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Creating More Emissions while Driving Up Prices
Even first round effects of the proposed agricultural emissions pricing scheme will see:
- Agricultural production shifted abroad to more inefficient, carbon emitting economies given that N.Z. is the lowest carbon emission producer;
- Prices, notably consumer prices for food, will likely increase when substitutes are imported as production falls; and,
- Even existing “Green” treaty commitments specifically state that policies dealing with climate change should be designed such that they do not affect food production.
The logic here does not seem that difficult to understand. Even the politics of the proposed scheme tests rationality severely.
Making no difference outside of harm…
Matt Ridley in the Daily Mail:
It is almost tragi-comic that this crisis is happening while Boris Johnson is in New York, futilely trying to persuade an incredulous world to join us in committing eco self-harm by adopting a rigid policy of net zero by 2050 – a target that is almost certainly not achievable without deeply hurting the British economy and the lives of ordinary people, and which will only make the slightest difference to the climate anyway, given that the UK produces a meagre 1 per cent of global emissions.
As for the middle-class Extinction Rebellion poseurs and their road-closing chums from Insult Britain, sorry Insulate Britain, they are basing their apocalyptic predictions of ‘catastrophe’ and billions of deaths on gross exaggerations.
And while preventing working people earning a livelihood may make them feel good, it does nothing to solve the real problem of climate change.
Neither Guilt Nor Apocalypse are Sound Policy Instruments
Bjorn Lomborg reports in Business Day that the latest IPCC report – the “code red” document states that “frequency and intensity of cold extremes has decreased.” Just what we might expect.
The Lancet reports that half a million die from heat every year. At the same time 4.5 million people die from cold. The last 10 years have seen, globally, an increase of 116,000 deaths from heat but a decrease of 283,000 deaths from cold. We have then seen 167,000 lives saved per year
This is neither apocalypse nor anything to be guilty about. Code red? Code for – look at both benefits and costs. You might be surprised.
Eye2theLongRun 