The Centre for Resource Management studies

The CRMS responds to false and misleading claims by Greenpeace

In a media release yesterday (published on Scoop and presumably elsewhere) Greenpeace climate campaigner, Simon Boxer said, in an attempt to link Owen McShane to a posting by Dennis Avery on the Heartland Institute webpage:

"The incident comes just as a notorious New Zealand sceptic, linked to the Heartland Institute, puts his case to the Finance� and Expenditure Select Committee on the Government's emissions trading scheme.

"Owen McShane, who was paid by Heartland to speak at their conference in New York in March, gave evidence to the� Committee this morning that climate change is a hoax," said Boxer. "If this latest incident is any indication of the veracity of� sceptics' case, let's hope the Select Committee paid no heed to his submission."

"This statement makes claims which are false and misleading," says Owen McShane, director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies.�

"My evidence to the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee made�no claim�that climate change is a hoax.�

My evidence focused on the Emissions Trading Scheme and related topics.�"Two members of Greenpeace made their submission immediately after mine, and the two members were present throughout my own submission, so they know this claim is untrue. But Mr Boxer makes the claim anyhow," �said Mr McShane.

"It is is true that the Heartland Institute paid my airfare to present a paper on the impact of climate change policies on urban planning related matters. This is normal practice. If this means I am "linked to the Heartland Institute" I am linked to a huge number of organisations around the world and throughout New Zealand. I have been giving papers at international conferences since the early eighties when I was the only person from the southern hemisphere to give a paper to "Biotech '82" the first international conference on genetic engineering. Next Tuesday, I leave for Houston13th to give a paper on "Integrated land use and transport" policies. I must be the most "linked" person in New Zealand," he says.

"The Centre expects those organisations who have published these false and misleading claims to publish a retraction or this response," he concludes.

For completion, the Centre has attached the full written submission to the Select Committee, prepared in February, and the speech notes to the oral submission made yesterday.

Both the full submission (nine pages) and the oral notes (six pages) are attached as pdf and word files.

The oral "update" and the original submission are combined into a single document so there should be a "largish" single word file and a "largish" single�pdf file below. They will both soon be on the CRMS website.

The Centre's oral submission focused on why the Emissions Trading Scheme was doomed to fail, and how so many of the predictions, made in Centre's original submission in February, had already come true.

The verbal "interpolations" have been added to the speech notes to provide a record closer to what was actually said.

Readers can judge for themselves the accuracy of the Greenpeace claims.

Owen McShane

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