Isramart : Carbon trading starting

Isramart news:
Leaving behind the relative merits and truths about anthropogenic global climate change, we seem to have the Government intent on raising more taxes in the name of carbon.

Carbon trading is due to take effect from July 2010

As an orchardist, I will be seeing increased costs in many areas such as fuel, chemicals, rates, electricity, and general living costs.

There has been much reported on the carbon credits being assigned to forestry projects but nothing in regard to farming and orchardry.

Using an orchard as an example, it is easy to report on the carbon that has been trapped by the trees in the orchard. The fruit is processed by the tonne and is largely made up by captured carbon and water. But no facility seems to have been made for these tonnes to be aligned with carbon credits.

When a bin of fruit is sent to a packhouse, the returns are governed by the marketing ability of the packhouse staff. There is no provision for recovery of any increase in costs (as experienced during the huge increases in fuel costs of late).

It would be possible to identify the carbon input costs and pass these onto the packhouse (web sites exist that allow for these calculations).

The packhouse in turn have their carbon-input costs and these would need to be added to the orchard costs. These would be passed to the wholesaler and they in turn pass on their costs and so on until the end consumer pays; much as GST works now.

This may be what is planned but I have found no evidence of it.

Unless some system is introduced then the introduction of carbon trading will result in squeezed margins for everybody and there is only one way those costs can be reduced and that is by lowering staff costs and that means job-losses!

It may be time for all us complacent Kiwis to get off our butts and let our politicians know what we believe to be the true costs of this new tax.