Essay by Eric Worrall
The new Conservative New Zealand Coalition Government has cancelled a climate flatulence tax which was due to start in 2025.
New Zealand ends plans to price agricultural emissions
By Lucy Craymer
June 11, 202410:11 AM GMT+10WELLINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) – New Zealand on Tuesday ended a plan to put a price on agricultural emissions including methane produced by belching sheep and cattle, relenting to farmer pressure that the plan would make their business unprofitable.
The conservative government said in a statement it would establish a Pastoral Sector Group with representatives from the agricultural sector to find other ways to reduce biogenic methane.
…
The previous government had introduced a plan to charge farmers for their gas emissions from the end of 2025, in what was hailed as a world first.
New Zealand, home to 5 million people, has about 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep. Nearly half its total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane.
New Zealand had been planning on including agriculture in the emissions trading scheme as part of its commitment to stop global warming. However, the plan was unpopular in many parts of the rural sector and the current government promised to end it if elected.
…
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/new-zealand-ends-plans-price-agricultural-emissions-2024-06-11/
While this is a promising start, New Zealand is not out of the woods when it comes to climate insanity.
In 2023 current New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Luxon said “If you’re a climate change denier at the moment or even a minimalist, I just don’t understand how you can hold that position to be honest.“. Junior coalition partner ACT wants climate action at a slower pace, and New Zealand First, while they place a heavy emphasis on cost of living issues, still have climate action on their list of policies.
Having said that, any relief from the madness of the Jacinda Ardern years is probably a welcome change for ordinary New Zealanders. Whatever doubts I have about the current New Zealand coalition government, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was far worse. In my opinion, nobody who thinks climate denial is linked to the Christchurch mass shooting should ever again be trusted with any kind of political authority.
Update (EW): h/t Duker – Corrected the link to the Ardern thinks Christchurch is linked to climate denial article, the original link was to a related article.
The following is a speech Ardern gave to the United Nations in 2022. This is the basis of my claim Ardern thinks climate denial is linked to the Christchurch mass shooting, she appeared to blame both on a lack of online censorship. If Ardern doesn’t want people to think she believes the issues are linked, she shouldn’t have put both issues in the same speech, and added “climate denial” to the remit of the Christchurch Call to Action.
…
On March 15, 2019, New Zealand experienced a horrific terrorist attack on its Muslim community.
More than 50 people were killed as they prayed. The attack was live-streamed on a popular social media platform in an effort to gain notoriety, and to spread hate.
At that time, the ability to thwart those goals was limited. And the chances of Government alone being able to resolve this gap was equally challenging.
That’s why, alongside President Emmanuel Macron, we created the Christchurch Call to Action.
The Call community has worked together to address terrorism and violent extremist content online. As this important work progresses, we have demonstrated the impact we can have by working together collaboratively.
…
As leaders, we are rightly concerned that even those most light-touch approaches to disinformation could be misinterpreted as being hostile to the values of free speech we value so highly.
But while I cannot tell you today what the answer is to this challenge, I can say with complete certainty that we cannot ignore it. To do so poses an equal threat to the norms we all value.
After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?
The weapons may be different but the goals of those who perpetuate them are often the same. To cause chaos and reduce the ability of others to defend themselves. To disband communities. To collapse the collective strength of countries who work together.
But we have an opportunity here to ensure that these particular weapons of war do not become an established part of warfare.
…
Read more: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/09/full-speech-jacinda-ardern-addresses-un-general-assembly.html
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Story tip. Desmog hit job
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/12/green-cranks-are-going-after-spiked-again/
Cattle are ruminants. They emit methane from both ends.
Thanks for the cow tip.
Milo: and nature and its diversity love it.
All vegetarians do.
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2021/09/10/It-s-official-plant-based-diets-make-us-gassier-so-what-s-worse-for-the-planet-cow-or-human-farts
It wouldn’t be fair to just tax ruminants for emissions if we’re concerned about climate change. This adds to costs for meat eaters. Equity and social justice could be established by taxing vegan emissions and pay it as a subsidy to meat eaters.
No, all vegetarians do not burp methane. That includes (or excludes) humans, no matter how much plant material we may consume. We emit CH4 only from the other end of the alimentary canal. Our burps are mainly ingested air.
Ruminants, OTOH, regurgitate stomach contents to chew as cud, so release methane by both mouth and anus. They also have four stomachs, so are more efficient converters, thus have outcompeted grazers and browsers with simpler stomachs, such as horses, rhinos and tapirs.
Good explanation, thanks!
A question:
How much GHG’s are released by compost piles?
