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Ryan Bridge: The price of being a climate warrior · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chris Hipkins is floating the idea of what is basically
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: an effective tariff on imported cement. He reckons this could
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: be a better way of dealing with our cement problem
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  Speaker 1: than the sixty million dollars in corporate welfare the government's
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: just handed out to Golden Bay's cement. They need the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: bailout because the cost of buying carbon credits from twenty
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: thirty onwards is too high. The cost of carbon credits
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  Speaker 1: credits is because of the ETS. When your builder goes
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to lay cement, for example, they might just go and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: buy imported stuff because it'll be cheaper, no carbon costs included.
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  Speaker 1: So how do you get around it? This is the
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  Speaker 1: question for our politicians. You could change the ETS system.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: You could exempt cement safe steel, as we'd largely do
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: with agriculture, but then you undermine the etes. You could
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: delete the ETS altogether, just get rid of it, which
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  Speaker 1: would mean ditching the Paris Agreement of course. Or you
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: could do as the EU does and go with a
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  Speaker 1: carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is basically a carbon tariff.
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  Speaker 1: So you go and slow rap of tariff on the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: importers to level the playing field with your local producers.
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  Speaker 2: What the Europeans argument is that they're treating those importing
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  Speaker 2: products the same as they are treating domestic producers, and
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  Speaker 2: so their argument there is actually it is about treating
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  Speaker 2: people equally, treating companies equally, rather than having different standards
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  Speaker 2: based on whether a product's produced within your zone or
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  Speaker 2: outside of it.
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  Speaker 1: It was hip cons yest today now he's saying this
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  Speaker 1: is an idea labor would consider, national won't because they
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  Speaker 1: say it'll mess with our free trade agreements. So we're
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  Speaker 1: a bit boxed in here, aren't we. If we want
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  Speaker 1: to be a country of free trade and a climate warrior,
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  Speaker 1: then we seem destined to lose a bunch of local
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: production and industry. Sure we'll do better in some areas,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: but manufacturing anything involving carbon emissions lookout. And in the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: meantime it looks like taxpayer funded corporate welfare. To the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: rescue for more from Early edition with Ryan Bridge.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Listen live to News Talks it be from five am weekdays,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.