Treasury reveals its emissions target

The New Zealand Herald has a story about how Treasury adviced the Government it should have set its greenhouse gas emission levels 15% above 1990 levels.

The news comes after the Government announced plans last week to reduce emissions by 10-20% of 1990 levels by 2020.

Trade Minister Tim Groser will take the proposal to Bonn later this month in the run-up to December negotiations in Copenhagen on a post-Kyoto climate change agreement.

The story includes comment from Climate Change Minister Nick Smith and Green Party co-leader Russel Norman:

Treasury papers released today show the Government did not follow a call from its financial advisers for it to set a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target 15 percent above 1990 levels.

On August 10, the Government announced an emissions reduction target range of 10 percent to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

But Treasury recommended a target range with an unconditional target of 8 percent reduction on a base year of 2005. READ MORE.

Introducing Mark Weldon and the NZX

This is a couple of months old but Commodify Me! would like draw your attention to a story which appeared in the Otago Daily Times in May about the New Zealand Stock Exchange and its chief executive Mark Weldon.

The ODT story mentions NZX’s establishment and sale of a registry for tradeable carbon credits, its acquisition of electricity spot market operator M-Co and it’s acquisition of rural media business Country-Wide Publications:

In his seven years as New Zealand Exchange chief executive, former Olympian and Columbia University School of Law alumnus Mark Mr Weldon has built something of an empire.

Formerly a “number eight wire order-matching exchange” with a reputation for lax regulation and ripe for takeover by the ASX, under Mr Weldon’s rule NZX has cleaned up its act. READ MORE.

NZ to cut greenhouse emissions by up to 20%

The Dominion Post has a story about what the impact and cost of tackling climate change will have on New Zealand:

The cost of doing our bit in the battle against climate change will be $27 a week each by 2020 as the Government prepares to sign Kiwis up to a global pact.

But it is under fire for being too cautious after setting the target of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent on 1990 levels and there are warnings that New Zealand risks being labelled a climate-change bludger. READ MORE.

The newspaper also has another story with comment from various business leaders about the proposed reductions of greenhouse gas ommissions as part of the country’s Kyoto Protocol agreements. READ HERE.

Goldman Sachs’ role in oil speculation and other market manipulation detailed

There’s an interesting story in Rolling Stone magazine by Matt Taibbi about how former investment bank Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.

While Commodify Me! would thoroughly recommend that you read all of Taibbi’s  story, the parts that will interest commodity exchange fanatics the most are  page five, which details  how Goldman’s speculation in the oil markets drove the price at the pump to record highs last year,  and page seven, which examines how the bank could potentially make a killing of another product that looks set to be traded on the U.S. futures exchange, carbon credits.

CLICK HERE to read the full story.