Should “organic” farming also take a tax hit?
Poor Sam doesn’t seem very Bright. 😉
One of the directors of DeSmog is Mr Richard Dudley Folland whose company Climate and Energy Associates has £900K (2022) cash in the bank
How did they manage to find all that cash in 3 years when in 2019 they had £55K?
No conflict of interest there then.
This may be a STORY TIP, not sure
Jacinda Ardern did seem like a bad parody of a “progressive”.
More of a Morticia Addams
It was a different PM Jenny Shipley some decades back for Kyoto Treaty who agreed to NZ having agricultural emissions including in Carbon counting.
Yes its totally bizarre as they are the only country who does this for carbon nuetral ruminants
Skip forward tp Paris and its was then PM John Key who signed NZ up to the 30% reduction in 2030 and the goal of Carbon Neutral by 2050
both Shipley and Key were from centre-conservative party known as Nationals
Once again, the Global Warming Potential numbers don’t have anything to do with the absorption spectrums of any greenhouse gas (GHG). There’s an inverse relationship between any GHG and its concentration in the atmosphere:
CH4 1932 ppb GWP 86
N20 337 ppb GWP 273
CFC 4 ppb GWP ~8000
SF6 0.007 ppb GWP ~17500
Do you really think that Sulfur hexafluoride is over 17,000 times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2?
we have to find that dentist and punish him
Apparently they couldn’t find anyone willing to audit the tax returns.
“find other ways to reduce biogenic methane.”
WAKE UP.. it is not needed, especially in tiny little NZ.
Be conservatives, don’t bow to the green CO2/CH4 idiocy in any way whatsoever.
Meanwhile Starmer is totally sold on the woke agenda and will take the UK to a very dark place if he wins the election. He is committed to doing precisely what Ardern did before her awakening. Starmer is either incapable of understanding climate science or is being damaged by that other idiot Miliband’s woke agenda. Britain is so on the edge of nosediving to oblivion and all because Johnson tore the Tories apart.
The thing that needs explanation, as usual, is why on earth anyone who did believe there is a global warming crisis would think that NZ taxing cow flatulence was an appropriate or useful response to it. What does NZ cow flatulence have to do with global warming? And why is taxing it a good idea? What conceivable effect can this have on the world’s climate?
Its like the lunatics in the UK NHS who think that denying patients tiny amounts of anesthetic gas is a useful response, because these tiny amounts of gas are of a supposed greenhouse gas. Maybe they are, so what?
Or its like the idiots in the town of Thetford who think that declaring a climate emergency and appropriating 30,000 pounds to do something or other in connection with it is a useful response. How far is your 30k going to go? Who is going to notice your declaration?
[Apart from connaisseurs of absurdity like the author…]
There is a continual parade of people doing or advocating things that can have not the tiniest effect on the world’s climate, and claiming to be doing it ‘because climate’, and calling anyone who thinks their demands are crazy ‘deniers’.
Thats because NZ National PM jenny Shipley agreed to the Kyoto Treaty in 1997 where ‘agriculture’ was counted . The only country to do so
Ruminant cows or sheep eat grass , not fossil fuels . However the Carbon from these farm animals has been counted as country emissions since then but the farmers never paid ( alongside a few major industries) for the ‘carbon accounting’ but the taxpayers did instead. The Ardern government got an agreement with the farmers own lobby group to shift the costs directly to the farmers
This just changes it back to the taxpayers with a ‘study group’ as political cover.
the original sin over the ruminants carbon being counted , unlike the rest of the world, happened at Kyoto . The same party as now signed Paris Treaty as long as Farmmers dont pay , the taxpayers do.
What about human farts? Or horse farts? Or rabbit farts? The ridiculousness of your argument apparently knows no end.
Its not my argument. I think its anti science and NZ choosing to include the *farmed* animals, alone amoung the nations is baffling.
Rice farming produces CO2 as well, but thats not included either
Unless humans become ruminants the CO2 isnt significant compared to creatures who are and are farmed.
I must say you have a special talent for the absurd and the nonsensical.
I have a special talent for believing in reality.
Ruminants have always existed on this planet ever since the age of dinosaurs. Warmunists whine about the emissions of beef cattle. In the USA, which has led the world in beef production ever since there was a beef cattle industry, the size of the cattle herd today is about the same or smaller than the size of the “natural bison” (undomesticated) herd through the middle of the 19th century, when large swaths of bison real estate were converted to beef cattle production and other forms of agriculture. And the average size and weight of a bison is about double the average size and weight of a modern bovine. Meaning “natural” flatulence emissions used to be a whole lot more than the highly efficient and productive been industry produces today.
