frogblog

I am alarmed - to put it mildly - by this week’s news of a new company established with the sole purpose of making it easy for tenants to pay their rent by credit card.

Based in Auckland’s K’Rd, ‘RentExpress’ charges tenants a ‘small’ fee for the privilege of paying their rent on tick.

Landlords and property managers, on the other hand, are not charged a fee for the service.

As we enter a period of deepening financial stress and hardship for many low and middle income New Zealanders, making it easier for people to pay their rent by credit is the last thing any ethical company should be doing.

Of course I accept the democratic right of those involved in RentExpress to establish a business based on extracting money from tenants for the privilege of getting even deeper into debt.

However, I fear that the new business will simply end up causing even greater long term debt among those least able to pay it back.

There is also a risk that landlords could end up requiring tenants to sign up to ‘RentExpress’ as a condition of tenancy. There appears to be nothing in the Residential Tenancies Act to stop this happening.

The Green Party would far rather see the establishment of a Rent Express scheme such as that run by the Stratford-on-Avon District Council in the UK.

Stratford’s scheme involves council housing advisers providing cash deposits and advance rent payments to landlords on behalf of low income tenants, and acting as a guarantor for the tenants involved.

Unlike the New Zealand model, Rent Express schemes like Stratford’s would be a wonderful contribution our local councils could make to helping struggling tenants, and their landlords.

Friends of the Earth and their friends have produced a moving video message for our politicians, The Big Ask. The video really says what needs to be said:

I have to ask of course, but is that Don Elder playing the suit? Now that the suits are in charge of new Zealand’s climate change negotiators and responses, we can expect a backlash from our larger trading partners. Polite critics call it special pleading. I call it whinging.

In the paper this morning I referred to the MAF briefing to the incoming Government released yesterday.The Government’s press release chose to focus on bland reassertion of the fact that agriculture is the back-bone of the economy as if someone had forgotten.

Far more topical is the briefing’s sage advice for our climate change negotiators in Poznan and the Government’s advisors considering changes to the ETS (p9-10):

International climate change frameworks and institutions have the potential to significantly impact on the primary sectors and their overseas markets. It is, therefore, of considerable strategic importance that New Zealand is both engaged, and sufficiently credible in its domestic policy settings, to influence international responses to climate change. New Zealand agriculture and forestry must be, and must be seen to be, part of the solution rather than the problem.

Unfortunately, yesterday’s admission [RNZ audio] that our negotiating team is focusing on detailed Kyoto rules around farming and forestry, at the expense of giving moral leadership by commitment to a strong binding target, suggests they are trying to redefine the problem rather than be part of the solution.

However, already the pressure on the Government is showing, the Prime Minister moving to limit the review of the ETS at the post-Cabinet meeting yesterday, and rule out any amendments to delay it for now.

So it seems that Rodney will get a brief chance to use his ecology degree to prove the world’s climate scientists wrong, and then we’ll be back to tinkering with the details of the ETS.

Kevin Hague pointed out yesterday the dire need for the $1 billion dollar Green Homes Fund to fix our homes’ chronic health and efficiency problems highlighted this week by the NZBCSD study. The Fund is written into the ETS legislation, and will require an amendment to kill it. Maybe there is hope National will see sense?

The dent to NZ’s credibility caused by National’s halt of the ETS and agreement to conduct a flat earth enquiry into the science, is rapidly turning into a car crash.

[Frog: I have linked to the relevant documents in Russel’s post]

Yesterday I was informed that a number of officials have been dumped from the New Zealand Government delegation to the climate change talks in Poznan, Poland [PDF factsheet].

Apparently, a number of senior officials from the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry for the Environment who were all set to attend to advice our Ministers during the negotiations, were told at the last minute to unpack their bags and stay at home.

One was even at the airport when he or she got the call to not board the plane!

I can only speculate what is going on here, which officials have gone and which haven’t, and what that means for the focus and expertise of the delegation.

Perhaps the National Ministers attending the meeting believe they don’t need expert advice from crucial sector agencies?

Perhaps the attempts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to get exclusive control over climate change negotiations have finally succeeded?

There’s no need for unnecessary ‘bureaucrat miles’, but I would like some reassurance that there isn’t a political reason for excluding expert and experienced officials.

I love a good turn of phrase, and “ethical terminators” makes a good turn of phrase. It belongs with the joke about “military intelligence” being an oxymoron. The DomPost reported on this article from the Telegraph today. In an effort to reduce the incidence of war crimes, the US is hiring specialists to help give their new generation of autonomous weapons systems a sense of ethics and a respect for the Geneva Conventions. This is something that the Pentagon concedes is difficult to achieve with mere mortal soldiers, who have a tendency to behave badly under the stress of war.

Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.

He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?”

Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants.

Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech university, who is working on software for the US Army has written a report which concludes robots, while not “perfectly ethical in the battlefield” can “perform more ethically than human soldiers.”

He says that robots “do not need to protect themselves” and “they can be designed without emotions that cloud their judgement or result in anger and frustration with ongoing battlefield events”.

First hand experience of battlefield stress leaves me none the wiser regarding the development of ethical terminators. I will say this though. Just the thought that some Pentagon desk jockey would consider ethics at all in the development of high-tech weaponry gives me just a glimmer of hope.

Had they considered the ethics of Roundup Ready GE corn and canola before unleashing them upon the entire continent of North America, the US and Canadian family farm might still exist.

Had they considered the ethics of cluster bombs before they spread them across Afghanistan, Iraq and southern Lebanon, the global economy wouldn’t now be losing billions in lives, lost productivity and cleanup.

Had they considered the ethics of depleted uranium weapons before using them in the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the global economy wouldn’t be facing the billions in health costs for both Iraqi and American civilians and military personnel.

I think if we spent the time to consider the ethics of terminator genes for food crops, we wouldn’t need to spend any time debating an international convention on how to manage them. They’d be gone.

I have grave doubts that the US will succeed in instilling their autonomous weaponry with a sense of ethics. But I do welcome the attempt. I would welcome any attempt to instil a sense of ethics back into the world of political discourse, which has been over run by the amoral dictates of the “free market”.

The T-800 from the Terminator films

Simon Upton writes a good critique of New Zealand’s climate change situation in today’s Dom Post. It must be amazing for the former National Party Minister who got us involved with the Kyoto process in the first place to watch as once again, we go back to square one in terms of our response to climate change.

… with the first year of the five-year commitment period under the Kyoto protocol almost over, square one is looking increasingly untenable. It has also become a rather expensive piece of real estate. New Zealand is the only country in the world to have fully elaborated both a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme and implemented neither. That takes some doing.

He goes on to criticise Labour for failing to get a cross party consensus, and National for backing away from a cross party consensus when Labour moved towards their emissions trading policy. He also chides the Greens for discounting National in the lead up to the election.  The Greens offered before the election to sit down with National and work on fixing up the ETS, since a number of the objections in National’s minority report the Greens agreed with and were already trying to negotiate to fix. Alas, John Key refused to discuss the issue. I am pretty confident that the offer still stands, John.

Most striking in the article  is Upton’s criticism of ACT and the select committee.

What fresh insights can a select committee of New Zealand politicians add to a subject that has been exhaustively canvassed elsewhere? Anyone who has studied the issue in good faith knows that there are no certainties and that it is a risk management issue. Picking holes in computer models or climate data is a path to nowhere and would make New Zealand a laughing stock.

I couldn’t have said it better. Oh wait. I already have said it. Many times. So has Jeanette. Good on you Upton. Pull us all up on it and tell us all to pull finger. Sage advice. The risks of inaction are too great. Too great for the environment, for society and for the economy. Too great to risk becoming the laughing stock at Poznan, or Copenhagen for that matter.

With consents granted to the Arnold hydro scheme (45MW), and now a new proposal for a dam on coal-mining land on the Stockton plateau (25MW), the primary rationale for Meridian’s Mokihinui Hydro Proposal (MHP) has been removed.

Meridian’s proposed MHP cites these benefits:

The Mokihinui Hydro Proposal would:

1. produce between 310 and 360 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year of renewable electricity generation.
2. meet the current and immediate future electricity needs of the South Island’s West Coast
3. provide security of supply to the West Coast region
4. on average - reduce the nodal price on the West Coast in the setting of wholesale electricity prices
5. significantly reduce transmission losses currently experienced which can be as much as 50% at peak demand times
6. provide an upgrade of and new sections of the 16km degraded walking track from near the entrance of the Mokihinui Gorge to the Mokihinui Forks area.
7. Include the formation of a Trust with other individuals and interested parties to investigate the potential to provide a further walking track that would link the Mokihinui Forks to the Lyell.

Points 2 to 5 all assume that there is no West Coast alternatives to generate the required power. The West Coast’s peak demand is about 65MW and projected to increase to around 80-90MW in the near future. Current supply capacity on the Coast is 18.5MW, but the addition of Arnold makes 63.5MW, and a new Stockton dam (subject to due diligence on the environmental impact of that proposal) would cover the projected growth in demand. And this doesn’t even include efficiency and co-generation options in the coal and dairy industries on the Coast, which are the primary drivers of growing demand. Hence, points 2-5 can be met without destroying the Mokihinui.

