How Cap and Trade Works Out

Fighting For The Last Breath

When men rebel against God, He ordinarily punishes them by giving them lots of rope, whereupon they duly asphyxiate themselves and endure a long, slow, kicking, agonizing, self-inflicted expiration. (Romans 1: 25-30) But, their final defiance, wheezed out for all to manage to hear it, is, "At least I did it my way."

When cultures and nations rebel against God, they, too, self-asphyxiate. We see a classic example of this in the complete folly of cap-and-trade. Now that these regimes are coming into existence in the West, we are getting to see how they are working out. The rope is tightening; breathing is becoming more painful.

James Delingpole tells us how the hopey changey cap-and-trade thing is working out for Britain, in a piece entitled, Time to Get Angry.

Corus’ steelworks at Redcar, near Middlesbrough, “Teesside Cast Products”, is to be closed (”mothballed” is the euphemism). It is Britain’s last great steelworks and an essential national resource. Without it, we are at the world’s mercy.

Corus is owned by Tata Steel of India. Recently, Tata received “EU-carbon-credits” worth up to £1bn, ostensibly so that steel-production at Redcar would not be crippled by the EU’s “carbon-emissions-trading-scheme”. By closing the plant at Redcar – and not making any “carbon-emissions” – Tata walks off with £1bn of taxpayers’ money, which it will invest in its steel-factories in India, where there is no “carbon-emissions-trading-scheme”.

How unbelievably stupid is that. The Indian carmaker is paid 1bn sterling by European taxpayers to shut down the last significant steelmaking plant in Britain, which it then uses to fund its steel making, carbon emitting plants in India. This is the European Emissions Trading Scheme at work.

And this is the kind of thing that our government is going to be inflicting upon New Zealand shortly. Let the long, lingering asphyxiation commence. But here are some more examples from the self-asphyxiating, suicidal United Kingdom.

Gordon Brown has secretly blown another £60 million of taxpayer’s money the nation can ill-afford to spend on “buying carbon credits from the Third World for the use of government buildings and other official purposes – so that our civil servants can continue to benefit from the CO2 emissions needed to keep their offices warm and lit.”

Before we go on, recall that "buying carbon credits from the Third World" means sending taxpayers' money to other countries. But it gets worse:

Thus we pay billions of dollars to the Asian countries for the right to continue emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases here in the West, including the £60 million contributed by British taxpayers to keep our civil servants warm. As a result we enrich a small number of people in China and India, including Maurice Strong, who now lives in exile in Beijing, having been caught out in 2005 for illicitly receiving $1 million from Saddam Hussein in the “Oil for Food” scandal. He played a key part in setting up China’s carbon exchange, to buy and sell the CDM credits administered by the UNFCCC – of which Strong himself was the chief architect.

The net result of all this trading and jiggery-pokery is that, after billions of pounds and dollars have changed hands, with a hefty commission for those bankers and other carbon traders along the way, there is no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions whatever. But at least our political class can continue to work in warm offices and fly righteously round the world on our behalf – while the rest of us foot the bill.

This is precisely the kind of nonsense that John Key and Nick Smith have foisted upon New Zealand with our own version of national self-asphyxiation. Our arrogance and folly have known no bounds, so the Living God laughs at us (Psalm 2: 4-5) and doles out the suicide rope.

In New Zealand, John Key piously and unctuously confessed his faith recently:

I think human induced climate change is occurring. We can have a debate about the speed and the impacts but my own view is that it is occurring.

He said this as he doled out another $50m of our money.

Since the Prime Minister is a believer it behoves him to choke all he can get his hands upon. And he will, making it more expensive and difficult for every person in this country to live and breath as his misanthropic ETS comes into force--except for those who will be enriching themselves of course, clipping the ticket, as our property is confiscated and sent offshore.

One wonders how long the people will remain supine or whether a genuine revolt will emerge--sort of like the last desperate thrashings before death. The thing most tragic of all is that we deserve it, for we have set our governments and our politicians up as demi-gods. And they, for their part, have believed their press.

Ever the Scriptures warn us that God is not to be mocked and the He will ensure we reap what we have sown . . . until we repent, and kiss the feet of the Son. Then His mercy will flow down like a great river.