Gooner's ETS campaign

Over at No Minister, Gooner (a well-known Actoid) has launched a last-gasp campaign to get the government to ditch the ETS. He blogs:

This month I am going to dedicate any blogging solely to the ETS as it is intended to be implemented on 1 July.

It is appalling that in the current economic environment the Gnats and the MP are imposing costs on ordinary New Zealanders for no purpose or reason whatsoever.

I am not going to debate the issues as they have been traversed for years. Suffice to say, the ETS is an economic debacle that New Zealanders cannot afford and which will put our exporters at a serious disadvantage to our trading partners.

Having played the numbers game, he then gives a sample letter for people to e-mail AND post to John Key and Nick Smith - it reads:

Dear Mr Key/Mr Smith

I write to oppose the introduction of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

This tax will add unnecessary costs to families and taxpayers at a time they can least afford it. It will produce no environmental gain; will provide windfall profits for state-owned electricity generators; and provide state subsidies to foresters. This is simply a wealth transfer of gigantic proportions that cannot be justified.

Our trading partners are not implementing and ETS and are unlikely to. Further, New Zealand is in credit under Kyoto so there is no need to tax anybody. And, Kyoto is due to expire on 31 December 2012 so this tax is even less justifiable considering that. There was agreement in Copenhagen to extend Kyoto and there is unlikely to be an agreement going forward. But as you know, that ETS tax will remain regardless after that date.

Your party campaigned on reducing costs on ordinary New Zealanders, and properly so after middle New Zealand was starved of cash during the Labour years. Yet, you are now imposing the biggest cost that has been seen for many, many years for no reason at all.

We cannot be a world leader because the rest of the world is not following.

For the sake of middle New Zealand, who voted you in at the last election, scrap the ETS.

Now!

Those who participate are invited to edit the letter to their heart's content. We will be doing likewise today, although we don't necessarily subscribe to the theory of doing so every day for a month.

We do however applaud Gooner for his initiative, and agree that it is time to up the ante against the government, which seems determined to take us down this road to nowhere. Sadly, this issue looks like becoming the one which marks the National-led government's term of office. We say "sadly" because we believe that much of what John Key's government has achieved is positive, and because we support the government's general direction.

And whilst we may be taking a pot-shot at the government we supported at the 2008 election, there is no way that our vote in 2011 will go to Labour or the Greens, or to any party which even entertains the idea of a liaison with the left. Labour passed an ETS, under urgency and immediately before the last Parliament rose for an election which would have been far more punitive to the New Zealand eceonomy than National's watered-down ETS. As much as we oppose National's ETS, let us never lose sight of what the left would have done.