Thursday 20 September 2007

What would 'Party X' do about the environment? - CONCLUSION: A Kyoto plan with a difference

Concluding this serialisation based on my 'Free Radical' article 'Environmental Judo' - seven environmental policies that a genuine opposition party could adopt if they were serious about spontaneously shrinking the state, without any new coercion along the way.

Today, the conclusion: a Kyoto Plan that makes the whole thing plain:

7. The Kyoto Plan for Tax and Regulation
Here’s one last suggestion that sums up the aim of all seven policy planks. Here’s a plan to explicitly clean up the human environment, using the language of those who seek to shackle it in the name of the natural environment.

If you recall, the Kyoto Protocol which Simon Upton signed us up to requires carbon emissions to be cut to 1990 levels by 2010 in a bid to save earth’s environment from man-made, climate-changing pollution.

Whether or not you accept either the science or the politics behind that notion, what I propose quite seriously is a similar protocol to limit a far more serious and provably destructive pollution: one that restricts taxes and the emission of regulations to 1990 levels by 2010.

While the jury is still out on the possible destructive consequences of emissions of carbon dioxide, there is no doubt at all of the destructive consequences of the emission of new taxes and ever more intrusive regulations.

Time to put a stop to the explosive growth in these emissions. 2010 works for me. Now would be better.
* * * * *
ENVIRONMENTAL JUDO--THE SERIES:

INTRO: 'What Would Party X Do?'
PART 1: 'Eco Un-taxes
.'
PART 2: 'A Nuisance and a BOR.'
PART 3: 'Small Consents Tribunals: Beating Back the RMA'
PART 4: 'Privatisation: Iwi then Kiwi'
PART 5: 'A Very Special Carbon Tax'
PART 6: 'A Fishy Story: How to Privatise the Oceans'

THE SERIES IS BASED ON THE PRINCIPLE DEVELOPED HERE:
'Transitions to Freedom: Shall We Kill Them in Their Beds?'

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