Climate change

In a recent incident involving New Zealand politician Maureen Pugh’s climate change denial, the opposition leader was grilled about the issue. However, his criticism of the government’s coal imports lacked economic insight, as these imports do not affect the country’s non-agricultural carbon emissions due to the existing Emissions Trading Scheme. Economists emphasize the importance of aligning climate policies with economic evidence.

If only the Government’s public relations staff were as good as Lotto New Zealand’s.

When the EU embarked on developing its own taxonomy, maybe it should have consulted with a few biologists. That may have prevented it from creating a monster.

It is much easier to channel public money to some preferred emitters and then post pictures of electric vehicles on Twitter. It achieves little but the warm fuzzy feeling is priceless.

The problem with economics is that it often uses a language that non-economists do not speak. But economists should know better.

Whether to cut emissions is a moral question. How to achieve this cut should be an economic one. The price of getting this distinction wrong is high.

An organisation confident in its recommendations should not fear transparency about its modelling.

If we care for effective emissions reductions, we need to understand how the ETS works. Otherwise, we will fail both the environment and the economy.