None of that matters, of course, to the climate. The silly notion that animal farts serve as the temperature control knob for the planet is beyond ridiculous.
How large were the herds of bison that used to roam the US?
Bison herds are estimated to have been 60-70 million in the 18th century. There are about 92 million cattle in the US today. Bison herds have recovered to about 500,000 in the US today.
Cattle range in weight from 800 to 4000 pounds – most to the lighter side. Bison run 800 to 2800 – most to the heavier side. Bison mature more slowly – grow to that weight more slowly.
Bottom line – there are about the same emissions today as there were in the 1700s.
The average adult bovine weight is less than 1,000 pounds, and the average adult American bison weight is upwards of 2,000 pounds. There might be some large monster cattle, but they make up virtually none of the beef market. Which makes historic bison emissions significantly larger than current bovine emissions. And that does not consider other plant eating animals that used to roam what is now North America, from elk to deer to bears (contrary to what most people think., most bears eat mostly plants).
You might have your units mixed up.
More like 600 – 800 kg for a cow, depending on breed. Bulls are heavier.
Lot less than 92 mill US cattle today think around 85 mill and falling
The main reason is more efficent
Why only the “Carbon” from only farm animals?
What does a bear doo in the woods?
Why not tax “Nature Preserves”?
Termites thrive in some areas more than others.
It does not matter if they believe in CAGW or not. A particular individual may be either stupid or cynical, or both, but this is not the point.
The whole thing is the other way around: the CAGW narrative was created to institute new taxes. The taxing was the good idea for bureaucracy in the first place, CAGW was an excuse.
The world population is becoming progressively more secular, paying less and less church tithes to save their soles. CAWG is the new religion collecting tithes to save the planet.
Being rational with them is akin to asking a priest if he believes that donating money to his parish saves one’s sole. What kind of answer do you expect?
Dismaying how uneducated and foolish most are.
Methane is a GHG in the lab in a standard dry atmosphere. But NOT in the real world averaging 2% specific humidity. Methane’s two narrow and very weak (since not much methane in the atmosphere) absorption bands are completely overlain by two broader and much stronger (from much more specific humidity) water vapor absorption bands.
And to think NZ could make any difference If methane were a real world GHG is just foolish virtue signaling.
Tell that to the PM in 1997 who signed Kyoto Treaty making NZ the only country including ruminants in its carbon counting
That was the same Conservative party who signed Paris in 2017 and committed the country to 30% reduction by 2030 and Nett zero by 2050
So it’s been a contest by all NZ politicians to get noticed by their “betters” at the UN and WEF.
So what?
They already inflicted far leftists like Helen Clark on the UN taxpayer teat.
Is she still there sucking?
Nobody cares which PM agreed to which stupid agreement. Regulating farm animal farts is the ultimate stupid and pointless folly.
Yet you keep blathering on about long gone PMs and long ignored agreements.
Kyoto Treaty isnt ignored , its where the taxpayers started paying for (increasing) ruminant emissions. The Treaty was backed by new laws passed by the legislature
Paris was the same , Zero Carbon act was voted for by every National Party Mps.
Your stupidity is equal to those politicians. Those are legally binding treatys and local laws and its stupid to suggest otherwise.
Legally binding treaties that have never been complied with are what normal people call “ignored.”
You do realize that in the last decade, the US has been the leading nation in the world in actually reducing total carbon emissions, due to the mass scale conversion from burning coal and oil to produce electricity via the use of (omigod! the horror!) natural gas. And we aren’t even a nation that ratified Paris; therefore there is nothing legally binding on the USA with respect to the Paris Treaty.
The Paris Treaty was always nothing more than an aspirational statement that, “if us smart people ran the world, this is what we would make happen” – the same kind of “smart people elite” thinking that brought us all manner of horrors in the last century of human existence, including communism, socialism, naziism, both world wars, genocide, etc. etc. And is now bringing us the horrors of global warmunism, a barely disguised attempt by socialists and reactionary elites to force the entire world to behave as they want us to behave
Even though the self same elites don’t actually behave how they want us to behave, flying around in their private jets all over the world to promote agreements that will never actually work in the real world, vacationing in S. Tropez, and living in their 30 thousand square foot mansions on Martha’s Vineyard while castigating all of us “little ignorant people” for failing to follow the words, but not the examples, of our “betters.”
Both the US and Canada formally withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, i.e. they are ignoring it. The Paris Accord is not a treaty and no one has fulfilled any commitment they made, they are ignoring it.
