Miranda's Kyoto Blues

Miranda Divine's at it again. This time she's having a dig at the Kyoto protocol, citing a local environmental dispute in NZ as evidence of the negative consequences of signing the treaty.

Apparently, a power company wants to divert water from a local river to supplement the supplies for a local hydro power station. The locals are understandidly concerned that the lost water will effect the ecology of the river downstream of the pumping. She takes the word of a local deer farmer that the project makes little economic sense.

Miranda also cites Maori beliefs as a reason not to go ahead with the plan.

It also violates the Maori belief in "mauri", the vital essence of water, which holds that waters from different valleys should not be mixed, says Martin, [the deer farmer] who is of Maori descent.

I can imagine what Miranda's ilk would say if Aboriginal beliefs were used as an argument to halt a project in Australia.

In short, the dispute is similar to any number of protests where the locals are concerned of the effect of industrial development. No doubt the protests will take their course and may well halt the project, as is reasonable if the environmental consequences are too severe.

This dispute is special only because it involves money from carbon credits. Miranda's argument is that the Kyoto protocol is flawed because of episodes like this.

This silly sniping at the moves to reign in global carbon emissions completely ignores the dire global consequences if carbon emissions are allowed to continue increasing. Of course there are going to be adjustments as the global carbon trading system kicks in.

Miranda gives some idea of the task when she has a jab at environmentally aware consumers.

There is an Australian company, Greenfleet, to which consumers can pay a sort of carbon tax to plant trees on their behalf to make up for driving a car or flying in a plane. For instance, $40 gets you one year's guilt-free driving as Greenfleet will plant 17 native trees to counteract the greenhouse gases produced by the average car.

Multiply five-hundred million vehicles globally by 17 planted trees per year to sink the carbon produced and you realise the magnitude of the problem.