Ending royal corruption in Scotland?

Earlier in the week, The Guardian reported that England's monarch had been secretly having laws amended to carve out exemptions for herself, using a procedure called "crown consent". Its a corrupt holdover from the days of absolute monarchy, and something which has no place in a modern democracy, or even in the UK. Unfortunately, Scotland can't get rid of it (at least, not until they're independent, at which point they can redefine their relationship with the monarch, or just tell them to go fuck themselves). But as Andy Wightman points out, there are a few things they can do to make this power much harder to use:

First, Scottish ministers should reject any request from the palace to exempt the Queen’s private estates from Scottish legislation. If this means that Queen’s consent is refused, then ministers should come to parliament and make that known.

Second, the Scottish parliament can take the initiative. It cannot remove the statutory requirement for Queen’s consent but it can amend its procedures to require far greater transparency from ministers about which bills require it, when and under what conditions it has been granted, and (most critically for legislative proposals) complete candour about which parts of any bill or any subsequent amendments are being lodged at the request of the Queen.

That an unelected head of state has the power to legislate in their personal interests, with no transparency or accountability, is antithetical to democracy. The Scottish parliament must take a lead in insisting on the openness and transparency it so often claims to champion.

Meanwhile, Aotearoa has a holdover of this in our parliamentary rules. Standing Order 321 provides that "No member’s bill, local bill, or private bill that contains any provision affecting the rights or prerogatives of the Crown may be passed unless the Crown has, by message, indicated its consent to that provision". I'm not sure if this means that there is a similar consent process here for government bills, or whether it is simply assumed that the government automaticly consents on behalf of the foreign monarch to its own legislation. Either way though, seeing member's bills with majority support having to wait for a formal stamp of approval from an unelected foreign inbred who lives on the other side of the world is demeaning to our democracy. I can't recall such consent ever being denied - we're not the UK, after all - but the possibility that it could be, to a bill with majority support, is an affront to our democracy. As for how to fix it, the solution is obvious: remove this odious provision (and until that happens, move to suspend it in any third reading debate on a member's bill).

Ending conversion "therapy"

The government has introduced a bill to outlaw homophobic conversion "therapy":

Practices intended to change or suppress someone's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, also referred to as gay conversion therapy, will become a criminal offence under legislation announced today.

Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi said today the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill had been introduced to Parliament.

Measures proposed in the Bill were aimed at ending conversion practices which didn't work, were widely discredited, and caused harm to rainbow communities and the wider community, Faafoi said.

Good. This "therapy" is basicly an attempt to torture and bully the gay away. Despite the name, it serves no therapeutic purpose whatsoever. Instead, its directly discriminatory, an attempt to stop people being who they are, and we should all be glad that the government is outlawing it.

The bill is here. It makes it clear that actual medical practice or just the mere expression of bigoted religious beliefs do not qualify. Instead, it is aimed at discriminatory and harmful quackery. There are significant safeguards against prosecution. It looks good, and the sooner Parliament passes it, the better.

Climate Change: The other Tiwai scam

Newsroom has a good piece this morning about the government's consultation on industrial free allocations, revealing that Fletcher Building is getting an extra $5 million a year ($7 million at today's prices) due to miscalculated carbon subsidies. That's bad, and it needs to be stopped by resetting emissions baselines to a credible level. But while we're talking about industrial over-allocation, we should talk about the elephant in the room: Rio Tinto.

In 2019, New Zealand Aluminium Smelters received 1.7 million tons of carbon as a free allocation for being emissions intensive and trade exposed (EITE). But its actual emissions were only 663,000 tons. The difference - 150% of its actual emissions - was the Electricity Allocation Factor, basicly "compensation" for the effects of the ETS on electricity prices. Except Rio Tinto doesn't pay those higher prices like the rest of us peasants - they got themselves a sweetheart deal which sees them pay a fifth of what us peasants pay, and less than a quarter of what industrial users are paying now. So they're being "compensated" for nothing. The financial cost of this unnecessary "compensation" is $50 million a year at current carbon prices - and triple that on the government's books. (The real cost is that it allows a million tons a year of unnecessary pollution into the ETS, which neither we nor the planet can afford).

