Trying to fully get to grips with the scheme, as with some other aspects of green economics, can leave you feeling rather like you have been dragged backwards through a thorny thicket.
For the average Kiwi, understanding the ETS is just not high on their priority list, not when the cost of living, teachers’ strikes and crime worry them the most.
Yet in terms of the future of New Zealand Inc, getting a scheme which works well is critical for us to tackle our greenhouse gas emissions and do as much as we can to avoid a very scary climate change future, with runaway heating and more frequent, more extreme, storms.
If you love a nice tree then you should also love the ETS as it currently stands.
At the moment, it seems to be all about planting trees — and rather fallaciously exotic trees — to offset our carbon dioxide emissions.
Trees, and other plants, do this by sequestering carbon.
As they grow, they reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by taking it in to build their wood and leaves and roots.
It’s a great idea to harness photosynthesis to sequester carbon and produce what are knowns as carbon sinks.
But it’s only great up to a point.
Just how many fast-growing pine forests does New Zealand really need, given they are short-lived, shallow-rooted, and easily go up in flames?
It would be a much better longer-term bet to be planting native trees, although as these are slow-growing they do not provide the quick and easy fix which many polluters clamour for.
Swathes of exotic forests are also not the be-all and end-all, as they take up land which could be far more valuable for production or other uses.
That New Zealand polluters have also been looking to plant millions of trees in other countries to absolve them of their emissions problems here is also bewildering.
Changes proposed this week to the ETS aim to make businesses think a little more broadly and flexibly about solutions to their emissions, rather than automatically opting for pine trees as a cheap and rather lazy answer.
There are four options in the consultation document, which wants to address the situation whereby it can be cheaper for polluters to buy carbon credits, and promote more tree planting, than to make changes which reduce their gross emissions.
Two of the proposals focus on the way the carbon market works, by reducing the number of credits in the market and lifting their price.
Option three suggests splitting gross emission cuts and carbon removals, while the fourth goes the furthest, proposing taking forestry out of the ETS and using incentives which could include a biodiversity credit market instead.
And always hovering in the background is the vexed issue of bringing agriculture, which produces about half of our total greenhouse gas emissions, into the ETS.
The Labour Government is working with the farming sector and iwi to measure, manage and reduce on-farm emissions and develop a bespoke emissions mechanism from 2025.
The National Party, however, wants to kick the can a little further down the road, to implement what it calls a ‘‘fair and sustainable pricing system’’ by 2030.
Its agriculture spokesman Todd McClay says the party believes the best way to reductions is by using technology rather than cutting production.
While the science of climate change was largely settled many years ago, New Zealand is still trying to get to grips with the best ways of lowering emissions and making polluters pay.
Courage is needed to continue tackling the biggest emitters. And much mettle is also required to ensure farming eventually joins the ETS and pays its dues like other sectors.
At present, the scheme is obviously not working as well as it could, with far too much reliance on pine forestry.
New Zealand needs to find that sweet spot, where we can continue to sequester carbon but not at the expense of discovering the best ways to lower our emissions.
