Before the impact of the rise of GST on 1 October, Tourism businesses will will first bracing themselves for the cold reality of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to be introduced on 1 July.
Imposing an ETS based on inconclusive science that will raise electricity, petrol prices and force producers to account for greenhouse gas emissions at a time of economic volatility is madness.
Further redistribution of earnings taken away from the productive to prop up the unproductive will restrict economic recovery and ironically will achieve nothing for the environment.
So will the pain of the ETS be worthwhile? Will this window dressing piece of legislation save us from ourselves and force social and economic change that will "save the planet?"
There has been a few emails doing the rounds lately to coincide with NZ's pending ETS. We like the following that has obviously originated in America and has a unique perspective:
Should our Government even be bothering about Emissions Trading anymore???
For all of you out there in America and across the globe who have fought so hard to tackle the hideous enemy of our planet, namely carbon emissions, that bogus god you worship named "Climate Change" or "Global Warming", there is some really bad news that will be very painful for you to process. But it is my duty to pass it on to you anyway.
Are you sitting down?
Okay, here's the bombshell. The current volcanic eruption going on in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash some time ago, has, to this point, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions.
I know, I know.... (have a group hug)...it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving your Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up til midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, going on vacation to a city park instead of Yosemite, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your $1 light bulbs with $10 light bulbs ....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tube in just the past weeks.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in the past weeks has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And, those hundreds of thousands of American jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emissions demands on businesses.. . you know, the ones that are creating even more emissions than when they were creating American jobs, well that must seem really worthwhile now.
I'm so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. will start in about two months and those fires will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.
So, grab a Coke, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!
