Friday, May 12, 2006



Climate change: Peter Dunne's line in the sand

Yesterday, the International Energy Agency released its five yearly review of New Zealand's energy policies, in which they expressed disappointment at the scrapping of the carbon tax and the current "regulatory uncertainty" around climate change. The call was taken up by ECO, who called for the carbon tax to be reinstated in order to restore a credible greenhouse policy. But now Peter Dunne has put his foot down, declaring angrily that

Nothing has changed since December, and United Future would consider any move to revive it as a breach of its confidence and supply agreement with the Labour ?led government

(Emphasis added)

So, that's that then. Greenhouse policy is to be held hostage by a party of fundamentalist wackos committed to allowing businesses to dump their costs on the rest of us. As a result, we will end up having to buy a substantial amount of carbon credits on the international market. But somehow, I don't think Peter Dunne will be quite so happy to take responsibility when that happens...

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