Meanwhile, at the same time it is getting this compensation for being a vulnerable, struggling industry, Rio Tinto is telling its shareholders that it is hugely profitable. It can't have it both ways. If they're that profitable, they clearly don't need any subsidies at all, and we should cut them off.

As for the Electricity Allocation Factor, this was apparently recently reviewed by the government. Hopefully this will result in it being cut, or in it not being given to polluters who pay less than the market price for electricity. Not that there's a lot of other polluters eligible for it - it really is a special purpose subsidy for Rio Tinto. So we might as well just phase it out entirely.

End the Tiwai scam

A little over a year ago, Rio Tinto was pleading povery, claiming its Tiwai Point aluminium smelter was unprofitable, and threatening to close it unless it got a government handout to keep it running. Their bluff worked, and we ended up paying the BluffGeld by giving them lower electricity prices - less than a fifth of what us plebs pay on average. And now they're laughing about what suckers we are in their annual report:

The owner of the Bluff Aluminium smelter noted in its results statement released late yesterday how successful its bluff to shut down the smelter late last year had been. The threat led 51% state-owned Meridian Energy to give a $60m per year electricity price cut to Rio Tinto in January which means the smelter now pays just $35 per megawatt/hr. That compares with the average wholesale electricity price since January of $239 per megawatt/hr and the price this week in the lower South Island of $103/mw/hr.

[...]

Rio Tinto reported this lower price deal had contributed to its record US$12.1b profit in the first six months of 2021 and its record high dividend payout of US$9.1b. It illustrated its “outstanding financial results” slide (8) for investors with a picture of a Bluff Smelter worker. Most of the profits and dividends came from surging iron ore prices as China fired up its economy last year with more steel and concrete, but tens of millions would have come from the profits from Tiwai Point.

[Unemtnioned: their 1.7 million tons of carbon in 2019 - and likely a similar amount last year - worth an estimated $82 million a year at today's prices, or $250 million a year on the government's books]

As Bernard Hickey points out, this is just obscene when we have kiwis huddling in energy poverty. This company is taking us for a ride, driving up electricity prices for the rest of us and directly causing at least a million tons a year (two or three million this year) of extra carbon emissions from the coal it forces us to burn to make up for the electricity it uses. And they're openly laughing at us while doing so.

Its time to end this scam. We need to end all subsidies to Tiwai immediately: electricity prices, carbon, regulatory, pollution. Clearly they don't need them. We should use some of that money to develop alternative employment in Invercargill, as a hedge against future threats. And if this causes them to leave, good. Because the carbon subsidy alone makes it clear that we're better off just shutting this polluter down and paying everyone it employs to do something better with their lives rather than allowing this foreign extortion to continue.

Climate Change: Just predatory delay again

Another day, another story arguing that climate change is Just Too Hard for farmers, and that they should be given more time to wait for a magic technological solution which will cut emissions while allowing them to continue doing exactly what they're doing at the moment. Today, the magic Technological Solution is low-emissions cows, and like a methane vaccine, its just another exercise in predatory delay by New Zealand's biggest polluters. How can we tell this? Because their magic low emissions cows already exist. But rather than using them to reduce emissions, farmers use them to crank out more and more milk and pollution.

You can work out the efficiency of the New Zealand dairy herd from the herd size and production numbers in the NZ Dairy Statistics [PDF, p8 and 9] and the implied emissions factors per cow in the Greenhouse Gas Inventory [PDF, p192-193]. They tell a tale of continuous improvement. In 1990 we had 2.4 million cows producing 599 kg of milk solids, which at 77.8 kg of methane per cow, means an efficiency of .312 kg of methane per kg of milk solids. In 2019 we had over twice as many cows - 4.9 million of them - producing over three times as much milk solids - 1896 million kg - which at 96.8 kg of methane per cow, means .251 kg of methane per kg of milk solids. Thirty years of ordinary, business as usual breeding for more efficient production has produced a cow which is 25% more emissions efficient. Which sounds a lot like the supercow farmers say they're looking for! So why do we need to wait again?

The answer of course is so farmers can keep polluting as usual and not do anything to take responsibility for the problem they are causing. Its pure predatory delay. But we've given them 20 years already to start lowering emissions, and now (according to the weather at least) we are out of time. The planet is simultaneously on fire and flooding, and its simply no longer credible for them to stand there and pretend they can't do anything about when they clearly already have (and then wasted those gains by using them to make our problems worse). Farmers need to do their part, and since they obviously won't do that voluntarily, they need to be regulated into doing it.

How do we do this? The bare minimum is to cap milk production, and force reductions in herd numbers. Or we just do it directly and cap and cut cow numbers. Either will ensure that efficiency gains help the planet, not farmers. And on current business-as-usual that would meet the bottom end of the statutory 2050 methane target range. If we want to better - and we have to, because the current target is laughably weak - then we reduce those caps faster. Think of it as an incentive for farmers to go beyond business-as-usual, and do more than just talk about breeding better cows.

(Again, I am ignoring sheep and beef cattle from this, on the basis that a) they are also getting more efficient by business as usual, and b) high carbon prices will see them displaced by trees anyway. The problem is dairy, and so that's where we should focus the solution: on slaughtering the sacred cows).

Still the same question

The Independent Police Conduct authority has found another case where police used excessive force in making an arrest:

A police officer broke a woman’s arm with a baton before dragging her out of her car by the hair following a chase.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found the officer’s use of force was “excessive” and his actions were “unnecessary”.

Naturally, the police deny everything and claim the use of force was appropriate. But if anyone else had done it, they'd be slapping them with charges of assault with a weapon and injuring with intent. And so we're left asking the same question: why does the law apply to us and not to them? And how can a body which purports to be above the law have any credibility in enforcing it?

Profiteering politicians delegitimise parliament

Why aren't politicians interested in actually solving the housing crisis? Because virtually the entire political class is making massive profits from it:

MPs have pocketed $50 million in capital gains from their property interests in the last year amid a growing housing affordability crisis, a Stuff analysis has found.

It represents a significant increase in wealth for many elected representatives, around 95 per cent of whom have land or property interests. The vast majority of MPs are accumulating more wealth from their properties than from their salaries.

Pretty obviously, this is a conflict of interest on a massive scale. But its also a direct threat to the legitimacy of parliament and of our system of government in general, making it look like its really just a tool for the landed gentry to enrich themselves by fucking everybody else over. And the deeper the crisis gets, and the more people are excluded from safe and secure housing, the more illegitimate it will seem. Over on The Spinoff, Bernard Hickey is talking about the housing crisis driving a Rogernomics-Ruthanasia-MMP-scale political reckoning. Politicians nakedly profiting from everyone else's misery is only going to strengthen that push, and make the backlash harsher.

Democracy wins in Samoa

Over three months ago Samoa had an election, in which the people voted out the incumbent Human Rights Protection Party and voted in the opposition FAST Party. The incumbent Human Rights Protection Party ignored the results and clung to power, hoping to get their patsy head of state to call another election they could then fix. But on Friday afternoon, their plan came tumbling down, with the Court of Appeal ruling that FAST was the government, and had been since their impromptu swearing-in ceremony back in May. The ruling left the HRPP with nowhere to legally go - there's no appeal, no wiggle room, and no way even to delay things further using the patsy head of state (he can only act on advice, and advice from the old regime is pretty explicitly no longer valid). And so they've finally blinked: the tyrant Tuilaepa started packing up his office over the weekend, admitted defeat last night, and has just given a concession speech to supporters. The new government will formally take power tomorrow, and parliament is scheduled to finally meet on wednesday.

So there's actually a happy ending: the Samoan judiciary actually stared down an attempted executive coup, and forced the results of elections to be respected. And they managed it because both the former government and the Samoan people had enough respect for the rule of law that any attempt to fire them or retain power in the face of a clear ruling of illegality just wasn't going to stick. And because they didn't have an army to fuck things up or give the regime the option of just ruling by force.

