My sense of it is we have become too reliant on pine trees to meet the Paris climate target.
The sheep farmers have worked that out as the protests around land conversion have once again been reignited, with posters put up by the Meat and Wool folk with the line: "I am not the problem".
Since 1982 we have gone from 70 million sheep to 25 million.
In the last seven years a quarter of a million hectares has been swapped from sheep to trees.
This of course was always going to happen. What's the easiest way to meet a target on carbon? Trees.
Cutting and slashing, whether its farm production or the economy, in general was never going to be palatable. So trees were easy.
But you might have noticed a couple of major things have happened;
1) Paris looks increasingly shaky in terms of people meeting targets, or indeed people even being interested in meeting targets.
2) Stuff grown on the land with legs is fetching very good money all over the world and as far as us earning a living goes, we have never made more from farming.
Carbon offsetting, which is what planting trees is called, has restrictions in other countries. But I bet you anything you want that other countries aren't as reliant on sheep and cows as we are.
We used to have tourism back us up. But last week's numbers tell the sad story - dairy is worth $20 billion, while tourism is at $12 billion. Even offal comes in at $9 billion.
Tourism used to vie for first place, hence the Government threw another $13 million at it yesterday to try and attract another 70,000 or so new visitors.
Trees also kill communities. Farming is life. A forest isn't.
As laudable as Paris was all those years ago, if we had thought about it, if we had been less evangelical, we might have stopped to think just what it was we were asking of a small economy.
And the simple truth is we were asking so much, a quick shortcut like trees was always going to be adopted with alacrity.
Saving the planet, as people get tossed off the land, is not an equation we should be proud of. As the protest poster with the photo of the sheep says, I am not the problem. And it's right.
The zealots are.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
Since 1982 we have gone from 70 million sheep to 25 million.
In the last seven years a quarter of a million hectares has been swapped from sheep to trees.
This of course was always going to happen. What's the easiest way to meet a target on carbon? Trees.
Cutting and slashing, whether its farm production or the economy, in general was never going to be palatable. So trees were easy.
But you might have noticed a couple of major things have happened;
1) Paris looks increasingly shaky in terms of people meeting targets, or indeed people even being interested in meeting targets.
2) Stuff grown on the land with legs is fetching very good money all over the world and as far as us earning a living goes, we have never made more from farming.
Carbon offsetting, which is what planting trees is called, has restrictions in other countries. But I bet you anything you want that other countries aren't as reliant on sheep and cows as we are.
We used to have tourism back us up. But last week's numbers tell the sad story - dairy is worth $20 billion, while tourism is at $12 billion. Even offal comes in at $9 billion.
Tourism used to vie for first place, hence the Government threw another $13 million at it yesterday to try and attract another 70,000 or so new visitors.
Trees also kill communities. Farming is life. A forest isn't.
As laudable as Paris was all those years ago, if we had thought about it, if we had been less evangelical, we might have stopped to think just what it was we were asking of a small economy.
And the simple truth is we were asking so much, a quick shortcut like trees was always going to be adopted with alacrity.
Saving the planet, as people get tossed off the land, is not an equation we should be proud of. As the protest poster with the photo of the sheep says, I am not the problem. And it's right.
The zealots are.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
The real Zealots are those that allow our economy to be trashed to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. An imbecilic public that stopped thinking for themselves decades ago. The corrupt MSM that attacks gutless politicians from questioning their climate agenda.
Hosking would rather choke than congratulate President Trump for justifiably kicking the Paris Agreement into touch.
At least most of the carbon credits are going overseas due to some astute government decisions. Oh wait...
I suspect most citizens , like me, have very limited grasp of the whole carbon buy off arrangements. And for that matter the whole pine industry.. No periodic succinct explanations in the msm. Our economy seems very dependant on. A disease would be a disaster.. I am curious about carbon credits in the event of major fire. With rival tribal interest a real possibility. What is situation if owner companies dissolve?
A forest is full of life. Unless, of course, it’s a pine forest. But, we were planting pine forests long before the Paris Accord. No one was complaining then when our paper mills were churning out newspaper by the hectare. But who reads newsprint now?
Dear Anon 8.10 am.
No one was complaining then because the pine forests were restricted to areas where it was considered to be the best land use - ie. the Nth Island Volcanic Plateau and farm wood lots on classes 6 and 7 marginal hill country.
There were also bi-laws that ensured those restrictions were upheld.
The problem arose only after those bi-laws were repealed and foreign owners were allowed to outbid local farmers for the best grazing land on which they would plant pine forests in order to cash in on the disastrous Emission’s Trading Scheme.
Unfortunately, the OIO (Overseas Investment Office) was instructed to allow these foreigners owners to buy up large tracts of our best grazing land and plant trees as part of the Labour Government’s obsession with Climate Change.
Thankfully, the current Government has finally reinstated laws to restrict the expansion of the forestry industry on our best grazing land but alas, it is too little, too late.
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