Freeloaders claim theft

A group of forest owners is whining and stamping their feet over the government's refusal to give them Kyoto credits. They're calling it "the largest private property theft in New Zealand's history" - which is frankly a load of crap. As the Environmental Defence Society points out, the carbon credits were never theirs in the first place. They exist solely as a creation of an agreement between the New Zealand government and other states. If we take the absolutist propertarian position seriously, the government created them, therefore they belong to the government. EOFS.

If the KFOA wants carbon credits, then there's nothing stopping them from negotiating a deal with other countries or companies to create a tradeable emissions right of so many kg of carbon per hecatre or whatever - but then they'd have to do all the work themselves, rather than freeloading.