The Coalition Government says the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will be its main tool for tackling climate change but it won’t be applied to New Zealand farmers.
Three of the four Ministers of Agriculture—Todd McClay, Andrew Hoggard, and Mark Patterson—and Simon Watts, Minister for Climate Change, confirmed the policy on Tuesday.
The Climate Change Response Act will be amended to exclude agriculture, animal processors and fertilizer companies from the ETS before a backstop kicks in next year.
Any farm-related emissions from these sectors will be unpriced until sometime before 2030 when the Coalition Government hopes to have set up a separate pricing system for the sector.
Carrots & sticks
The Labour Government had been working with the sector to develop agricultural pricing ahead of a 2025 deadline which would’ve seen it dropped into the ETS.
It was a ‘carrot and stick’ type approach which collapsed in 2023 when the National Party pulled its support and signaled it would delay pricing if it were to win the election.
Now in Government, the party will set up a new version of the Crown–industry partnership to work out how to price emissions before the new 2030 deadline.
It will be called the Pasture Sector Group instead of He Waka Eke Noa, which has been formally disestablished, but will serve a similar purpose.
Wanye Langford, president of Federated Farmers, said he hoped the group would focus on reducing, rather than pricing, on-farm emissions.
The group aims to avoid emissions pricing altogether and encourage farmers to use their resources to reduce methane output instead of “paying a tax”.
He said the Pasture Sector Group would be different from He Waka Eke Noa as it included a tighter-knit group of farming representatives and would have new terms of reference.
Federated Farmers has three bottom lines: methane targets need to be reviewed, viable and cost-effective tools should be available for farmers, and no emissions leakage should occur.
"We can see those bottom lines explicitly reflected in today’s government announcement and that gives us a lot of confidence for the future," Langford said.
Delay today
Todd McClay said it was “time for a fresh start on how we engage with farmers and processors to work on biogenic methane”.
The Minister has also asked for advice that may be used to challenge the Government’s own Climate Change Commission’s advice on how much agriculture emissions should be reduced.
He wants to approach methane from a “no additional warming” perspective, which could effectively allow the sector to freeze their emissions at their existing levels.
Green Party co-leader, Chlöe Swarbrick said the Government would not be able to achieve its climate commitments if it kept delaying pricing half the country’s total emissions.
“The science tells us we must reduce methane emissions. Fair pricing is a crucial way to achieve this, putting the sector on an even footing with the rest of our economy,” she said.
Searching for solution
Simon Watts said the Coalition would invest $400 million over the next four years to support the commercialisation of tools and technology that could reduce on-farm emissions. This includes a $50.5 million funding boost for the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.
Things such as a methane vaccine, lower-emission cattle breeds, and methane and nitrous oxide inhibitors could make the pricing less costly when imposed in 2030. (See more on these here).
“These investments signal the Government's support for farmers while ensuring New Zealand meets its international climate change obligations,” Watts said.
Tthe Act Party said the Government—of which it is a part—should have gone further and repealed the Zero Carbon Act and abolished the Climate Change Commission.
78 Comments
The scheme is a farce. Even the UN has made public that the criteria which the NZ scheme uses was based on false assumptions. But no, the Greens continue their campaigns to run NZ agriculture into the ground, and have never corrected their false public information in this regard.
Even the Paris Accord clearly stated that security of food production was a priority and should not be threatened by any emissions scheme. Yet the Left in NZ, Netherlands, Ireland were all determined to shut down 20-25% of their farming capacity. Its like people who can no longer afford to buy food are their voter base or something .....
Correct me if I am wrong, but does exempting farmers from the NZ ETS mean the burden of reducing emissions from the agricultural sector is shifted away from farmers to other sectors covered by the scheme. i.e other sectors have to make deeper cuts to compensate for the emissions that would have been accounted for from agriculture?
If so, no cause to celebrate I would suggest.
Correct - NZ's plan was to reduce biogenic methane by 47% by 2050. Methane makes up 42% of gross emissions (agriculture as a whol3 is 53%).
