Finally some research has been done on the effects of bio-fuel crops on the ecosystem. As widely expected the research has shown that bio-fuels can be highly destructive on the environment as well as actually adding carbon into the atmosphere.

So much for being the replacement to fossil fuels.

This a prime example of doing something because it looks like the right or a good thing to be doing. Those people with prescriptive views on how we should live our lives rarely take the trouble to do the sums and that’s where the problem arises.

Until we start to price up environmental externalities and let them flow through the price mechanism we will not get to see the true cost. So we will keep doing things because they feel good to us or they remove some embedded guilt about the way we use the environment.

The market is working in an inefficient manner and the environment continues to suffer because of it. Many environmentalists have a big grudge against the market perceiving it to be a monstrous creation of the capitalist machine. They are sadly mistaken. The market is how we show the real value of the environment to everyone not just those who think humans are a stain upon it.

Now I don’t want to tar all bio-fuels with the same brush. Bio-diesel from algae for example is using a waste stream and an easily grown input. Large swathes of forest don’t need to be cut down for this process.

But until we see the costs flow through the system we just don’t know.

So after the environment minister said the 13th chapter was inaccurate, it gets released. How ridiculous is that?

How can anyone have any faith in a government which is so transparently incompetent. It’s good to read Simon Upton calling for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to take charge of the next report.

13: unlucky for some.

I wasn’t going to bother with this really. Who needs another dose of reality? But there is an interesting story here.

The Greens have come out with a story about a buried chapter in this report. They claim that Chapter 13 was pulled due to a very negative slant on the dairy industry. It pointed to dairy as the “largest cause of environmental decline” in New Zealand. Anyone who likes to swim in their local stream, river or lake could attest to that.

The dairy industry is also one of the biggest earners for the country. There you have it. New Zealand is no more immune to political lobbying than any other country except its pretty transparent. It’s hard to keep anything a secret here.

The Greens propose that this report come under the auspices of the Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment rather than the government.

Yes to that!  The government simply cannot be trusted to be objective. Yes it’s a sad statement to make but that’s the way it is until we get a more distributed form of democracy and power.

If you can’t sleep then here is the link to the various reports.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a PM forum in Christchurch. It was a chance to hear Helen Clark and her Ministers talk about the new Emissions Trading Scheme that they had just put out. I’ve tried to wean myself off climate change conferences because in the end they are all pretty boring and generally say the same thing: the world may end in a flood of seawater and we need to get cracking by x% right now.

What always surprises me is that no matter how many calls for action there are very little has been done to really restrain emissions. Why is this? Well quite simply this is a very tricky issue. Economic growth is not going to be sacrificed on the altar of environmentalism or, more to the point, an outcome where there is uncertainty. So it drags on. China continues to expand its economy at a fierce pace and shows little interest in reining in its emissions insisting that it’s full steam ahead.

So in come emissions trading schemes: carry on as normal but buy your way to heaven via a piece of paper saying “1 tonne of carbon”. If it sounds like a papal remission that’s because it’s pretty close.  It’s a piece of paper you get for money which blesses your wins away.

The problem is quantifying and packaging a tonne of carbon or equivalent. How can we be sure that people will get what they pay for. This is where certification comes in. We need an agreed international standard and a single market. After all there’s only one type of carbon just like there is one type of gold. Its not like crude oil where there are different prices for different types.

Another issue is the changing science. For example, if forests are used as credit generators because of their ability to sequestrate carbon, there is a possibility that the amount the sequestrate may change over time either due to ecological reasons or a change in the understanding of how and how much they actually lock up and over what time period.

As a business having to purchase carbon credits on paper I would be crossing my fingers and hoping it all works out otherwise i might be out of business.

There is also a concern about the over issuance of paper credits. As readers will know they fractional reserve money system we have started life in a similar fashion: an underlying quantity of a commodity on which paper bills were issued. We know the outcome of that, a money system with no control.

From what i have seen this issues haven’t been covered in enough detail. I can still envisage a scenario where the carbon credit market takes off but overall emissions are not reduced. The goal of all this is to reduce emissions not create a huge market in carbon. But for now its the easy way out and politically more acceptable. Trees can take the slack for now and maybe technology can takeover at a later date.

Leo Hickman, a Guardian columnist, published an interesting book called “Final Call - In search of the True Cost of our Holidays”. Its reviewed here and I’ve made a few comments on it.

Eco tourism is all the rage these days and rightly so. We should always consider the impact of where we go and what we do. But as consumers of goods, services and exotic holidays we expect the price to reflect the cost of what we are paying for. If it doesn’t is that our fault or problem?

Well that’s where the consideration or “ethics” of your decision comes into play. I’m in favour of travel as it expands the mind. body and soul. It allows us to gain a different and newer perspective on the world. But do we dare look beneath the surface as Leo has done?

I’m reminded of the excellent Stephen Frears film “Dirty Pretty Things” about the  immigrant workers who keep London going at night whilst people sleep easy. Crap working conditions for service staff are nothing new so why should it be any different on holiday?

What should happen is that people get paid proper wages and work in decent conditions. Then it’s up to them whether to take a job or not. Madeleine Bunting deals with this issue quite well in her book “Willing Slaves” which also looks at the guest worker phenomenon.

My interest is more in the environmental sphere. Simply put we should be paying the Trucost of our activities. How we get that is a bit trickier but doable.  I’ve looked at this before and having been to the UK recently its clear that this issue is center stage.

We must move quickly to connect external environmental costs with the pricing mechanism. Once a cost has been calculated (carbon, nitrogen runoff, water) then that cost gets added in at the point of extraction, abstraction or manufacture. The EC (external cost) flows back to an Environmental Contingency Fund where it sits (in sovereign bonds) until it can be put towards paying for the exact cost that was incurred, whether that is planting some forests to sequester carbon, cleaning a river or fencing land or implementing new water management processes.

As much as we would like it to be, it isn’t (as yet) an exact science. But it will alert consumers to the true cost of the good and allow them to make more accurate purchasing decisions.

Then maybe we can actually enjoy our holiday instead of worrying about how much damage we’re doing to “the planet”.

Thanks for Celsias for this post on the updating of the Montreal Protocol. It seems obvious that this successful treaty should be the starting point for any treaty on greenhouse gases but many of the lessons derived from those intense negotiations haven’t fully be absorbed into the Kyoto process.

It’s not too late to have another look. Many Kyoto advocates have told me there is too much time and money invested in it to change tack now. Well that’s not good enough. If Kyoto is not going to work then it should be set aside. It doesn’t mean a step back but a step forward.

So i’m dusting off my proposal based around Montreal. I think it’s time to realise that major reductions can only come from the supply side.

See Climate Control and also have a look at Oliver Tickell’s proposal Kyoto 2.