There's still unfinished business though. The FAST government has talked about constitutional amendments to plug the gaps exploited by the HRPP to attempt to cling to power, and there'll probably be a referendum on those at some point (since I don't imagine the HRPP will vote for them). And there needs to be a clearout of regime loyalists. The attorney-general has already said she is resigning, and good riddance - she's destroyed her credibility, utterly poisoned her relationship with the judiciary, and made her position with the new government untenable by being an utter patsy of the HRPP. The head of state also needs to go: the court has been clear that he has repeatedly overstepped the constitutional mark and acting in bad faith throughout this. Though his term expires next year, so if he doesn't resign before then, he can simply not be reappointed. But above all, after this debacle Tuilaepa the tyrant needs to resign from parliament and exit politics forever. And hopefully, there'll be people in his party trying to convince him of that right now.

Climate Change: The solution farmers don't want us to talk about

RNZ this morning has a piece asking Can NZ really meet its methane emissions targets?. Posing it as a question like this frames it as difficult, more of the "but its too hard!" whine from farmers. But its not hard at all. Pretty obviously, we can meet methane reduction targets simply by reducing the number of cows.

This is the solution farmers don't want us to talk about. So, they spend a lot of time holding out the prospect of a methane vaccine to reduce emissions technologically. Obviously, this would be great if it actually existed, but we've had nearly twenty years of research on this and we still don't have one. Meanwhile, the focus on a non-existent future solution has distracted us from the very real things we can do to cut emissions here and now, allowing emissions to rise and rise. Its honestly beginning to look like a dairy version of the coal industry's constant talk about "carbon capture and storage": using the promise of non-existent technology as a tool of predatory delay. Governments have stopped believing the CCS bullshit, adopting a "you can have policy when you deploy it" approach, and we should treat methane vaccines and other promised technological solutions to agricultural emissions the same way. Yes, that would be nice, but for the time being its a fantasy, and we no longer have time for fantasies. We need to focus on what we can do now. And what we can do now is cut cow numbers.

This isn't as radical as it sounds. New Zealand has had fewer cows in the past [PDF, p9]. A 10% cut would simply mean cutting the herd back to the size it was a decade ago. A 49% cut by 2050 would mean cutting it back to what it was in 1990, the baseline year for our emissions (interestingly, both cuts would occur over a similar length of time to the original growth, so the industry should easily be able to handle that change). It would mean fewer farms, and fewer farmers. It would also mean cleaner water and a better overall environment. (It would mean less food, but we export 90% of that, so even significant cuts will leave more than enough for all of us).

(I am focusing on cows here because they're the really big emitters, and because current carbon prices mean trees will cut the numbers of sheep and beef cattle quite happily by normal market mechanisms. Those industries are now uncompetitive compared to sitting back and watching trees grow. And the quicker they admit it and move on, the better off we'll all be).

We need policy to start driving these cuts now. Bringing farming fully into the ETS with no subsidies will help, but we will probably need explicit herd-size and stocking limits as well to drive the reduction. The good news is that this policy is completely reversible: if in the future farmers get their magic vaccine, we can let cow numbers rise again (subject to water quality and other environmental limits). But in the meantime, we need to start cutting them down to size. And the sooner we start on it, the better.

Looking for more coal is indefensible

Siberia is burning. China is flooding. Westport flooded last weekend. And against this backdrop of climate breakdown, the Southland District Council thinks its a good time to approve new coal exploration.

This is a terrible idea. But its also a waste of time. Any coal discovered can never be burned - not if Southland wants to keep its neighbours in Invercargill above water, anyway - so there is literally no point even looking for it. The best thing we can do with coal is leave it in the ground and forget about it. And even Southland District mayor Gary Tong seemed to recognise how indefensible his position was: he didn't want to say why the council had approved it, and certainly didn't want to say whether he had personally supported it (in the end, he admitted he did, with some mumbling about "jobs" and that they'd just get "Crown Minerals" - actually the Minister - to approve it instead. Well, then the Minister can be the climate criminal and face the lawsuit rather than him).

