Climate change. Who pays?

Mention climate change and most people light up with concern and conversation about the human induced damage and what they, and New Zealand, can do about reducing what is clearly the biggest threat to our planet.

Mention Emissions Trading Scheme and most people’s eyes glaze over.  It’s not simple.  It has not been well explained in the mainstream media.  And, frankly, many people are quite over-whelmed with their day to day life and really don’t have a lot of spare time to learn about schemes like this.

But it doesn’t mean that they don’t care.

They will care even more when they realise that the new scheme, introduced by the National government on the last day of the last session of Parliament, has shifted the cost of paying for emissions in New Zealand from the companies that produce emissions, to the general taxpayer – to you, in other words.

This cost shifting was possible because the Maori Party support it.  They seem to have been conned by the negotiations with the National Party because they originally opposed it.  Then they thought that benefit levels would rise to help beneficiaries pay for the increase.  That was wrong.  Then they thought that Maori families would be getting free insulation in their houses.  That was wrong.   

Quite what the Maori Party “won” in their negotiations to get them to agree to this is still a mystery.