Larry Williams Drive

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we are being incredibly naive and frankly stupid in forcing farmers to pay for climate emissions. Or in fact, forcing anyone in this country to pay for climate emissions. Let’s look at the facts: New Zealand will not be able to stop climate change. We only contribute (at last count) 0.17% of the world’s emissions. We can stop emitting altogether right now, and climate change will still happen. Because China and India and other big emitters are still going hell for leather, opening coal power plants. In which case, why are we wasting money on something we know we can’t stop? Shouldn’t we take that money and instead use it to prepare for the inevitable: move houses away from eroding coastlines, build stop banks for low lying suburbs like Wellington’s Petone, lift exposed roads like Auckland's Tamaki Drive or redo the water infrastructure that will be inundated? That’s going to happen no matter what we do, so wouldn’t we be better off paying for it now, rat