An old acquaintance of mine in the UK, Paul Klemperer, who is the world's leading auction theorist, and was the principal designer of Britain's mobile-phone license auction that raised £22 billion in 2000-02, wrote an article awhile ago called, "What's the Top Priority on Climate Change?' He was also an adviser to the British government on the world's first auction for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, working with Nobel prizewinner, Eric Maskin. After reading his article below, it would seem impossible to disagree with his argument that:
"The critical issue is that no strategy will work unless it is consistent with developing countries’ continued economic growth. So we're unlikely to be able to reduce the use of ‘dirty’ energy sufficiently unless we can find a cheap, clean, substitute. And that requires innovation. Developing countries are not going to give up the immediate aspirations of their (often growing) populations in exchange for environmental benefits that arise largely in the future".
In other words, his argument implies that Rod Carr's Climate Change Commission and James Shaw's Green Party are irrelevant to solving the problem which they pretend to be at the forefront of helping to solve. Which makes one wonder - why aren't they focused on cleaning up NZ's immediate environmental problems within our own borders, like sewerage flowing into Auckland harbor whenever it rains heavily, the declining quality of our freshwater ways, and heavy metal contamination around Devonport Naval Base?
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