So by failing to reduce methane then we need to find savings equivalent to 20% of the total from elsewhere in addition to the current plan - either from harder reductions elsewhere or from planting more trees or buying dubious overseas credits.
Not so much need, but it will be an eventuality when the cost of extraction of said fuels becomes uneconomical to the point of rationing the remaining reserves. By then it will be likely too expensive to drive fossil fuel cars, generate electricity from said fuels at a reasonable cost to the consumer, and have the luxury of things like building materials, machinery etc that we enjoy today. We only have to look back in history of the last 100 or so years to the effects of sudden rise in the cost of oil and the flow on effects. Imagine that on a much larger scale.
kiwimm uses the old "gross" sleight of hand beloved of greenie snake oil salesmen. Net emissions on the other hand are negative for this country and biogenic methane is just the carbon cycle - which green ecotards slept through in biology class.
"Dr Kevin E Trenberth says: ...The issue is that methane is so short lived that in fact NZ is already at “net zero” wrt methane. The numbers of livestock have been stable enough since 2010 that the amounts emitted are completely compensated by the amounts oxidized to carbon dioxide. Since the methane started out as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere before being taken up in grass, and then eaten by livestock, the process is circular."
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/04/08/govt-sidelines-climate-commission-in-…
"A Comprehensive Assessment of Anthropogenic and Natural Sources and Sinks of Australasia's Carbon Budget
...New Zealand was a net CO2 sink of −38.6 ± 13.4 million tonnes C yr−1."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GB007845
Assuming we don't withdraw from the relevant agreements, or some other changes, the government will likely end up buying a whole bunch of foreign credits for our farmers emissions. This isn't ideal, as there is little incentive to reduce agricultural emissions.
There should be some sort of emissions pricing imposed on farmers, even if the proceeds are ring fenced and recycled back somehow so there is an incentive to tackle the easier improvements.
Come on.
Farming is NOTHING but the turning of fossil fuel calories into food ones. Many of the former, to each of the latter. That is a temporary arrangement, fossil energy being finite, and half-used-up.
Beyond that (and aquifer draw-down and top-soil loss ditto nutrient) we don't feed 8 billion. Perhaps 3, probably 1-2. Justification of farming as practiced, then, is to justify temporary self-gain by a few.
The bigger question is: how do we reduce our population(s) to fit non-FF food production. (left-vs-right is therefore a red :) herring).
Some of us may fall in the battle against the transgenders, but we need to remember we are doing this to protect the children!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/destiny-church-disciple-arrested-and-char…
Yes some fossil fuel energy, and a heap of solar energy. Sheep are little solar cells that munch grass and oneday get to feed their owners or others. They shit and fertilise the ground. Other countries even use their bones as tent pegs, they are useful critters for us mortals. Do you have any livestock yourself
Complete this sentence. Without farmers there would be no...
No, it doesn't. It depends who is eating the primary growth; us directly, or animals that we then eat. The major loss is in the 'via animal' pathway. I am no vegetarian; no vegan; but pragmatically they are correct; you can feed a s--tload more people per acre on grains/vegetables, than meat/milk
And where is merely sunlight hours; solar acreage.
Yep, by 2100 there will be only 2 workers for each geriatric. Who is going to fight in this conflict?! - working age will be too busy nursing geriatric greenies clinging to their Population Bomb bibles.
"In 1949 there were about eight people of working age (25–64 years) for every person over the age of 65 years. Seventy-four years on, globally there are now about five adults per old person because so many of us live on into extreme old age. By 2100, when the children born in the first third of this century are elderly, this ratio is expected to have dropped to about 2."
https://insightplus.mja.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Picture4-1.png
We don't even have 2 workers for each elderly person in care now (I assume that is what you meant by using geriatric offensively and not just people over the age of 65 which predominantly does not include those who would have been classed as geriatric, much like calling everyone below the age of 30 babies and toddlers).
