Mike Hosking: Green MP James Shaw's Zero Carbon bill makes zero sense

Greens co-leader James Shaw has reached into the nutty jar and pulled out another doozy to end the week.

He started it, of course, with his plan that we all eat less meat. The very thing that we make a living with.

He ends it with his much vaunted Zero Carbon bill. He's tabled some options and so begins a six-week consultation process.

I'll start shall I? You're mad, it's not going to happen. End of submission.
And here's why it won't happen.

Firstly, it's trying to match some of the fabulously insane ideas already signed up to by other countries. This is part of an international "try to look good competition". The UK wants an 80 per cent reduction in emissions. Canada too 80 per cent. The EU 80 to 95 per cent.

We need to be seen to be doing the same thing. And when I say 'doing', no one is 'doing' they're just 'saying' they will do. It's like Britain banning combustion engines. It won't happen.

Secondly, it won't happen as it will tip our economy on its head.
That's not me saying that, that's an admission in the papers. GDP will slow, household income will slow.

And those least able to absorb it will be hit the hardest. Thus you will need more government support to help those people through the change.

So in other words, we aren't growing, our incomes aren't growing. And yet we still need to pay more to help those most affected.

What politician is taking that to an election? What politician is successfully going to sell a stalling economy, with underperforming household income, all so we can save the world?

And finally - and this is perhaps the most critical part before perhaps we even get to one and two - James Shaw doesn't have buy-in.

Do people believe broadly in climate change? Perhaps.
Would they do without a straw, or a single use plastic bag? Sure.

Would they watch their life savings vanish? No.

Oh, there is more, our transport fleet would need to be 95 per cent electric. How's that going to happen?

It isn't. Why? Because we don't produce enough power, not without building some more dams. And I assume he'd go hydro not coal.

Is James Shaw lining up to build some dams, block some rivers and destroy some countryside? I don't think so.
And all of this by 2050, 30 short years away.

This is a sham, it's a fraud. It's a well-intentioned fraud, Shaw and co mean well.

But he has no buy-in, and he will get no buy-in because the simple truth is people like money and a job. And under his scheme it's possible they won't have one.
Or if they do, it won't be worth having.

We'll live in a country of trees. That's the other thing by the way, 10 per cent of the country would be trees. A country of trees and broke people.

Hobbit author J R R Tolkien would have been proud of a fantasy this fantastic.