Feeling the financial pinch from the emissions trading
scheme? Didn't think so.
Admittedly, it is still only Day Three.
But, as is so often the case, when the big moment finally
arrives for something of such monumental importance to at
last grind into life having been thrashed to death for months
(or years in this case), there can be an acute sense of
anti-climax.
Thursday's "introduction" of the ETS - it is really an
expansion of a scheme which until now only covered forestry -
proved to be even more of a non-event despite last-minute
doomsday-style warnings from the scheme's opponents about its
impact on households and small businesses.
On the home front, the scheme may well be unfair.
It may well increase the burden on the taxpayer, rather than
the emitters.
It will most surely have little immediate effect in cutting
New Zealand's levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
For most people, however, the hideous complexities of the
scheme are far removed from their daily lives.
Where it matters is where it bites.
But it is hard to get much news mileage out of $3.17 - the
initial cost per household per week.
Therein lies the problem for critics of National's revised
ETS.
It may have more holes than the proverbial Swiss cheese.
But while is easy to knock the scheme, doing so in a way
which resonates beyond the climate change cognoscente to the
wider public is proving extremely difficult.
Put that down to John Key and Nick Smith, National's
environment minister, who have well understood the risks an
ETS poses for National and reacted accordingly with what
might be described as a "lowest common denominator" scheme.
They have come up with the greenhouse gas emissions-cutting
equivalent of mass- marketed fast food.
In short, the ETS is bland and non-threatening.
No-one admits to admiring it. No-one is getting enthused
about it.
But the vast majority can live with it.
National's rewrite of Labour's original scheme ticks all the
right political boxes - if not the climate change ones.
It protects jobs. It has (so far) a low impact on households.
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