Heather Roy's Diary - Your Carbon Footprint?
How Big Is Your Carbon Footprint? Let me first begin by saying that I don't consider myself a Climate Change denier: since records began, and from scientific evidence gleaned before that, it is clear that the world's climate has experienced fluctuations - sometimes wildly - since Adam was a boy.
21 September 2007
2 minute read
I actively care for the environment; my husband often tells me my recycling efforts are wasted because much of the cardboard, glass and plastic waste I carefully set aside for recycling goes to the dump - I don't know if he's right, but recycling feels like the right thing to do.
When my family moved from South Canterbury a few years ago, the hardest thing to leave was our 10-acre block of land on which we'd spent years planting tens of thousands of South Canterbury native plants - we'd begun planting in 1990, not to attract carbon credits but, to create an attractive and natural environment in which to hide a family home. The land was just starting to look like a forest, and was attracting native wildlife, when we moved city.
Yesterday saw the Government announce its climate change policy, the fiendishly complicated 'Climate Plan'. The plan revolves around a 'cap and trade' emissions trading scheme, to be phased in from next year starting with the forestry sector. Transport, energy and large industrial companies will follow from 2009 and agriculture - the biggest emitter - will be affected from 2013.
In the scheme, carbon credits will be traded as the 'New Zealand unit' - a unit being equal to a tonne of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions. Companies must acquire units to emit and will be able to buy them from those who reduce emissions. In reality, deciding who gets these units and who has to pay for them is going to be a difficult exercise.
Source: TheScoop
