The Interim Climate Change Committee is expected to report today and according to Politik (paywalled) will propose that agriculture is made part of the ETS for a period of five years to build up funds to allow a levy/rebate system that can operate at a farm level.
National is already going hard out with its response. Basically this is an attack on our way of life, particularly the way of life for our farmers who should be allowed to continue their current business model without interference.
I am not so sure. I mean it seems pretty clear that the way things are going climate change wise our planet will not be the same. Billions will be dispossessed and/or starve to death. Ice at the polar caps and Greenland will melt. Sea levels will increase and coastal cities, Florida, New Orleans and Dunedin amongst other areas will be submerged.
But it appears that some think that running millions of cows, and polluting our waterways and our drinking supplies is a god given right up there with the possession of high powered automatic weapons.
Inclusion of agriculture into the ETS has been on the cards for a long time. After all if you have a system designed to apply market discipline to the production of greenhouse gasses then including agriculture is a very rational thing to do.
But National went a bit weird on it and is claiming that a Te Papa touch screen that suggested more cows meant more methane and more global warming was somehow PC gone mad.
And National’s climate change spokesperson Todd Muller, the person who is responsible for the negotiation of a durable agreement between the major parties, is also somewhat skeptical.
I’m sorry but the solution is less dairy. The result will be less methane, less pollution, less meat, less milk, less global warming. I agree that there has to be less consumption of meat as well but to get ourselves out of this problem business as usual clearly will not work.
This is main stream scientific thinking, not some extreme crack pot theory. It is a shame that National is going to play politics with the issue.
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