We need this to stop happening - both to remove the risk of further coal being burned, but also to stop companies from wasting their resources pursuing an asset which will ultimately become stranded and valueless. How do we do it? An immediate amendment to the Crown Minerals Act forbidding any future exploration or mining permits for coal and other fossil fuels would be a start, along with a sunset clause on existing permits and resource consents. That would both cut off supply, and send a clear message to existing coal users that they need to transition to carbon-free alternatives. The only question is how long we give them to phase out: five years or ten.

Update: And if any MP wants to work on this, here's the first stab at a member's bill to do those things: the Crown Minerals (Ending Fossil Fuels) Amendment Bill. It needs work, in particular on transitional provisions to state clearly that the new provisions prevail and apply to all pending applications, and that no compensation is payable (and on unpicking previous transitional provisions which preserve rights against past amendments) - but its a start.

An end to imprisoning refugees?

Back in May, Amnesty International exposed New Zealand's repuslive system of refugee detention, and the ongoing human rights abuses it leads to. It clearly embarassed the government, because today they've announced a formal inquiry into the practice - the first step to ending it:

But following the release in May of a damning report by Amnesty International into the practice, the Government is now acknowledging swift action is needed.

The Minister of Immigration Kris Faafoi and Associate Minister Phil Twyford have ordered a review into Immigration New Zealand’s processes following Amnesty's research. The review will focus on the appropriateness of the use of Corrections and Police facilities for immigration detention.

[...]

[Amnesty International Executive Director Meg] De Ronde welcomes the Government’s prompt response to their meeting but cautions there is still work to be done.

“We’re heartened to see such a prompt and direct result to our research and to the meeting we had with the Ministers and the Asylum Seeker’s Support Trust. A review is a good first step, but we along with others in civil society will be keeping the pressure on until we see legislative change to stop the imprisonment of asylum seekers in criminal justice facilities.”

Good. This practice needs to end. We don't accept it when Australia does it, and we should not acept it from our own government either.

Hydrogen in Southland?

New Zealand wants to move to more renewable electricity. But there's a barrier: the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter. It sucks up 13% of our total electricity supply, but its continued threats to shut down create ongoing uncertainty about demand, which puts people off building the additional renewables we need. But it seems that Tiwai's suppliers, Meridian and Contact, have a solution: just build something else:

New Zealand could become the world's first large-scale producer of green hydrogen if Contact Energy and Meridian Energy's plans pan out.

The two big power companies are looking to develop the world's largest green hydrogen plant in Southland, once the supply agreement with Aluminium Smelters for Tiwai Point comes to an end in late 2024.

"New Zealand has a key competitive advantage, as the renewable electricity available from 1 January 2025 could produce green hydrogen at an internationally competitive price point," a report by global consultancy McKinsey & Co said.

Hydrogen is not a very good fuel, but it may have some uses in our future energy system depending on which ways heavy vehicles go. It is a useful chemical feedstock, and that's where its value actually lies: rebuilding a chemical industry that isn't dependent on gas. But it can be made anywhere there is power and water, which suggests that there isn't actually a lot of "competitive advantage" to be had. But ultimately, that's all a problem for Meridian and Contact and whoever goes into business with them.

Obviously, the plan lives or dies on whether Tiwai actually shuts down (something which looks unlikely this month). But by talking about it, Meridian and Contact have signalled that they are committed to ensuring that electricity demand stays high, which should in turn help encourage that investment in renewables that we need.

Samoa's women's quota: Have I missed something?

(Narrator voice: Yes, yes I did. See correction at the bottom)

Another election petition was finalised in Samoa today, seeing the first finding of an illegal practice against a FAST candidate (a party roadshow made a customary gift - koha in NZ terms - during a period where these are forbidden). She wasn't disqualified - it was an illegal practice, not a corrupt one - but before I learned that I wondered whether this would affect the operation of Samoa's women's quota. And that rabbit-hole got interesting.