Thats for US only and is partly true. Yes Trump formally withdrew because it was still legally binding. Biden resigned so back to square one
Other countries especially those that are legislature-executive systems make it binding also
The nett zero mechanism is then in legislation passed by the parliament so the taxation provisions and the buying of carbon credits etc are legal
The claim that Canada withdrew is nonsense, similar to most of youir cliams
Only because you a few generations along from the modern greenies but you are as fact free as most of them and likely would be an ardent believer if you were half your age.
https://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/att__e_43947.html
Auditor General of Canada says
The Paris Agreement asked countries to enhance targets over time. Canada commits to a higher emission reduction target of 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, which equates to annual emissions of about 406 to 443 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Trump withdrew from Paris Treaty but Biden reversed that . Kyoto was never ratified by Senate however after that they just used executive orders like other Presidents did for all other agreements- theres 100s of them
Canada still belongs and they say its a legally binding treaty
https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/corporate/international-affairs/partnerships-organizations/united-nations-framework-climate-change.html
NZ has signed all the Climate treatys and they made them into national law to boot
“Dismaying how uneducated and foolish most are.”
and getting worse!
https://bigthink.com/thinking/iq-score-average-college-students/
If Trump gets elected in November and he follows through on his promise to sh!tcan all of this climate change nonsense, then the game is over. The US has the potential to be the lowest cost energy producer in the entire world. There is no way the European industries can compete due to their high cost of energy and social programs. They will be forced to offshore production to the US if they want to have any hope of being competitive, just as German companies have started to do. At some point the populace will say enough and that will be the end of it.
EU could have low cost energy if UK would frack the Bowland shale and the continent would resume consuming its abundant coal. But they aren’t. So they are driving industry away. Their loss, US and China gain.
‘Their loss, US and China gain.’
The US only gains if the Biden / Obama contingent is run out of office AND the Republicans don’t blow the opportunity.
US oil production hit a record high in 2023.
It has nothing to do with whos president
Indeed Trump promised to “save Coal’ and failed miserably, but then hes a loser only kept going by the large believers in Trump Deity Syndrome
Production went up in 2022-2023 because prices went up stratospherically, almost entirely caused by the Democratic President and his Democratic Congress that went on a wild spending binge in 2021-2022 (only curtailed when Dems were thrown out of office in the 2022 Federal election) that brought the highest inflation in more than 40 years. So of course oil production follows price.
Production is down now from 2023 for the exact same reason, in reverse. Lower prices causes lower production.
I know this is really really difficult for you left wingers to comprehend, but the law of supply and demand controls the world. It is the immutable law that cannot be broken, it always prevails.
Lies
https://www.macrotrends.net/2516/wti-crude-oil-prices-10-year-daily-chart#google_vignette
The red wave ? mostly boundary changes resulting from 2020 census
Otherwise it was another Trump losing experience.
Now its the dems keeping the House speaker in his job as his far right is raving lunatics and he used to be similar
“If Trump gets elected in November and he follows through on his promise to sh!tcan all of this climate change nonsense, then the game is over. ”
A lot of “ifs”. The reality will be different.
Trump may slow down the madness, but neither he, nor Republicans have a clear agenda to stop CAWG hysteria once and for all. Their goal is to scale it down to make it possible for parasitic climate-industrial complex to forever coexist with value producing economy at the expense of the latter.
But please note that laws of nature and economics will make it happen anyway. Net Zero is mathematically impossible, wide adoption of EVs is impractical, solar and wind can only be part of the grid up to a certain level (useless and detrimental at any percentage), etc., and as result, banks invested in green tech are loosing money. Since American political system ultimately serves the banking industry, whoever is in power will have to take some corrective measures.
To reach the finish line requires a first step towards the goal must be taken.
Obama, Brandon, the Progressives and Dems (in lockstep) have been running in the wrong direction.
The concentration of methane in air is 1.9 ppm by volume. The reason for this low concentration is that discharges of lighting initiates the combustion of the methane. There are thousands of lighting discharges everyday, especially in the tropics.
We do not have to worry about methane.
The earth lighting it’s farts?
Quite so Harold. Everyone forgets about lightning providing the activation. We are told the hydroxl radical, OH, is the main oxidiser of methane, but I suspect methanotrophs are responsible for much more than they are credited for.
CH4 + 2 O2 → CO2 + 2 H2O
So lightning is a cause of global warming. We therefore need a lightning tax to fight global warming.
More welcome news from N.Z. It will take time to unwind years of left/green idiocy, gotta start somewhere.
