100% agreed – society might be more willing to take on protectionism now. If this is the case then that is fine for society, I would just prefer it if they would honestly admit that it is protectionism 😉

I don’t disagree that the transition in the 80s may have been too quick, and perhaps a bit too disorganised.

BUT, the argument to keeping agriculture out of the ETS is exactly the same as the argument for keeping agricultural subsidises during the 80s – if NZ was so willing to get rid of the subsidises then why aren’t we now? There seems to be a framing issue here.”

Agreed it is protectionism. but maybe our view of transition has changed since the 80’s and a longer transition is now what is desired by society.

If these can be substantiated, then the protectionist backlash from Europe and the US will not be far away.

Government policy has been spineless and shortsighted on this issue. Not only are farmers getting taxpayer dollars to cover their Kyoto costs, but other big polluters are as well.

The contrast to US and EU farming is obvious. NZ has more dairy cattle than people, and about 10 sheep per head of population. The US has about 300m people and only 9m dairy cows.

I’d love to see someone carefully work out the numbers on what the direct subsidies via ETS exemption will cost NZ taxpayers, per job saved, akin to the studies of the “voluntary export restraints” for Japanese automobile exporters into the USA in the 1980’s… the numbers were huge. They might change the political game here. C’mon, Greens.

Since our dairy producers are highly “efficient” (the quotation marks allude to the environmental subsidies mentioned above), I suspect the number of jobs lost from full unsubsidised inclusion of agriculture in the ETS would be minimal. It would merely reduce farmer incomes from astronomical to planetary; I can’t see them all upping and leaving the farm tomorrow (except on a quick tractor run to Wellington).

I never actually said that a subsidy was bad – although I suspect that is the way I would come down. My whole post was just saying that excluding agriculture from the ETS IS an effective subsidy.

I find it weird that some of the same people saying we shouldn’t have (explict) subsidies are also saying we should exclude agriculture from the ETS – there appears to be some sort of disjoint here.

This is still protectionism in the same vein. It is exactly like saying that if other countries are subsidising agricultural exports (which many were in the 80s) we should keep doing it.

I don’t disagree that the transition in the 80s may have been too quick, and perhaps a bit too disorganised.

BUT, the argument to keeping agriculture out of the ETS is exactly the same as the argument for keeping agricultural subsidises during the 80s – if NZ was so willing to get rid of the subsidises then why aren’t we now? There seems to be a framing issue here.