A Message For The Greens
Update: The Greens have decided to support the Emissions Trading Scheme. Here’s the Greenpeace response.
The long anticipated Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will either either be born or stillborn next week.
IN the absence of any real policy on climate change the ETS, although not perfect, would be a good step in the right direction. It leaves out some important things like agriculture, but it is whole lot better than nothing.
The Labour Govt. don’t have the numbers to get it through on their own so they’ve been in tough negotiations with NZ First and the Greens to attain their support for the bill.
The Greens have said in the past days that they are unsure about whether to support it and have asked for public opinion - should we or shouldn’t we? They’ve set up a special ets@greens.org.nz email address for you to send you your thoughts on whether or not they should support the bill.
I’m certainly going to send them a strongly worded message. The climate is in crisis and New Zealand has virtually no policy in place to start addressing it. The ETS isn’t perfect but it’s all we’ve got at this point and to abandon it would be big step backwards.
And dear reader, if you’ve got an opinion on the matter I urge you to send it to the Greens at ets@greens.org.nz … it’s not every day that democracy is so participatory! (You can hear what the Greens have to say on the matter via a little youtube clip on their blog.)
The ETS is a complicated beast so here’s an excerpt from our latest Greenpeace Magazine to explain it a little. Read more »
