June 17, 2024
Cow herd set to double with emissions flim flam
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Indigenous climate activist Mike Smith says scrapping He Waka Eke Noa will leave emissions policy in the hands of polluters.
The Government says the long-running effort to have agriculture, iwi and government agencies working together to set a price for agriculture emissions hasn’t worked, and it’s replacing it with a Pasture Sector Group to work on the problem of biogenic methane.
Agriculture and related industries like fertliser are being removed from the emissions trading scheme entirely.
Mr Smith says the public is being asked to trust technological fixes that don’t even exist yet, rather than addressing issues like the size of the national herd.
“We’ve seen the national herd increase by about 500 percent just over the last 20 years or so and we hear now from the Government they want to double the GDP that’s earned from the agriculture sector in the next 10 years so tha con only mean they are thinking of even more cows on farms around the country,” he says.
Mr Smith says 6000 farms may benefit from the change, but the rest of New Zealand will have to bear the cost.