Samoa's constitution requires that a minimum of 10% of parliament be women, with additional MPs appointed if not enough are elected. It has been established by recent court rulings that that (presently) means six women, and that appointments are made after all election petitions and resulting byelections are resolved (and that parliament can sit before that). Section 44(1B) of Samoa's constitution says that the (unsuccessful) candidates with the highest number of votes are appointed. According to the final election results, the top five unsuccessful candidates were:

• Toomata Norah Leota (FAST) (780 votes)
• Gatoloaifaana Amataga Alesana-Gidlow (HRPP) (555 votes)
• Ali'imalemanu Alofa Tuuau (HRPP) (464 votes)
• Lolomatauama Eseta Mataituli (FAST) (292 votes)
• Atuatasi Katifa Bryce (FAST) (244 votes)

(Note that following the resignation of Leota Tima Leavai there are now only four female MPs. There are a bunch of byelections to be determined, which may see women elected or poll well, but on the present numbers, assuming nothing changes that seems to mean Leota and Gidlow would be appointed, with no change in the balance of power).

On 20 April, after these results came out, Samoa's head of state purported to appoint Ali'imalemanu Alofa Tuuau as an additional member. That appointment was later thrown out by the courts, but on the basis that it was made at the wrong time. Meanwhile, I'm left wondering why the third highest-polling unsuccessful candidate was appointed in the first place. Have I missed something?

Correction: And the thing I missed: the clause saying "“Highest number of votes” means the percentage of the total valid votes in a constituency polled by a woman candidate" (which I guess is because Samoan electorates are not equal-sized). So Tuuau has 464 / 1159 votes = 40%, Leota 780 / 2200 votes = 35%, and Gidlow 555 / 1669 votes = 33%, and Tuuau and Leota are first to be appointed if nothing changes.

A promising start

The "rebate" half of the government's feebate scheme to lower transport emissions came into force three weeks ago. And it looks like its had an immediate effect, with two months worth of EVs registered in the first 19 days alone:

More than 1300 electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles were registered in the first 19 days of the Government’s new “feebate” policy taking effect.

Though a small fragment of the overall light vehicle market, that number was higher than the two months of electric and plug-in hybrid sales that preceded it, and about triple the daily average for the first half of 2021.

[...]

According to Ministry of Transport figures released to Stuff, 1357 electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids were registered from July 1 to July 19 – including both brand-new vehicles and newly imported secondhand vehicles.

We'll get full monthly figures here early next month, but this is a very promising start. While the numbers are still low overall, and sometimes distorted by government procurement, it looks like the policy has roughly tripled EV uptake. The policy was expected to see 4,000 more EVs than the status quo, and it looks like they're well on the way to that. And when the fees on dirty vehicles kick in, the incentive for a clean one should be even stronger.

Taking shortsighted penny-pinching to a whole new level

Over the weekend Westport was hit by devastating floods. Half the town had to be evacuated, 89 homes (so far) are uninhabitable, and another 400 (of ~1700) need serious repairs. The total cost hasn't come in yet, but its going to be well into the tens of millions of dollars. And it turns out that the entire thing was preventable:

A $10 million flood protection scheme proposed for Westport would have prevented most of the devastation caused by the weekend's massive flood, the West Coast Regional Council operations director says.

[...]

Randal Beal said the scheme involved extensive stopbanks and floodwalls – essentially ringfencing the town from the Buller and Orowaiti rivers – and would cost $10.2 million. “It is designed for a one-in-a-hundred-year flood in the Buller, and whether it would have protected the town this time, the simple answer is yes, unless there was a flood bank failure,” he said.

[...]

The regional council originally pitched the project to Westport ratepayers in 2017, but they had little appetite for it, Beal said.

Only 10.8 percent of respondents supported it; 24.6 percent preferred to do nothing about their town's flood risk and 30 per cent had no opinion.

“It would have been an expense for ratepayers, certainly, and without a majority supporting it we couldn't go ahead,” he said.

