Climate Change legislation and who pays.

1 July 2010 has arrived and that means the Emission Trading Scheme is going to impact on everyone through higher fuel and electricity costs. See what this means to you, click here. You will also be able to see the impact of the forthcoming Tax cuts and the ACC Employee levy increases as a mitigation of the cost increases.

Introduction

For quite some time now New Zealanders have been bombarded with information about climate change, greenhouse gases, carbon credits, emissions trading, to name just a few of words in this reasonably new language.

Leading up to the initial Climate Change legislation in September 2008, the Government had an army of civil servants and others generating copious reports, theoretical models with very little about the financial implications of the policies that the general public could read and understand.

Carboncalcs.com has been developed to change that and allow individuals to look at some aspects of their "carbon foot-print" as well as looking at the financial impact of the forthcoming climate change policy regime, starting with land based activities (because they are the most significant and probably least understood.

Although the Kyoto protocol is about "fixing" greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels (a period when NZ was climbing out of the post 1987 crash while everyone else in the world had moved on), Prime Minister at the time Helen Clark is reported as having seriously suggested a zero emissions objective. This would come at a huge cost to NZ Inc. And in the context of world emissions, NZ contributes an infinitesimal amount of CO₂e (Carbon dioxide equivalents) - 0.2%. However, there is no denying that NZ needs to be playing its part. Only time will tell at what cost!

One of the major anomalies of the Climate Change legislation is the expropriation of value from private owners of pre-1990 forested land, the majority of which is Maori land. Click here. The situation arises because of the deforestation liability incurred if the use of the land is changed.

Check on the savings you may be able to make from low energy light bulbs, click here!