EDITORIAL: Putting on hair shirt of Kyoto | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

LOUIS PIERARD

The Government has been mulling over laws to enforce public acceptance of breastfeeding (is there no end to its determination to manage our minds?) yet the serious business is brushed aside.

The only thing that made palatable New Zealand's eagerness to push to the front of the queue to sign the Kyoto protocol was the pill-sugaring prospect of the harvest from carbon credits.

The minds advising cabinet estimated half a billion dollars' worth would come our way; which would help stimulate alternative power generation. Instead we learn we'll be half a billion dollars in the red. Anywhere else, a billion-dollar boob would remove heads.

Does it make a difference? Not if you believe Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson (in whose portfolio lies the implicit conviction that we can dictate the weather).

In fact, he said, the credits were the least compelling of reasons to sign up. However, he may have trouble convincing businesses and consumers that Labour's preening on the world stage will be worth their sacrifice.

Meanwhile, more searching questions are being asked of the "it's our fault; we must do something or we'll all die" jeremiad and the usefulness of the Kyoto Protocol that it inspired.

The credits reversal will make a difference. Not only does it seem to throw major schemes, such as wind farms proposed for Hawke's Bay, into doubt but it also raises the prospect of everyone having to take nasty medicine for no apparent purpose.

Self-scourging might be good for the soul but the economic consequences could be deeply scarring. And for what?

When the religion of saving planet earth has supplanted Christianity, questioning Kyoto is heresy indeed. However, even if all states signed on there is no guarantee the protocol would make much difference.

What could be more virtuous than going in to bat for the planet? Kyoto needs to be sustained by rather more than the argument that "it's better than doing nothing".

More are challenging the fashionable wisdom of Kyoto, despite the personal abuse they are bound to attract. "Sceptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg says all models agree the effect of Kyoto on the climate will be minuscule and that the proposed cure will be far more expensive than the original ailment.

Just last month two of the world's leading scientific journals came under fire from researchers for refusing to publish their papers which directly challenged "anthropogenic" climate change.

While global warming is self-evident (but it is by no means indisputable fact that humans are singularly responsible) the phenomenon is not new. Last week researchers confirmed alpine glaciers have shrunk to almost nothing 10 times since the last Ice Age. Hannibal never even saw them.

Furthermore, it is even less likely, despite the best intentions, that we are capable of reversing the process and that the protocol on climate change will be worth every billion spent on it. Surely there are more efficient and cost-effective ways of cutting reliance on fossil fuels than having us don the hair shirt of Kyoto.

The scientific community is divided over the issue; as will be many New Zealanders when they are called on to take up the true burden of pious, feel-good ideology.