This takes Keeping Rates Low to an entirely new level. Wellington's regular poonamis are embarrassing, but it takes real shortsighted penny-pinching to make 5% of your town homeless. They're lucky no-one died. But hey, at least some old dudes didn't lose an election.

Meanwhile, I'd hope that other councils around the country are looking at their flood protection, and their climate change projections, and prioritising improvements. And if they're not, they should face the rage of voters in 2022.

Climate Change: Calling time on "leakage"

When New Zealand was trying to implement carbon pricing back in the early 2000s, polluters whined about "leakage", either threatening to take their production overseas so they could continue to pollute for free, or complaining that paying the full cost of their pollution would mean they would be out-competed by those who did not. As a result, the ETS we eventually got had hefty free allocations for "trade-exposed" industries, meaning much weaker incentives for them to cut pollution. But there's another way to deal with leakage: remove the advantage of foreign pollution subsidies at the border, by making high-carbon imports pay for their embodied pollution. And this week, two of the world's biggest economies have taken steps to introduce such border adjustment mechanisms:

Milk, meat and metal exports could one day be stung with border tariffs, if the country falls behind international efforts to cut carbon.

Last week, lawmakers in the European Union and the US announced proposals to put levies on foreign goods that aren’t subject to carbon pricing in their home countries.

The EU tariffs will begin with industrial products, such as aluminium. Experts are divided on whether tariffs could one day extend to our biggest exports, dairy and meat. The goal is to level the playing field, so EU and US-based businesses don’t lose out to countries with softer emissions rules.

New Zealand exports might escape levies if they are covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme, or a proposed scheme to price farming’s greenhouse gases that could kick in from 2025 – if those schemes are deemed tough enough by overseas lawmakers.

[Emphasis added]

As I've said before, this is something New Zealand should welcome, as it punishes climate cheats. But the key is in the last bit. Would an ETS which includes enormous pollution subsidies be regarded as equivalent? Alternatively, the EU's detailed proposal [PDF] allows importers to deduct any carbon price already paid in the country of origin, but the methodology for this is a matter for future regulation, and there's a big question of how it would interact with free allocations. In particular, for aluminium - the NZ industry actually affected by the EU rule - its unclear what deduction they can make, given that their free allocation (1,697,437 tons in 2019) was more than twice their actual emissions (663,620 tons in 2019 according to Emissions Tracker). Will they have to pay more, to compensate for the excessive subsidy?

Of course, that problem simply goes away if we remove subsidies. And major global economies taking this step significantly reduces the case for their continued existence. After all, if New Zealand polluters' competitors can no longer gain a competitive advantage by carbon cheating, why do we need to "compensate" for it? If carbon prices on exports are simply deductible at the EU or US border, why do we need to weaken the pollution-reduction incentive by keeping them artificially low for favoured industries? Instead, we could get rid of them, and make polluters face proper incentives to reduce their pollution. So the quicker the EU and US phase this in, and the broader it is, the better.

Exporting their social licence

One of the slogans of Friday's ugly farmer protests was "no farms, no food". But the truth is that most of what farmers grow is exported, and kiwis are increasingly being priced out of eating it at all:

If you feel like red meat is more expensive than it used to be, you're right.

Around 95 percent of New Zealand's sheep meat and 87 percent of beef is exported, and what's left behind for locals is being sold at a premium.

[...]

Beef + Lamb NZ chief executive Rod Slater said the cost of meat in New Zealand reflected what markets overseas were willing to pay.

"If a housewife in the middle of Oxford in the UK is prepared to pay a certain price for a cut of meat, we have to match that in New Zealand," he said. "We are price takers, not price makers in this country."

I guess you could say that what they're really exporting is their social licence to operate.

So, we get 10% of the food and pay 100% of the environmental costs (which effectively end up as a subsidy to foreign consumers) - and get higher prices into the bargain. Meanwhile, farmers laugh all the way to the bank, having ripped us off at both ends. What, exactly, is in this for us again? And why should we listen to their whining about having to obey basic environmental standards, or pay for their emissions like the rest of us, when the primary benefit of their operations goes straight overseas?

