Summarised by Centrist
“Could it be the fact no credits were sold at our auctions last year and the commission’s concerns over settings is largely because this is a scam?” asks Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking. He describes the carbon market as an exemplary case of “voodoo economics.”
His comments follow a conversation with Steven Joyce about the impracticalities of quantifying New Zealand’s carbon emissions liability, as promised in the Paris Accord. This is due to inherent uncertainties in measurement and the lack of a clear recipient for potential payments, according to Joyce.
With four Climate Change Commission carbon credit auctions last year yielding no sales amid an oversupply of carbon credits, the anticipated revenue of approximately $2 billion vanished.
Hoskings says nothing will happen if we don’t meet our “obligations” because China, America, and India, “the world’s actual polluters,” aren’t meeting theirs.
“We have got ourselves caught up in a faux fight, with a market we invented, in a non-enforceable deal. All propped up by the idea that you should hand over money to an imaginary group, or organisation, or people if you burn coal,” he says.
