Carlaw wrong on climate change

Simon Carlaw's statement, Big Kyoto liability looming, contains the following errors and weaknesses says Convenor, Ministerial Group on Climate Change, Pete Hodgson.

·He has relied on information from Castalia, a company that has recently produced two reports related to New Zealand's position on climate change. The first is undermined by a combination of methodology errors and forecasting assumptions at the bottom end of credibility. The second carries forward that analysis.

·He claims that Castalia's unproven and unlikely liability should be recorded on the nation's books. The Auditor General's office disagrees.

·He has assumed that the forthcoming carbon charge will be pocketed by the Crown, when the government's policy is to do the opposite and recycle it back into the economy.

·He seems to want to tax farmers around $1 billion a year and abandon Negotiated Greenhouse Agreements with companies whose competitiveness would otherwise be at risk; driving one lot into the ground and the other offshore.

·He ignores the fact that New Zealand will be one of very few seller nations in the first Kyoto commitment period and that carbon trading has already started to New Zealand's economic benefit.

·He overlooks the fact that Ireland has simply chosen a different method of addressing climate change, emissions trading, rather than abandoning its commitment to act.

"Mr Carlaw is obsessive in his opposition to doing anything to address what is probably the biggest threat facing the world today. He seems incapable of dealing with the facts or acting to promote the preparation of the New Zealand economy to compete in a carbon constrained world," says Pete Hodgson. His approach is completely at odds with some of the world's biggest firms including many global oil, energy, mining and car companies."