the likely outcome is Air NZ will lose most of its international business and go bankrupt again!!

* Mandating that two thirds of petrol taxes be spent on anything but the roads. This will slash maintenance and building of roads by over 50%. More people will die on unsafe roads, and traffic jams in Auckland and Wellington will spiral.

* Spending $3 billion on electrification of railway lines, which would result in around $50 million of carbon credits!!!

Dealing with climate change requires careful examination of the benefits and costs of proposals. On first glance some of these proposals seem to incur costs that will be massively higher than the benefits they provide.