Things have changed since then. There is a new Mayor in town and the Breakdown Gang has wreaked havoc on the Hawkes Bay grocery, the Auckland livery and the Northland Ranch. They’ve slashed up Tairāwhiti. Will he confront them this time? We’ll see in this next, exciting episode.

Camera zoom into the sheriff’s office on Main Street:

Sheriff Ministers is having his toast and tea when Deputy Greenie Shaw bursts in.

Greenie: “Sheriff, it’s a mess out there. The grocery and the livery are all bashed up and now I’ve got Commissioner Carr asking why we didn’t use the ETS on the Breakdown Gang.”

The sheriff leans back and takes a bite of toast, “Just tell Carr that it’s complicated, we gots lotsa irons in the fire”.

Greenie: “That’s what I told him before, but he wants more spee-cifics. Should I tell him about the…”

Sheriff: “No, don’t mention nothin’ ‘bout the ‘lection. He’ll just think we’re a pack of coyotes who think ‘bout nothin’ more than holding on to our day jobs and sounding ‘portant.”

“Besides, that ETS don’t seem to work anyway. I took it out to the Unit Auction for a test fire and it didn’t work. I think it was may be a problem with the reserve price…”

Shaw looks incredulous, “Didn’t work? What are we going to use against the Breakdown Gang?

Shaw takes his hat off and sits down, pressing his temples.

“How about the Biofuels Mandate?”

The sheriff sips his tea, “Nah, Mayor Hipkins nixed that.”

“The Cash for Clunkers deal to get the high emissions vehicles off the street?”

Sheriff: “Gone too.”

Greenie: “Expansion of public transport?”

Sheriff: “Nope”

Greenie: “Maybe the light rail for Auckland?”

Sheriff: “History”

Greenie: “Surely, we could at least put back the petrol tax. You know, cheaper petrol is playing right into the Breakdown Gang’s hands.”

Sheriff: “Not gonna to happen. Hipkins has made some changes round here.”

Greenie: “So, what we gonna do? The situation’s getting dire out there! People are hurtin’!”

Sheriff: “Well, the mayor has sent around some bread and butter. Maybe that will help. It’s awful good. Here, try some… If he keeps giving these out, maybe he’ll win that ‘lection.”

The sheriff hands Deputy Shaw a slice of toast. Shaw looks on in stunned silence.

Camera fade to credits…

Sheriff Cabnet Ministers with his rusty ETS sidearm

So, dear reader, the situation in Aotearoa is looking grim. As you will recall, cabinet decided in December to ignore the Climate Commission’s advice and kept the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) price settings low for this year. As a result, the price of emissions credits fell so low that the last two quarterly unit auctions actually failed. Not enough bids achieved the minimum price set by the Ministry. No emissions credits were sold.

Compare this to last year, when a quarterly auction hit the cost containment reserve price triggering the release of extra credits and emissions unit prices were at an all-time high. The price of emissions units has been steadily rising in the last few years, as intended.

A failure of the auction is a little bit of good and a lot of bad. Good because it means industry will need to buy the credits they need to surrender for their emissions from the secondary market, soaking up some of the surplus units that Climate Commission has been worried about, but bad because the government didn’t raise any revenue for the Climate Emergency Response Fund like it expected.

It’s also really bad because the price for a tonne of CO₂ emissions has fallen from a high of around $85 late last year to a low of $60 now. Releasing greenhouse gas into our atmosphere has just gotten a whole lot cheaper.

And, there’s a whole lot more uncertainty in the ETS market right now. Companies planning to upgrade coal boilers to electricity or wood chip will now look at their balance sheets and wonder if it is still a good idea. It’s maybe going to be cheaper just to pay for more credits, if the price stays low. Yet another delay in the transition to a low emissions future.

