Auckland City Planning
Auckland City is a lock for the centre left for the next 5 years, at least. The left has a strong organisation in South Auckland and West Auckland. The Greens are disproportionally popular with youth and in the suburbs. And the meta is good, the population is bound to be turning agianst the John Key Nayional government and will look to protest vote more in the next round of local body elections.
What the council should be doing is using this opportunity to make some real gains for left-wing voters. Make rents more affordable by building some more council rental accomodation. Lower land costs by moving land from lifestyle block to residential zoning. Send a clear message to the government about supporting public workers by backing the unions in the ports dispute.
So why is the Auckland Council jumping so far to the right? It has decided that its primary project focus is a $billions rail tunnel to support the property values of the CBD landlords - the richest of the rich. Restrict land borders to protect the property values of middle class suburbia - core strength National Party supporters. Back the ports company as it privitises the port operations.
Dear Mark Steyn
Dear
Mark Steyn,
Climate change can be solved by small government. This may shock you, but the best solution to anything is seldom a bigger more expensive government based on over-arching socialism. Climate change should be an opportunity for small government blowhards to demonstrate the need for a small government solution.
The solution to climate change is to have every country independently operate a consumer marketplace where a high price of AGW gases is charged to private consumption. There will be no capping, trading, emissions limits, production controls, bans or restrictions - there will be no UN involvement. There will be no big government, because government retards and distorts market incentives by its existence. Our governments will exist solely to provide security and to enforce the consumer taxation on the AGW gas footprint. The smaller the government is the better the planet will be.
As the Greens have been saying for years - if the planet is to survive climate change we must make sacrifices and the best sacrifice is to relinquish our socialist spending.
Regards u-c
Climate Change Summarised
Climate change is a global crisis caused by over consumption of Earth's resources. This crisis demands a rapid and effective response. Cap and Trade is a negative unworkable response, it is a big government initiative. Small government offers the only effective positive response to the climate change crisis.
Western capitalist societies dominate the worlds economy and are consumer driven, not production driven. Positive solutions harness the consumer economy to combat climate change, negative solutions attempt to control production.
We are consumer driven democracies, we must empower consumer growth in enviromentally sustainable pathways - we must give consumers more access to wealth and tax pollution literally off the planet. We should not engage in production controls, there should be no limits set.
The pollution taxation should be as high as we can possibly make it, as high as our local economy can stand. This taxation rate should be higher than the anemic costs suggested under a global Cap'n'Trade, but differ in positive ways. Taxation should be in the form of a Value Added Tax (VAT) for a sales cummulative of all pollution ultimately charged to the domestic consumer. Equivalent pollution tax to be charged on local and imported goods, but not charged on exports. Thus our productive economy is unharmed and able to adapt quickly to changed demand, whilst our consumers are directly aware of any saving to be made by reducing the amount of pollution their purchases create.
This taxation regime couples consumer driven change to saving the planet, therefore to be most effective requires maximising the amount of consumer involvement. We must reduce the size of the state, because the state is not a consumer driven entity. A states funding mechanisms (taxation and borrowing) are immune to the effect of consumer taxation, because they are the recipient of that taxation. This means a paradigm shift is required not only for our present taxation policy, but also our state spending - it must be reduced. We need to motivate as much of the economy as quickly as possible to reduce pollution, by doing what co. Getting rid of all non-essential state enterprises and moving state employees to the private sector will be amongst our highest priorities should we wish to save the planet.
Welfare is socially required. Welfare programs (pensions, unemployment relief, healthcare) should be increased to cope with the additional demand pollution taxation places on the poor, but these programs must be stringently asset tested and privately administered.
Labels: NLG
Kyoto - Destroying The Planet
The "idea" behind them is flawed. The results are catastrophic. The precedent they set is that it is okay to fail as long as you mean well. The only "good" is the publicity its supporters bring to highlighting the facts of climate change.
The "idea" is to limit Annex I countries to 10% less emissions than their 1990 levels. This is presumed to be a good thing, when even if it were (in some unlikely event) achieved it would deliver no good outcome. The reason it doesn't benfit the planet is that a cap of emissions from point source producers (factories, farms, incinerators) allows us consumers to offshore our pollution. This exercise in pointlessness, migrates consumed pollution elsewhere. A real solution to climate change can only be found through the modification of consumer society.
The Flawed Economics of Emission Trading
Basic economics: 0 << x = 0
x is the probability of a catastrophic climatic event occuring.
x >> 0 to justify the neccessity of tackling climate change and joining up to the Kyoto Protocols.
x = 0 to select an Emissions Trading Scheme as the lowest cost methodology capable of meeting the Kyoto Protocols.
This seems a little flawed to me, but hey what would I know.
An ETS is useful only in meeting Kyoto requirements. To be effective at combatting climate change an ETS would need to be global and that is unlikely. By eliminating any consideration of climate change from the economic equation an ETS has been selected by our government.
0 < x = 0
Very soon we will be getting taxed to save the planet by getting taxed to kill the planet...
Cap and Trade
The thinking behind Kyoto and Cap'n'Trade is that limiting production will drive the economy to a low carbon future - this fails. The refusal to address the causes of crisis with the most powerful driver to a solution is killing the planet. We need to empower consumers to make changes to the global economy and fight climate change this has become imperiative, because we have suffered years of Kyoto driven pollution.
We embarked on the disastorous Kyoto derived Cap'n'Trade pollution generation process for two self-serving reasons. The Green movement has been captured by the political Left who are very much against relying on consumer driven solutions, because ultimately such solutions require empowering consumers and reducing the state. The movement arose in the consumer society democracies of the West where the imposition of high consumer taxation was not going to be popular and so the Kyoto process of Cap'n'Trade was born to shift costs elsewhere. Cap'n'Trade is an effort to create a global market in pollution that will spread the cost across the globe, through trading imposed costs on production.
Cap'n'Trade will not be adopted worldwide as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Vietnam are developing countries who have production driven economies and cannot afford production cost increases. The developing world citizens are less than keen to endure poverty as the solution for a problem caused by the developed world. (Even if Cap'n'Trade were to be adopted worldwide it could only ever be a second best solution, because of the arbitrariness of how the Caps are assigned it will never be the most efficient way to run a planet.) Without a global market Kyoto/ETS/Cap'n'Trade has served to drive production to the developing economies and consequentially increase pollution - Kyoto kills the planet faster than doing nothing at all. The Cap'n'Trade attempt has failled, as it was always doomed to. Al Gore is part of the problem, not the solution and we need a new direction.
European Position
Short Summary:
Under a global ETS (Euro) proposal the developing world will have to pay Europeans to outsuorce production (as Europeans been doing for 20 years); whilst the developing world gets charged financial transaction fees by Europeans on European carbon markets to pay a tax the developing world can least afford.
Even Shorter Summary:
Europe demands developing world pays Europe to fight climate change.
Likely Response:
Developing world rejects proposal.
