I had a productive meeting with John Boscawen from the ACT Party last Monday night. The ACT party is farmers only hope of progress in our case against being the only farmers in the world hit with the injustice of being taxed for no good reason whatsoever.
National know that farmers generally support National and for that reason farmers don’t have as much influence as a voting block. In fact it seems that National is going out of its way to punish farmers as an act of demonstrating it is not the National of old. Why else would you legislate to subject NZ farmers to being the only farmers in the world paying for harmless livestock emissions? David Carter is not comfortable answering questions on livestock emissions and has preferred to just refuse to answer them. Maybe he feels a little guilty or maybe he is out of his depth I don’t know which. I gave John Boscawen the information we have and he along with their Parliamentary researcher will use it to prepare questions to ask David Carter in Parliament. He will not be able to refuse to answer them. Hopefully it will make him uncomfortable enough to pressure the Government see reason.
My aim is to keep the issue alive in parliament and in the media. Whatever your political leanings ACT is the only party that will do this. John did say they are hopeful of getting big changes to the ETS. Global warming support is taking a hit around the world and Australia and the USA are having trouble getting an ETS through their parliaments. Add to that the possibility of getting into the public arena the flaws in the nonsensical arguments the Government and NIWA and Fonterra put forward about livestock emissions. It is I believe their archilles heel because unlike global warming itself, which will be argued about for a long time yet, when it comes to livestock emissions we can prove them wrong.
Having said that what better proof can you get that what we say about enteric methane is right than this from Keith Lassey, Principal Scientist Atmospheric Science of NIWA.
“An emission of methane today” while not by itself adding appreciably to the atmospheric burden of methane, helps to maintain that burden and without it that burden would decline; hence that emission is responsible for part of that burden.
This is exactly what we have been saying all along! Livestock are being pinged for just maintaining the atmospheric concentration of methane and Keith confirms this. He is as good as you will get as an expert on enteric methane so what he says that is factual is hard to argue with. He does though claim that by just maintaining this burden livestock are contributing to global warming but he would struggle to defend that position when faced with the logic that you can only cause global warming if you increase something. Only maintaining it will not do. This is a case of a CRI that has stated political views on global warming and Keith Lassey who has to struggle to match scientific fact with these political views. Failure to make these dodgy claims would probably see him thrown out of his job. Hopefully with ACT pushing it in parliament we can expose the flaws in NIWA’s political views using their own scientific information. MAF are the same and I encouraged John and ACT’s researcher to look at the garbage MAF have on their website about livestock emissions and global warming and make David Carter as the Minister in charge justify what they say on it.
What I like about Keith Lassey confirming what we say is right about enteric methane, is that it means that the Government and the Green Party and Fonterra and all the academics and scientists researching mitigation of enteric methane emissions are WRONG!
I did say to John I will help him and his party where I can with information and with support for their endeavours to kick out National’s amended ETS. John is holding a meeting in Gisborne if you are interested in his views or want to ask him questions or put your views across. I don’t know what other meetings he has planned for other areas and I will let you know if there is going to be one near you.
The meeting is at
Godzone Church building,
82 Grey St, Gisborne
Tuesday 2 March, 7.30pm
It is a public meeting to discuss the implications of the amended Emissions Trading Scheme. The following is what was printed on the advertisement for it.
New Zealanders will all be poorer. Power, petrol and food will all go up in price.
Come and find out;
- Why the ETS will see many low and middle income families struggle
- Why many feel the ‘scientific consensus’ is crumbling and dispute that the
science is settled
- Why it will be more difficult for our export businesses and farmers to compete
- Why ACT’s offer to support National in delaying Labour’s ETS was ignored