If you think the ever decreasing below living wages of our workforce will be enough to make up for a universal benefit of a living wage every person over 65 then you really missed out on just how screwed we are as a country now. But don't worry we are far more likely to sacrifice the poor and those vulnerable below the age of 65 first (as we are doing en masse now) before we ever considering cutting the benefits of rich investors & those choosing not to work over 65. Just picture a reverse Logan's Run scenario, or perhaps Make Room, Make Room where the booths were more for those who could not longer support or suck off the property holders.
The bigger question is: how do we reduce our population(s) to fit non-FF food production. (left-vs-right is therefore a red :) herring).
What we need is educate the 1st world population (below in kJ, but basically the average intake an adult needs is ~2000kcal/d, the US average in 2018 was ~3800kcal/d, NZ was ~3200kcal/d):
List of countries by food energy intake - Wikipedia
Add food waste on top of that...
Yes, and no, respectively.
The ETS was always a scam - trying to absolve ourselves from ADDING fossil carbon to the above-ground arena. No financial shenanigans could do that.
But not common sense. This is merely a socialisation of the cost, by a lobby. Not the first time, but that is all it is; not I. said the little blue hen....
Basically, the trading format we use is past its use-by-date, and all trading done under/with it, is ditto. That includes the so-called 'backbone of the economy[ - which is in reality, the turning of fossil energy into food (a temporary format).
Then you don't understand exponential growth.
Half of ALL the fossil energy consumed, has been consumed inside the last 30 years. So we can know we've less than 30 to go - and that'll be the dregs, and will inevitably be fought over.
Sigh. That message has ben on this site for a goodly time - did you not do the research/learning?
Personally, if it were possible, I would think most people would rather live an agrarian life on a low output farm than spend 20 years in Vegas and then eat rats while fighting a war?
Your alternative doesn't make that much sense, if we take it at face value that we will run out of energy in our lifetime if change isn't made.
We aren't smart enough to change, so what we think is pretty irrelevant, but your preferred option seems to result in rat eating faster.
Half of ALL the fossil energy consumed, has been consumed inside the last 30 years. So we can know we've less than 30 to go.
You can't determine that from what's already been consumed.
You would have to also take one of the repeatedly failed estimates about how much there is left as fact.
You - seriously - need to study exponential growth, numbers and function.
Doubling-time is the key here; if we've used half of half the total (a quarter, in other words) that had to be the second quarter. One doubling, uses up the last half. You want to grow at 3%? That doubling - that last half - will take 24 years. Not so far off the 30...
Even if there were twice what we have discovered - an impossibility - that would only support another 30 years. So your last comment is a misunderstanding, at best.
Discoveries peaked in? 1964. Think about it....
Few factors
- oil production has relatively plateau'd.
- we'll have hundreds of millions of less people, who are probably poorer over the next 30 years
- offshore and unconventional oil discovery are both still increasing
- 150 years of coal left
- 60 years of natural gas discovered, with new discovery steadily increasing
- like the age of peak discovery, every nuclear plant operating today had their fundamentals designed using a pencil
We will turn the planet into a shitty, smoldering mess before we run out of natural resources to exploit. Or more likely, find some other way to come unstuck.
It's all a bit of Catholic vs protestant though. We should fundamentally redress what we're doing and how we're living. I've just accepted that just because we can travel to space and eradicate diseases, doesn't mean we have really evolved in our core behaviour in thousands of years.
Can we? Hard to say.
Amazing time to be alive though, I'm with Te Kooti, enjoy what you can while you can.
Coal - at what rate? So many say that silly stuff about X years to go. But change your rate... And are you going to displace oil with it? Gonna be shorter, then. Very. (It can be done; the Germans did, but lost the EROEI battle).
Gas will indeed outlast the other sources - again, displacing what, at what rate?
Nuclear plants are built using fossil oil - as are all energy infrastructures, indeed pretty much all infrastructure, period. They are not made of pencils - any more than hospitals are built of money.
Re indulgence - You got offspring?
Have they?
I answer yes to both questions, and I've got a conscience.
Just sayin'...
Gas will indeed outlast the other sources - again, displacing what, at what rate?
Highly likely more than another 30 years.
