Josie Pagani: Who pays for our climate policies?
OPINION: No, thank YOU Tesla buyers for saving us. The EV subsidies going to brand-new Teslas alone total $80 million. Every dollar subsidising the worlds richest toddler, Bubba Musk, is a dollar that hasnt been spent on, say, hiring more bus drivers and paying them well. Or buying a train track inspection. Reporters this week established that the recipients of EV subsidies live almost exclusively in leafy suburbs. People who live in struggle street do not buy brand new $80,000 motors, or even relatively affordable brand new Toyotas. And it is not just an $8000 handout to buy a new Tesla. They also get an ongoing $2000 a year top-up bonus of unpaid road user taxes . EVs still use the roads, dont they? READ MORE: * A Fonterra staff member was asked to help shape a crucial climate policy. Why? It's unclear * Climate change: We vulnerable countries are not asking for much * Why one rental company just bought a Tesla fleet (and another just got rid of them) * Emissions Trading Scheme most durable path to net zero carbon goal * Government introducing car import rules aimed at lowering emissions and fuel costs, considering incentive scheme for EVs Over 10 years, a Tesla owner is getting another $20,000 handout. Bludgers. The International Energy Agency estimates that if the whole world achieves its electric vehicle targets by 2030, we will save an additional 235 million tons of carbon. Sounds good, but the world produces about 37 billion tonnes each year, so that is a 0.1 percent reduction in carbon emissions. If I were more cynical, I would say that the people who have told us that taxing wealth is off the table also have an EV policy that looks like more middle-class capture than effective climate strategy. Buses and trains that are more convenient to use than your car would be a bigger bang for buck, but New Zealanders have little experience of public transport that works properly. Let us turn to the Climate Change Commission's latest draft advice to the Government, delivered from Mt Sinai last week by Rod Carr, who somehow presents as the guru of a rigid new church. The commission does a good job of setting carbon budgets and holding government to account on whether its reaching them. Then we get to its menu of ideas for how to reduce emissions, which are a bit zany. Its manifesto reads like its been put together by people who spend their mornings glueing themselves to motorways: Bans, subsidies, nothing measured to find the most efficient. It instructs that mindsets and the values of businesses and consumers must be redefined. I have been around the far left for much of my life, and I have previously seen the movie that tries to persuade us we are living in false consciousness. I wont spoil the ending for you. It wants to replace our linear economy with a circular one. In case you think this sounds like recycling - who isnt in favour of that? - the commission considers recycling an option of last resort. Apparently we should only have products that can be repurposed or last forever. Diamonds then. The commission encourages us towards active transport, formerly known as walking. Not popular among voters who live 20 kilometres from work and do night shifts. They should buy new Teslas. An integrated planning system is needed to build cities upward. I don't mind apartment blocks. Denser inner cities have many benefits, but growing up in the UK made me suspicious of utopian town planners. A post-war generation of idealistic architects, with their vision of streets in the sky, condemned friends of mine to childhoods in the urine-stinking stairwells of tower blocks. These were a solution to rat-infested slums, but built too quickly and cheaply. Do we really want to rush this again? Even if we did, we are not going to close suburbs and rebuild cities in the next 25 years. We cant even afford the water pipes. Carbon News noted that people who buy carbon credits are not taking the commission seriously. If anyone was listening, the ETS price would be heading back to the highs of last year at $88.30 per tonne. Instead, the price dropped by about 10% and sits at $54 a tonne, two-thirds of the level needed to incentivise change. Greenpeace suggests the Climate Change Commission should run the ETS. But the commission wants something more revolutionary than the ETS, and we prefer elections when deciding how to run our economy. I would take its policy advice role away: It should stick to setting budgets and pronouncements on whether we are meeting them. You will never get the majority of people to support a clean energy transition that makes them pay more for less. Better to spend the EV subsidy on working out how to make electric vehicles cheaper than petrol cars. Only then will most of us switch. It is hard to have a debate about which climate policies work best without being called a climate delayer, as if doing the wrong thing quickly is better than doing the right thing more carefully. But let's at least have a debate about who pays. If donating to the rich to save the planet works, I only ask that Teslas give way to me at intersections.