I find the Bill extremely…

I find the Bill extremely disappointing.

1. It provides no specific targets for Carbon emissions.

2. It provides no deadline for the plan that the Minister must produce.

3. The Bill will require the Minister to produce 'regular' reports, but there is no defintion of regular.

4. Cap-and-trade has been shown by economists to be effective in reducing carbon emissions. The Bill was written before the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded this week to the economists who demonstrated this.

5. I heard an interview with one of the Nobel Prize recipients who pointed out that cap-and-trade will be good for employment, by producing well-paying green jobs.

6. Most importantly: the report this week from the IPCC shows we have very little time to fix the climate change problem. Again this is new information publicized since the Bill was written.

Good government must be prepared to change policy when new evidence arises. As I have noted, since the Bill was posted, two crucial pieces of evidence have become widespread public knowledge - the work of the Nobel economists on the effectiveness of cap-and-trade; and the IPCC report on the urgent need for action. You can show the people that your government will indeed be evidence-based by acknowledging this new information and scrapping Bill 4.