Further cost of the ETS?

The Press reports:

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has received an assessment of the impact of the Government’s flagship climate-change policy on the value of land handed to iwi under Treaty of Waitangi settlements.

Officials are refusing to divulge the monetary figure placed on the estimated loss in value contained in the assessment by senior Christchurch-based valuer Donn Armstrong, of Forest Land Consultants.

However, Maori say they could be owed as much as $2 billion in compensation, because land currently in forests will not be able to be converted to other potentially more profitable uses.

So we are starting to get to the beginning of the end of settling historic grievances, with compensation likely to be around $1.5 billion.

And the ETS could create a new contemporary grievance of up to $2 billion?

This is why NZ needs to be very careful as we proceed with an ETS. Again, we need to develop one or risk trade sanctions, but need to ensure the costs are proportional to the benefits.

Also we should consider what our Kyoto obligations mean in light of Russia’s invasion of Georgia. You see there is a high possibility that we would have to purchase carbon credits off Russia as we will be well above our 1990 emissions levels. So we may end up giving Russia hundreds of milllions of dollars of hard cash, which they can use to fund their war in Georgia. Yep, there is no mechanism for excluding Russia because they have gone nasty – if they have the carbon credits, they will get billions of dollars in hard currency for them.