Beware, CO2 credits are like fool’s gold

Industry can buy CO2 credits at this new low price of $1.50 a tonne, meanwhile the long-suffering public are still forced to pay the $12.60 a tonne set by government on the price of energy we use.

Nick Smith kept telling us the tax on fuel and electricity was not a tax but an emission trading scheme. If this tax is a trading scheme it should be affected by the new low price being paid at the moment of $1.50 a tonne.

But no, government will not lower the cost of this tax because it is short of money and will continue to take money with a Ponzi scam.

The public are entitled to use fossil fuel up to the 1990 levels without an ETS tax, according to the UN.

Tree growers are being paid money to grow trees so NZ can become CO2 neutral, but there is a problem – tree growers can sell these CO2 credits offshore, which means NZ would never become CO2 neutral.

CO2 emitters pay tree growers for CO2 that supposedly enters growers’ trees. Hoever, trees retain only the carbon component of CO2 and emit the oxygen back into the atmosphere, so who is ripping who off?

CO2 credits are like fool’s gold. NZ’s ETS is self-inflicted economic mutilation.

S D Payne

Invercargill