Nuclear plants are built using fossil oil - as are all energy infrastructures
Does a nuclear power plant not generate more energy than it's construction?
Re indulgence - You got offspring?
Yep, I do. If not for them I'd be living shoeless somewhere, consuming not much of anything.
I think they'll prefer the fact I spent the time raising and listening to them than evangelizing about unknowables and things I can't change.
There's something distinctly unscientific about reverting to moral judgements on the basis someone else doesn't 100% agree with your point of view.
Nuclear process heat application options: Highlights from the European GEMINI+ project
Nitrogen fertilizers and chemical products
Hydrocarbon or ammonia synthesis
Dry reforming of methane with CO2 to produce syngas as a feedstock for numerous chemicals
Hydrogen production for integration of nuclear energy in Hybrid Energy Systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029549322002333
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/danish-companies-support-smr-use-for-a…
That part was intended to cover subsistence farming, and necessities, think rice paddies in Nepal, that also produce methane. Our chocolate cheese and ice cream unfortunately isn't a necessity and won't be prioritized for global emissions budgets. Thankfully precision fermentation is on the way. If the government won't take care of it, markets and nature will.
All for the sake of $ 6 per su, will end up costing the country and farmers billions in the end.but these idiots( i"ll exclude Watts until we get a better feel of his stance), can't see past the next election, hoping there's enough 1950s thinking people to reelect them.
As opposed to your constant long-winded diatribes? Just because you have a belief and then obviously spend countless hours "researching" opinions to support your own, doesn't an expert make! What it has made you is a pompous, bombastic, patronising twat!!!! One among quite a few on this site, solardb case in point!
If you believe that Labour, the Greens and very other whack-jobs plan to tax NZ farmers out of existence for growing food for home and export was a good plan then you need to go and seek professional help!
Sigh
I'm guessing you didn't do too well in school?
I put up links to reasonably well-argued, fact-based items. If you need to shoot the messenger - a well-known ploy that I identify when I see it - which is often - it usually indicates lack of concrete argument.
This textbook is free. Let's try something; you read it, then rebut.
But you won't, will you. Ask yourself why?
Powerdownkiwi, using absolutes and claiming scientific certainty on models is rightfully called out as deceptive, manipulative and actually demonstrates a poorer understanding of science then those you are attacking. As a trained sustainability engineer as well I had experience with much of the literature, scientific and non scientific research, even practical steps possible in farming and manufacturing. It pains me to see you have failed to understand the living necessities of most the populace as well as the extreme ableism you show in every initiative you push for. But here is a clue try reading science texts and journals for once.
There has never been a defined certainty because of a key factor the assumptions we make in most of our models and our limitations in assuming closed systems. A journal article by itself is meaningless and many are non peer reviewed, have poor assumptions, and are heavily affected by AI generation. Sealioning people with misleading and poorly written articles is pretty poor behaviour as it only increases the mistrust. You also cannot draw a line from one poor shoddy study to then proclaim as a populace the poor should starve to reach your goal metrics. If you are unwilling to even recognize that there is no climate certainty (rather we have measured trends that are not easily predicted and evidence of anthropogenic climate change but with a significant delay factor for any changes to be apparent and no clear rates of change related to activity) and we often make models with assumptions that are not exact to the real world then you will lose people.
Most people with appropriate support would accept global climate change & yet you are forcing critically harmful changes on people's lives with no measurable beneficial factors to show. Hence the turn & churn away from initiatives. If you want changes you need to actually look at real world people and work with real world living needs. Fanciful idealogical models that fail to accommodate real world communities will fail to make meaningful change. As people are less likely to follow the poorer and less empowered they are. In case you did not realize it NZ has taken a big hit to become much poorer and have been harmed physically more from actions taken over the last few years, much of it we are still processing (e.g. effects of long term disablement from a pandemic are still developing as it takes people many years to burn through all their supports, and poverty is a multi-factor issue that takes time to increase in severity of social effects and even more time to get out of).
Most people, even those on your side, will not appreciate your misinformation practices. It throws more people off and only perpetuates a lowering standard of discourse. If you think people are too stupid to understand the shades of grey, that there are many factors we cannot control for and you resort to scare tactics it is just harmful to the public discourse and education of people into the science as a whole. Your audience will not appreciate or thank you for it.
Next time try here is an idea consensus with accounting for living needs. If you still think sealioning people is your way to go try at least for the same standards we need for medical research because even with the massive harm and fraud that is prevalent in science publishing as a whole these days (and sadly most sustainability research is non scientific and produced by inexperienced barely left side of arts graduates whose basic assumptions are so erroneous & fraudulent that the whole paper is invalid) the medical publishing at least requires more thorough and repeated studies that require more real world data points then mathematical models. Our real world weather system monitoring data is available and there are many much more scientific educational sources which actually are aimed for climate scientists that also train for appropriate methods for dealing with science communication to the public, & providing critical evaluations of the skeptics research as well proponents.
Lotta words
But the takeaway is simple; we are a species in gross overshoot. We got there by levering fossilized solar energy; a one-off boost. We applied it to agriculture - perhaps our biggest mistake.
Degrowth - both of population and per-head consumption, is therefore inevitable.
Don't conflate 'rights' (of the individuals of one species) with that reality. There are 'best possible in the circumstances' actions. There are 'best outcome for future generations' actions. Both are worth pursuing.
Then there is post-crash society - what will it look like? And what skills will be needed? What will it triage? As time goes on, logically, that becomes more important than adaption.
Someone has to address overshoot - arguing that one shouldn't scare people, is to avoid. We are indeed in a scary situation.
It can be said every government is a one term government as every government is different after each election. We do not have a continuation of governments from one term to the next as in authoritarian regimes, dictatorships etc.
Sadly a better measure of population voting likelihood are on betting websites. Ironic I know but most people vote on common behavioural factors that are not well represented in voter polls or even political parties polling mostly from people who are in their bubbles.
It is a sad truth that a person might have self determination & opportunities for nuance, people often do not. Common behvioural factors are often forgotten when it comes time for the election and ironically our lack in psychologist & MH workforce also affects the availability of these MH professionals to support politicians in planning.
it has nothing to do with the next election of course - this measure was part of the election manifesto .
It hurts you to think about the election result .. so you bring up the next election - stating with certainty befitting a true idiot that you somehow know its result. You lost - get used to it.
The Young and the environment lose under this govt. Perhaps if you had young children, you might think differently. However, I do believe the younger generations have the ability to fix the mess we are leaving them, but that doesn't mean it's OK to make it worst. I'm quite happy doing my own thing , planting as many trees as I can, but this govt does make me angry.
It is a win for the farmers but a loss to tourism. Whatever spin it will be given but New Zealand 100% pure image will be broken down in overseas markets. Apart from that the EU CBAM is still there and I will bet EU farmers will make sure the EU will upheld it even if it is still a part of the green deal.
So by you reasoning we should be taxing the hell out of our own farmers so that we preserve our "100% Pure" brand (100% Pure bullshit!!) that will then attract all those tourists on their untaxed airlines from across the other side of the world, while belching huge tonnages of Co2 and other nasties. Very smart logic there!
Tourism, seriously? Tourism can ##$## right off, the absolute worst waste of FF possible.
About 33% of farmers will just carry making changes and doing better and some even more than necessary. The other 67% will breath a sigh of relief with no idea why just those in charge said it was good. Half the 67% will then carry on improving while the others rage on.
I guess Fonterra, and to a lessor extent, the meat processors, will drive a lot of the actions required anyway, as they realize they will lose high value sales if they don't.As will farmers selling their from farm to plate stories. It just makes it harder for them to do so, when oversees journalists can write stories on our worst farmers and practices.
Never ever read a negative article by an overseas journalist about our farming practices. The reality is we are viewed in a very positive light with a trusted food source, hence why Chinese love to buy our baby formula. These scare tactics ('losing high value sales') have been adopted by the Greens and Labour in an effort to make life tough for farmers because fundamentally they see them as national voters and therefore to be punished.
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