Fingers in the dyke

Well-meaning attempts to stem our greenhouse-gas emissions risk fuelling more widespread flare-ups.

- JANE CLIFTON

Former prime minister Sir John Key, rather showing his vintage,  once told Parliament the economy was like a waterbed. You press on it here, he said, and it only bulges out somewhere over there.

As an economic primer, it wasn't bad. Governments can never change anything without a knock-on effect somewhere else. On the Key waterbedometer, New Zealand's climate change policies are proving to be the mattress from hell. Two core measures intended to reduce our net greenhouse gas emissions already look highly likely to result in even greater gas output.

One is the wholesome sounding Reshaping Streets proposal, under which the government will empower local councils to experiment at will with "traffic-calming".

This reads like a goodie-two-shoes charter, with ideas like blanket speed reductions, parking restrictions near schools to discourage vehicular drop-offs, and new swathes of pedestrian and cycle-only streetscapes. The laudable idea is to make it less convenient to drive, so people walk, bike or take public transport more often.

Alas, there's an inconvenient factoid. More than 90% of this country's freight increasingly is delivered by trucks. It's not feasible to distribute container-loads of goods on foot or by bus, or by wagons hitched to multiple tandem bicycles. Slow trucks down, make them drive more circuitous routes or force them to idle longer in "calmed" traffic and they will emit more carbon - rather more than that apt to be saved by inconvenienced householders leaving the car at home more often.

The policy could also be tank fuel to the untameable inflation beast, newly measured at 7.2%. Never mind Key's waterbed motif, with petrol and diesel reaching new price peaks and a shortage of truck drivers ratcheting up wages, this scenario has the makings of a James and the Giant Peach scenario.