If you follow the carbon market, and you should, it is yet another lesson in the abject failure that almost certainly results in gerrymandering markets.

Four times a year you bid for credits (offsets) to counter your polluting habits.

You do this because we signed up to Paris and made a bunch of promises we were never going to be able to keep.

By selling credits the Government has the potential income of about $2 billion a year. Except little, if any, of that happens because by and large people don’t turn up and bid.

And they fail to show up, broadly speaking, because people don’t believe a word the Government says on climate.

It's not just this Government. The last one was even worse.

They have tried to set a price for carbon credits, remembering of course that it's an entirely invented market. So it's a dart-at-a-board stuff at the best of times.

Of late the price was $52. Then it was $33 before settling back to about $40-something.

Enter Climate Minister Simon Watts. Now, he doesn’t normally talk about the market because that’s interference, the same way the Prime Minister doesn’t talk about the Reserve Bank.

But Simon has talked about the market, and he has done that because the Government are panicked.

He issued a reassurance that despite all the changes they are making around climate, the carbon market and the ETS are still a thing. We are still committed, it's still going to happen.

His commitments, he said, are firm.

Except, Simon, that’s the problem – no one believes you.

This is a Government that says one thing and does another. Don’t get me wrong, what, roughly, they are doing is the right thing.

The tide has gone out on climate. The promises are a bust. No one is going to make Net Zero, so the answer is stop pretending you are.

Science might come to the rescue and if it does, fantastic.

But the governmental promises around carbon and the ETS and car import duties is all BS. There is no better proof of that than the carbon market.

The market is calling the Government's bluff.

Carbon credits or snake oil? Same thing.

No one's buying figuratively and literally.

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At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.

Education: 8/10

The maths trial results this week were a tangible example of the simple truth that if you concentrate on something and work hard, you will win.

The All Blacks: 6/10

They did better than the critics seem to suggest. Rugby has changed but the attitude on expectation and winning hasn’t. This isn't 1986.

Regional councils: 8/10

Bold call, good call. We will be better off for the call.

Ginny Andersen and steak: 6/10

Who had her down as a surreptitious food stealer?

Rachel Reeves: 2/10

Have a look at her work on taxes and ask yourself how far-removed Barbara Edmonds is - or isn't.

Surrender by Thursday: 4/10

Wasn't that yet another harebrained thought bubble by a bloke who looks increasingly unhinged, or tired, or old, or mad. Or possibly all of those things.

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On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Friday 28th of November, Judith Collins speaks on the public inquiry to be held into the disappearance of Tom Phillips and his children.

Could we grow more coffee in New Zealand? And who knew we grew any sort of decent coffee here in the first place?

Kate Hawkesby and Tim Wilson talk about the installation of Mike’s new TV and the legacy and impact of Simon Dallow as they Wrap the Week.

Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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