Raise a glass of full cream NZ milk to celebrate!
Nope .
The Carbon Zero Act was passed by all MPs in 2021 except 1 .
The current government was the same party as the one who signed Kyoto and Paris
The absurd ruminant carbon cost still exists, just taxpayers will pay instead of farmers – which has been the case since the Kyoto carbon counting started
Methane is 2 parts per million in the atmosphere, experts agree. That is 0.0002 percent. Oh no!
See Manhattan contrarian
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-5-20-is-beef-production-a-major-contributor-to-climate-change?rq=methane
Methane became a big issue in New Zealand because our large amount of hydro electricity meant that our electricity was already over 80% renewable and the greenies needed a cause to force the global warming guilt onto the public.
In reality New Zealand has some of the cleanest and most carbon efficient agriculture in the world but they needed an enemy and farmers were an easy target.
Wasnt Greenies who included agriculture back in 1997-8 at Kyoto
Was the same conservative party ( by NZ standards) who have signed all the climate Treatys with gusto since including John Key with 30% reduction by 2030/Nett Zero by 2050 at Paris
Eric even your multiple back links dont confirm your claim.
She never said Mosque terrorist shooter was linked to climate denial
The link was social media , used by both but separately .
Mosque shooter live streamed his attack on social media
Climate ‘deniers’ use social media obviously alongside practically every body.
The error is your linking the two separate situations, her own words in the speech dont
Ardern was and still is a waste of space.
Face it.
Voters disagreed . Thats what politics is all about .
The current chrome dome is going to find out as his numbers are dropping
Thanks Duker, I fixed the link and added relevant excerpts from the speech Ardern gave which linked climate denial and the Christchurch massacre. Adding “climate denial” to the remit of the Christchurch Call to Action is a bit of a tell, don’t you think?
We will never cease to be amazed at the depravity you defend.
51 died in two mosques, thats depravity with a semi automatic. An Australian who moved to the country because of its looser gun laws compared to his homeland
Although the Aussie government hold the CSIRO as there go-to scientific authority, they ignore the same organisations comments from their measuring station at Cape Grim (https://capegrim.csiro.au/)
The same comment is made for CO2
Both Oz and NZ should be selling our sink capabilities to the Northern Hemisphere rather than sinking us further, both literally and figuratively.
Interesting point . However they only consider human related sources or sinks. Plant a forest that becomes a sink. Farm cattle thats a source etc
Giving more money to the government whether through taxes or fines doesn’t solve a damn thing. The government doesn’t need more of our money they need to get out of our business and stay out. We are not in a climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for our climate, we are not going to reach a tipping point and suffer irreversible global warming. The government is lying to us and that needs to stop.
so now i can visit again. phew
And that’s what you’ll be saying as you approach Rotorua’s boiling mud.
(think iron filings mixed with hydrochloric acid 🙁 )
I thought it was sulphuric acid. Well, hydrogen sulphide, really.
Yeah I know.
But either way, as Kenny said about the porta-potties –
“that’s a smell that will outlast religion”
Yeah, there is that.
I liked the food in Rotorua. Best food I’ve eaten since I ate breakfast in the middle of one of the more rubble strewn partisan areas of Belfast in Ireland. Eateries which serve bad food don’t last long in places where the locals don’t believe in completing complaint forms.
oops – ignore
Do any of these stupid people know how much methane is in the atmosphere?
Well, they don’t know so many things which is why they are ‘stupid’. The chance of any politician knowing what methane consist of, or what level it manages to achieve in the free atmosphere before it is blasted into CO2/water vapour by lightening is zero. Maybe that should be Net Zero, they simply haven’t a clue.
Elections are coming up here in the UK. We should ask our prospective MPs what is the current methane level in the atmosphere?
At a hustings event at a previous election I asked the would be MPs presenting their reasons for selection what level CO2 was in the atmosphere? With a follow up, what level is considered too low?
They had not got a clue. Despite that, one of them went on to become the head of the Parliamentary climate committee…..
Yes. I simple question like ‘What is the Carbon Cycle’ would floor them. Especially when the human contribution is in margin of error for the massive quantities involved
Methane always has been, is, and always will be a complete non-factor to “climate.” Any notion that it would have any effect as a “greenhouse gas” are based on the ridiculous make-believe “dry atmosphere” which will never exist on this planet whose surface is 72% oceans of water.
Water vapor COMPLETELY OVERLAPS the absorption bands of methane, rendering its real-world effect as a “greenhouse gas” ZERO.
What is missing is, biological methane is in equilibrium. There is no increase. There is no problem.