The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we are being incredibly naive and frankly stupid in forcing farmers to pay for climate emissions. Or in fact, forcing anyone in this country to pay for climate emissions.
Let’s look at the facts:
New Zealand will not be able to stop climate change.
We only contribute (at last count) 0.17% of the world’s emissions.
We can stop emitting altogether right now, and climate change will still happen.
Because China and India and other big emitters are still going hell for leather, opening coal power plants.
In which case, why are we wasting money on something we know we can’t stop?
Shouldn’t we take that money and instead use it to prepare for the inevitable: move houses away from eroding coastlines, build stop banks for low lying suburbs like Wellington’s Petone, lift exposed roads like Auckland's Tamaki Drive or redo the water infrastructure that will be inundated?
That’s going to happen no matter what we do, so wouldn’t we be better off paying for it now, rather than wasting money on trying to stop it when we know we can’t?
This will get one of two arguments back.
Number one: we need to price our emissions if we want India and China to or they won’t listen to us.
Number two: if we don’t do this, western consumers won’t buy our products.
Firstly, India and China aren’t listening to us now and they're not going to listen to us even if we price our emissions.
Secondly, BS to consumers not buying our products. When was the last time you went to the supermarket and considered the climate credentials of the country of origin before buying it. You didn’t. Exactly.
And in any case, it’s not as if every other country’s farmers are doing this and we’re the laggard. Our farmers will be – as far as we can tell – the only farmers in the world paying for their emissions.
That’s crazy right? It’s throwing good money at a problem we have no control over.
What a waste.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
19 comments:
Brilliant piece Heather, thank you. Another point to note is:
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) – the body the Government relies on for advice – has already explained that if a country has an Emissions Trading Scheme in place, no other policy interventions are necessary to meet emissions targets:
“If a cap and trade system has a sufficiently stringent cap to affect emission‐related decisions, then other policies have no further impact on reducing emissions”.
And New Zealand does have a fully functioning ETS in place!
In the case of Climate change the ideology trumps reality.
Like everything in New Zealand it too is driven by a dogma that somehow cannot be challenged and to do so makes you a heretic.
Labour will use all its advantage to denegrate our economy in the name of that dogma and the citzens will be left to clean up the mess but in the end the outcome will remain the same.
Using figures from the United Nation’s IPCC:-
• Global CO2 levels in the atmosphere are 400 ppm (parts per million)
• Each year, an extra 2 ppm is generated by human activity.
• NZ contributes 0.17% of that 2 ppm each year.
Okay – let’s illustrate just how much this is:
Picture a domestic backyard swimming pool, 6 meters by 4 meters, and 1.25 meters deep.
The pool contains 30,000 liters of water. That is 30,000,000,000 mils. (30 billion)
This represents the total global atmosphere.
• 400ppm is 12 liters (= Global CO2)
• 2 ppm (human per year) is 60 mil
• 0.17% New Zealand contribution is 0.102 mils per year, this is 2 drops in 30,000 liters per year.
This is ONE drop every 6 months in a swimming pool !
ONE drop every six months in a pool of 30 BILLION mils., ( = 600 billion drops, 600,000,000,000 drops ). This represents how much global CO2 New Zealand is emitting. I repeat – ONE drop in 600,000,000,000 drops every six months.
ONE drop in 600 billion is about as close to zero as you can get.
On top of that the Climate Change Commission plans to have New Zealand spending up to $60,000,000,000 per year, every year to reach "zero" targets by 2050. While the rest of the world carries on ignoring us.
Well said Heather..!!
Well said Heather. Sanity at last. I will go further by saying man made global warming is a myth, propagated by the politically unscrupulous UN IPCC, left wing fanatics, corrupt scientists, self serving investors in green energy and outrageously promoted by the MSM to a gullible audience. The emperor is indeed naked.
Does anybody realize how dangerous James Shaw really is? From farting cows to a Ministry for Rainbow People the guy is a twit. Worse, he's a twit (ostensibly) leading a pack of idealogues who don't appear to have a practical clue about anything.
It is all just posturing to pretend we care. If we wanted to try and force change the only action would be to refuse to deal with countries like China and India. No trade, no visas, nothing.
Unfortunately this would directly impact those at the top. It would mean they would need to make sacrifices, which is just a step to far. The poorest, no problem, dump all over them. But actually get impacted as one of the wealthy bleaters, not so much.
True enough Heather, but we are told that what we do here will save the planet.
Our young people are being brainwashed and in some cases, terrified of what the future might bring.