Points 6 and 7 are misnomers. The track upgrade and developments can be done without the dam, and the Trust is proceeding on this basis already.

Only point 1 remains valid. Inherent in any new project is new generation, that’s self-evident, but the question is at what cost, fiscally and environmentally. The environmental cost of MHP is huge, and the economics of other renewables nationwide are comparable, so that is where some national strategic planning of new generation would be useful. Add to this that the proposed National Policy Statement on renewable energy recognises the inherent irreversibility of a large hydro dam, and well, it’s not rocket science that the MHP is a non-essential and environmentally undesirable proposal.

Hence if we proceed with the MHP, we are simply sacrificing premium biodiversity, a pristine wild river, and our conservation credibility, unnecessarily and irreversibly.

Saving the Mokihinui was not just an election year campaign for the Greens, it continues to be top of mind, and now we have two new South Island-based MPs to help fight it. Hopefully Meridian will see the writing on the dam wall and gracefully withdraw.

Greenpeace has turned it’s front webpage into a giant countdown clock leading to Copenhagen to highlight how little time we have left to cut a real deal on climate change. I quite like it.

Temperature increases, global emissions and loss of ice at the Arctic and Antarctic have now overshot scientists’ worst case scenarios. The Arctic icecap has entered what’s been called a ‘death spiral‘. For the first time in human history, you can take a ship right around the North Pole. There may be no summer ice left at all at the North Pole within five years. Many are calling for the world to be put on a war footing.

No Right Turn also has a good post about what is at stake for NZ in Poznan.

According to Radio New Zealand [audio] this morning, we’re primarily looking for a change in the rules around agriculture. Half of New Zealand’s emissions currently come from agriculture, and rather than working to reduce or offset them, the government has decided that it is easier simply to try and get them not to count. Voila! Instant emissions reduction, without changing the underlying reality one iota. This is a cynical tactic, which will not do a thing to help the situation (and in fact will give a false picture of its seriousness).

Fortunately, National’s lurch into climate change denial is likely to fundamentally undercut our special pleading at Poznan. No-one is going to listen to a country which has just dumped its only policy for controlling emissions and is conducting a fundamental review of the science.

Meanwhile, the Listener wonders whether National will get lost on the road map to change. I think they have already lost their way, based on our embarrasing stance in Poznan. It’s ironic, given National’s election campaign for change.

Another year rolls around and we are once again reminded of the scourge that continues to gather pace across the globe. Despite a peak of new cases in 2005, NZ continues to struggle with 2+ new HIV cases per week. Complacency amongst middle aged men and the resurgence of bareback porn are both considered to be behind the high infection rate.

The NZ Aids Foundation is at the forefront and regularly holds community forums to try and figure out how to get the safe sex message out there without sounding like a broken record. The 2007 report can be found here.

Here are some of the global trends, sourced from Avert.org:

More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans.

At the end of 2007, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide, and for 59% in sub-Saharan Africa.

Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide.

In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs.

The number of people living with HIV has risen from around 8 million in 1990 to 33 million today, and is still growing. Around 67% of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.

My heart goes out to all those living with HIV/Aids and all those who work the front lines every day of the year. Keep up the good work.

Why would someone who believes climate change is a hoax and human activity is not contributing to climate change, want a carbon tax? Why would you tax fossil fuels if you don’t believe they are doing any harm? Why would a party that has campaigned on a carbon tax since 1993 and accepted the ETS only reluctantly, not welcome the chance to revert to a carbon tax now?

Why would a “mainstream” party that campaigned on an ETS - but a different one - set up a select committee enquiry into maybe preferring a carbon tax?

What does Key mean when he says the ETS will be “put on hold” when most of it won’t be operational for more than a year anyway?

Why would a government that has set a target of reducing greenhouse emissions 50% below 1990 levels by 2050, oppose and dismantle every measure that could help achieve that, while at the same time reviewing whether there should even be a pricing signal?

Why would a government that wants to be taken seriously internationally, on the eve of the next climate change talks, set up a committee of politicians to review whether the scientists of the IPCC, the Royal Society and NASA, etc., know what they are talking about, or whether an alternative view is “right”?

Why would a government that aims primarily at economic growth and positions itself as business friendly create such policy uncertainty that international investors withdraw from New Zealand?

Most of these bizarre situations can be explained by the transition from opposition to minority government.

Key has set up a carefully balanced government where he can go as far to the right as he wants and justify it as “Act made me do it”. But he doesn’t have to go an inch further than he is comfortable with - “sorry Rodney, Maori Party won’t go there”.

It will be a true National government, able to do pretty much what it wants.

So Rodney’s posturing about scrapping the ETS was just a distraction and a nuisance during government formation. “You want to scrap the ETS Rodney? Let’s put that to the select committee. You want to review the science? Good idea. They can do that too. You think a carbon tax would be better? Fine - let them consider that.”

So Rodney calms down and the government is formed. The test will be when the chair of the committee arrives with a draft terms of reference, and Act has only one vote on the all-party committee. What that will really tell us is whether National is seriously committed to major delay. Considering a carbon tax and reviewing the science as well as considering National’s proposed amendments to the Act would be a huge job. It would take well beyond 2009. Meanwhile taxpayers are covering the cost of 100% of our emissions. Oh - but high income earners will be paying less tax.

Of course, Act doesn’t really want a carbon tax. Neither does the Business Round Table (BRT) which has been advocating it. But it gives them three advantages:

• more delay - so there is no price for as long as possible;
• if there is a carbon tax, it will be low, and cause a huge political fight whenever a government tries to raise it. The BRT is talking of $5-10/tonne, while the international carbon price for quality units is around $30-40.
• A carbon tax can be repealed as soon as there are the numbers in the House. An ETS creates property rights and cannot easily be done away with.

Under these conditions it’s not surprising that the Greens are not leaping at the chance to go there. Also, trying to apply it to agriculture and providing assistance for industries competing internationally with firms with no carbon price create the same problems as with an ETS.

I can’t believe that Key doesn’t understand that the only part of the ETS that is operational before 2010 is forestry, and that to “put the ETS on hold” either means nothing at all, or it means taking away the credits for planting over this last winter, which foresters are entitled to expect under the legislation, and taking away the deforestation penalty. This would lead to a huge deforestation this summer for conversion to dairying - exactly what Nick Smith endlessly criticised Labour for during 2007. To “put on hold” the ETS would require legislation before Christmas to amend the starting date for forestry - with all the international derision and challenge in Parliament. My pick is it was a figure of speech to keep Rodney happy.

Rumour has it that when Key complained about the air travel emissions tax in the UK, he was told to pull his head in and get his own house in order carbon-wise before he became a laughing stock internationally. He may be finding the hard way that sound bites that go down well with the uninformed on the campaign trail raise eyebrows in informed circles around the world and are not so simple to implement.

It must have been embarrassing when Nick Smith announced the cancelling of the green homes insulation fund (negotiated by the Green Party as part of the ETS agreement) and Key was announcing infrastructure spending to keep jobs and businesses afloat during an economic crisis, that Brian Easton was saying on radio that the home insulation fund was one of the best ways to keep jobs going because it could be done fast with little capital and only a very short training period. So should we expect an amendment to the ETS legislation, which has cemented the fund in law, to remove that clause? Will it be called the “ETS (keeping NZ homes cold and damp) Amendment Bill? Will it be introduced before Christmas? I look forward to the debate.

It must be embarrassing that investors ready to build biofuel plants making fuel from wastes and low value by-products are putting plans on hold because the Biofuel Act may be repealed.

It must be embarrassing that the EcoSecurities Group, one of the world’s largest, most reputable carbon trading companies has cancelled its plans to set up in NZ because there is uncertainty over whether the ETS will proceed.

It must be embarrassing for Gerry Brownlee to learn that the so-called ban on incandescent lights, which he campaigned to get rid of, is actually an efficiency standard for lighting just as we have for dozens of home appliances; that the appliance efficiency programme has saved households $148 million on their power bills over 7 years; and that some incandescents, as well as halogens and compact fluorescents will all meet the standard. It must be worse to find that without that standard, many of the best quality lights will not come into NZ because our market is too small if most people are still buying crap. Woops, market doesn’t always work after all.

He will learn similar embarrassing facts about what the showerhead issue was actually all about when he is responsible for cancelling a hot water efficiency standard for new homes.

So the interesting question, which I intend to ask in the House at some stage, is how does National intend to meet its target of 50% by 2050 with no investment in home insulation; no regulations for energy efficiency; no waste-to-biofuel projects; presumably no economy standards for vehicles coming into the country (announced in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy but not yet legislated); transport investment hugely favouring roads over public transport; and an investment strike in new green technology because of the uncertainty over whether there will be an adequate price on carbon?

Sounds like an interesting term ahead.