At the moment we give the farming sector an effective $2 billion a year carbon subsidy, plus Cthulhu knows how much in water (both of which pale in comparison to the effective subsidy of past land theft), so we can pay more for food. And that seems like a pretty shit deal. We should end those subsidies immediately, make those "self-reliant" farmers stand on their own two feet for once. And if this means that half of them go out of business, I honestly don't see that as a negative. Again, its not like they provide any social benefit to justify their carve outs and subsidies.

The government needs to act on this warning

Over the weekend devastating floods hit the South Island. Half the population of Westport were forced from their homes, and it looks like hundreds have been made permanently homeless. Its a taste of what we can expect in the future due to climate change, and things are only going to get worse. The only way they stop getting worse is if we stop spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In this context, the government's plan to flood the market with carbon and allow polluters to emit an extra 7 million tons this year in order to keep carbon prices low looks wildly irresponsible. Every ton of carbon matters. Every ton makes it worse. While how bad things ultimately get depends on total global emissions, its trivially obvious that us allowing extra makes things worse, not better. And to do it because essentially you can't be arsed stopping it is a perfect illustration of the banality of evil.

We've had a warning here, and the government needs to act on it. And if they don't, if they just continue sleepwalking us deeper into the apocalypse because its just "too hard" for them to do otherwise, we need to hold them accountable for it.

A howl of ugliness

Farmers are protesting today, invading cities with tractors and utes in protest against water and climate change policy. The core message of their "howl of protest" is meant to be "no farmers, no food" - which rather undermines their own case, given that 80% of the food they produce is exported. We could drive half the farmers in Aotearoa out of business, be massively environmentally better off, and still have more than enough cheese for everyone. But of course, they're also displaying their ugly side, with signs displaying racism, gun nuttery, more racism, and of course sexism, misogyny, and an obsession with dead political ideologies. And we haven't even got to the weird conspiracy theorist stuff yet!

Meanwhile, parts of Germany just received two months' rain in two days, causing massive, unexpected floods which have left 58 people dead. The US and Canada are experiencing another heatwave, and a huge chunk of the US is on fire again. And we may be about to get another freak rain and flooding event in Westland. In these circumstances, protesting against climate change policy is as irresponsible and sociopathic as being an antivaxxer. Oh, wait!

Basicly, this sort of messaging is likely to be... unpersuasive with urban Aotearoa. Where "unpersuasive" equals "as popular as a proverbial unpopular thing". Which means it is unlikely to be persuasive with the government either. Urban Aotearoa is where the votes have been for decades, and the first rule of government is "learn to count". Maybe farmers should learn that too?

Proactive release: What is the government afraid of?

Last month, Newsroom reported on the government's slow progress on reviewing its proactive release policy. The story quoted Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins as saying that there had been "ongoing reviews" about the effectiveness of proactive releases. Naturally, I asked for these reviews using the OIA. Naturally, I got dicked around, and had to complain to the Ombudsman to get a response. And naturally, it turns out he was big-noting. Those "reviews" turn out to be "people talked about it at an OIA forum a few times", plus a partially redacted piece from a daily briefing last December. Hipkins does note that

The review I described have been interim assessments of the implementation of the policy, based on the feedback received from agencies and the baseline metrics available.

But despite explicitly asking for such material, these weirdly don't seem to have been included. Though possibly he was referring to real work done back in late 2019 and early 2020, which has of course been withheld entirely. The government espouses transparency, but when it comes to actually practicising it, its back to control-freakery and secrecy as usual.

Which is not just disappointing, but downright weird. I mean, what are they afraid of here? What's the threat to orderly and effective decision-making? That people might agree with them? That we might nod and say "yes, this is very good work, and it is leading to positive change"? That we might, in short, encourage them?

Hipkins' response mentions the prospect of a single searchable platform for proactive releases. Obviously, that's the sort of thing which will take time and public consultation to develop properly, but it would be great to see. It would just be nice if they were more open about their plans here, rather than clinging reflexively to bad old habits.