Our politicians have convinced themselves that climate hysteria is the way to scare the living daylights out of the populace, and fellow politicians to afraid to go against the party line.
The guts of it is, as you have said, is that whatever we do here will not have the slightest effect on the climate. It is what it is and as it always will be.
Seems everything that happens now is blamed on climate change. I might be able to use the climate change argument to curtail home spending on such things as expensive clothing, jewellery, hair perms and the like.
Heather is 100% totally correct but that is only part of it.
Unfortunately this is not really about Global Warming,but a slow gradual and deliberate wearing away of all our NZ society established mores with the object of bringing down and destroying the whole of our existing social mechanisms.
It is such a planned and deliberately instigated program, that unless NZ's population realizes and takes action accordingly in short time -- it really will be too late.
We all as NZ'rs are going to have to stop our complacent approach to what is going on,and actively make a stand to return governance to a more normal and democratic operation as has been for the last 100yrs.
Such logic isn’t common Andrea.NZ farmers are apparently the lowest carbon farmers in the world and we are preparing to be the only country to actually tax our farmers on our animals emissions No one else is even considering it !
So our farmers will have to compete against subsidised farmers who get enormous financial support from their taxpayers,pay tariffs to get our products into their countries,and now pay a fart tax that our competitors don’t
The country has gone completely mad
If there was a collective world wide agreement that each farmer must pay a certain $ amount per specified animal in US dollars, then we would at least be all on the same playing field
But as you say it wouldn’t make any difference to world emissions if China and India keep burning coal
It will just make food more expensive for everyone
Absolutely correct Heather. The track that we are going down is just barking mad. It's not logical, scientific or remotely clever. Just posturing and self-importance by our government and supported by the Opposition who seem to be too gutless to make a stand (or maybe they really believe it all too).
Any media about the billions we are to spend is usually accompanied by images of floods, wild storms, droughts etc as if to imply that spending this money and choking our efficient agricultural industry will somehow stop or reduce those happening. It is false advertising and there should be a disclaimer to that effect. The government should be required to publish a direct cost/benefit study of the money being spent on climate change, including the money going into the ETS every time we turn on a light switch or fill our tank.
Where is the rational thinking and open debate about this topic? Oh that's right, the science is settled, anyone who questions it is a denier. NZ must do its bit even if the rest of the world doesn't.
Ray S and Rob Beechey have summed it up very well.
The apocalyptical predictions made by the IPCC are ridiculous.
The IPCC is consistently wrong in it's predictions of doom.
None of their predictions have come true:-
1/ No 50 million climate refugees by 2010, as they forecast in 2005.
2/ No increase in rate of sea level rising.
3/ Artic Ice is still there, and not melting away
3/ Antarctic Ice is actually growing.
4/ Extreme weather events, world-wide are NOT increasing.
5/ Forest fires, world-wide, are not increasing.
Added to this, the increase in CO2 levels from 280 to 400 ppm, is a major benefit to the world, because (food) crops are more productive, and previous arid areas in the world are greening up.
It is worth pointing out that for most of the 500 million years or so of planet Earth' history, CO2 levels have been between 2000 and 7000 parts per million. Our current levels are literally CO2 starvation.
If CO2 levels drop below 160 ppm, all plants stop growing, and die. Which means ALL LIFE on Earth dies.
Is this what the Green Lunatics want?
And, lastly, Thanks you for an excellent article Heather.
This topic is so often drowned in complex, drawn-out, verbiage to try and pump up the panic and drama.
You have summed up the situation very clearly, simply and accurately.
Well done !!
Well said Heather
They (government and greenies) want to ping pastoral farming and promote agriculture.
But pastoral farming is net carbon sink. Every atom of carbon in livestock and their produce and emissions came out of the air via the grass.
Government's carbon report the other year excluded the carbon capturing effect of grass - it was dishonest.
For carbon out of the ground (diesel for machinery) agriculture uses far more than pastoral farming. If they were honest, they would be promoting sheep and cows over plowing the land.
Doug, I liked your swimming pool analogy but I got to 30,000 litres = 30 billion mills and stopped there, you might want to check your math :-)
If only Doug Longmire's statistical explanation could be printed on the front page of the NZH.
But wait, that doesn't fit the accepted Climate Religion. Heresy!
All we are experiencing is the normal fluctuations of the earth going through its normal cycles as it was, so it will be again 60s and 70s , cold 80s warm. As for rising sea levels etc check out the shore lines going down on almost every coast
I thank Breaking Views for providing a platform. I’m heartened to see so many comments denied by the MSM that challenges their ideology and lies. You cannot suppress the thinking public forever.
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