Mike's Minute: Another win for farmers and sensible moves

Another one of those sensible moves this week, with an amendment coming to the Climate Change Response Act.

It's to make sure agriculture doesn't enter the Emissions Trading Scheme.

On a side note, the report the previous Government commissioned to look at how we handle agriculture around climate change was called He Waka Eke Noa.

Ele Ludemann: Ag out of ETS

The government has honoured its promise to keep agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme:

The Government will deliver on its election commitment to take agriculture out of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) and will establish a new Pastoral Sector Group to constructively tackle biogenic methane, Coalition Government Agriculture and Climate Change Ministers say.

Peter Wilson: Week in Politics: National and Labour go courting at Fieldays

It was Fieldays week and that meant Labour and National courting the farmers with enticing policies.

Opposition leader Christopher Luxon announced National's policy, which pushes back the deadline for pricing agricultural emissions to 2030 and rules out putting the sector under the Emissions Trading Scheme.

The party's agriculture spokesman, Todd McClay, said it was all about giving farmers the tools they needed to cut methane emissions.

Point of Order: Greenpeace attacks government on tardiness to cut farm emissions.......

.......but doesn’t NZ need all the income it can get?

At a time when the nation is reeling from the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle, climate change campaigner Greenpeace is demanding answers on why the government has yet to come up with an effective plan to cut emissions from the country’s biggest polluter.

Where’s the long-awaited plan to cut agricultural emissions? Greenpeace climate campaigner Christine Rose demands.

Point of Order: Impeding food production with taxes on emissions is a bad idea when the world is tipping towards mass hunger

As the war in the Ukraine drags on, the international food crisis is deepening. The Economist put it simply but grimly:

“The war is tipping a fragile world towards mass hunger. Fixing that is everyone’s business”.

So shouldn’t the New Zealand Government be exhorting farmers to go all out to produce as much as they can for this country to be lifting its food exports? Is this the time for the government to be erecting new hurdles to impede the production of food? Shouldn’t it delay the plan to tax methane emissions for at least 12 months?

Let’s look at what The Economist further said: