New Zealand: Do years of debating a nonsensical carbon trading scheme qualify as a "competitive advantage"?

Have we wasted the whole last decade debating climate change policy, if we need to go back and start from scratch with a select committee review of ETS? No party was happy with the scheme that was finally passed in September. It took years of negotiation and huge political compromise from those who voted for it. Now National will consider "any amendments or alternatives to it, including carbon taxes". Are we just starting again then? Given that US president-elect Barack Obama is committed to a cap and trade scheme and even the United Nations is working on plans for a "Green New Deal", why on earth are we choosing to give up our competitive advantage (ie years of policy work)?

Global financial leaves thinking on climate exposed | The Australian

Professor McKibbin said the Kyoto experience showed how even most environmentally-friendly countries, such as New Zealand and Canada, could commit to rigid, long-term targets only to find themselves disadvantaged when their economies or external conditions changed.

He declared there would never be a uniform global carbon scheme and urged the Rudd Government to take the time necessary to develop a workable national scheme.

Europe's $14 Billion Clean-Coal Plan Lacking Backers

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- A European proposal to spend 11 billion euros ($14 billion) testing how to pump greenhouse gases underground is itself getting buried.

But how will he "heal the planet" and stop the very rising of the seas?

A bit of bad news for those seeking quick action on climate change under the new presidential administration: Barack Obama is not heading to Poland next month for UN talks on a pending global climate change pact.

Obama's no-show status at the talks is hardly a death knell for the emissions reduction treaty that the UN must negotiate by next year to replace the expiring Kyoto protocol. But environmental groups had mounted a vocal campaign to persuade the president-elect to attend Poland -- or at least send a delegation to represent him -- and Obama appeared to agree during a pre-election appearance in Ohio.