So, the Climate Breakdown Gang appears to have won this round in Aotearoa, and will have plenty of rein to continue its havoc. I suppose we can all thank the new mayor for our bit of bread and butter, at least until the Climate Breakdown Gang comes back. And, you can rest assured, they will be back.

by Tom Powell – Climate Karanga Marlborough

The post High Noon in Aotearoa, Part 2 appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Sheriff Cabinet Ministers was busy at his desk, sorting through citizens submissions, when Deputy “Greenie” Shaw bursts into the room. “Sheriff, it’s the Climate Breakdown Gang again. They’re back and causing trouble. If we don’t do something, somebody’s going to get hurt!”

Sheriff Ministers knew what had to be done. It was all laid out clear in the Zero Carbon Act. He rose from his chair and reached for his trusty sidearm, hanging on the peg by the door. Those troublesome Emissions Boys would be no match for the Revamped ETS, its shiny emissions-killing metal gleaming from the holster. He strapped on the weapon and reached for the door.

But then he thought, “Wait. What about inflation? What about the election? What about my corporate buddies at the Parliament Saloon? Nobody understands the ETS anyway. What the hell.”

The sheriff turned back and sat back down at his desk and went back to the submissions.

Greenie, wide-eyed and exasperated, piped up, “But sheriff, we’ve got to do something! Mayor Adern has promised the townspeople that we’d be net zero of those emissions by 2050!”

“That’s another 27 years away, Greenie“, grumbled the sheriff. “Plenty of time to deal with those emissions. Now go away, I’ve got paperwork to do.”

“But, what will we tell the townspeople? They are expecting us to get out and fight those Emissions Boys with the ETS!”

“I’ll just hit them with another request for submissions. That’ll shut them up!”

The evil Climate Breakdown gang out to raise havoc

What? Wait a minute! That isn’t how the story is supposed to go! The sheriff is supposed to go out into the streets and fight the bad guys, not hide in his office doing paperwork!

But faced with the choice of either strengthening the ETS, (i.e., NZ Emissions Trading Scheme) by letting emissions prices rise, as the Climate Commission has recommended, or holding emissions prices down for another year, our cabinet ministers blinked and voted in December to keep the prices low. So, we are in for yet another blowout of the cost containment reserve, releasing more emissions credits into the market than planned, making it incrementally harder to reach our ‘net zero by 2050’ emissions goal. So much for using the ETS to cap our emissions.

This little episode, the latest in a long list of disappointing episodes involving the NZ ETS, points up its fundamental weakness – it is a beast that is easily defanged.

Which is perhaps why The New Zealand Initiative, a conservative think tank advising the National Party, likes it so much. They argue that government incentives and regulations to control emissions, such as banning the import of petrol engines by 2035, as recommended by the Climate Commission, are not needed because the ETS is all that is needed to do the job.

But, we all remember what happened to the ETS under the last National government. The emissions price went from $21 per tonne CO2 in 2011 to just $2 per tonne by 2013, recovering to $19 per tonne by 2017, when Labour returned to power. In essence, the last National government was quite successful in defanging the ETS, stopping nearly all progress in reducing New Zealand’s emissions along the way. Good for business but bad for the planet.

So, considering this latest example of how easily the ETS can be softened, and even by a government that has declared a climate emergency, it is clear that we should NOT put all our climate mitigation “eggs” into one basket, like the ETS.

Government incentives and regulations, on the other hand, are harder to “defang” because, once handed down, industry starts to take action. The government ban on coal-fired boilers after 2037, for example, would be difficult to change because industry has already started to invest in the change to other fuels. A new government relaxing the 2037 ban would be met with howls of anger from industry, asking why they want everyone to change horses in mid-stream. Businesses do better in a stable regulatory environment, so regulations made well in advance give them time to plan and make the necessary changes with minimal disruption.

So, don’t despair, Deputy Shaw. There are other guns we can use to fight off the Climate Breakdown Gang. Sheriff Ministers just needs to be pushed into having the courage to use them.

TO BE CONTINUED…

by Tom Powell – Climate Karanga Marlborough

The post High Noon in Aotearoa, Part 1 appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.