‘A statement by the Minister for Primary Industries, Damien O’Connor, “that it is a huge concession for agriculture to only face a 5 percent obligation when it enters the ETS in 2025”, shows how out of touch with the science of methane emissions the Minister is.’ Robin Grieve, Chairman of Pastural Farming Climate Research said today.
‘O’Connor’s claim that a 5 percent obligation is a huge concession also ignores the fact that all high emissions trade exposed emitters also faced a 5 percent obligation when the ETS was first inflicted on New Zealand.
‘These industry emitters of CO2 received a 90 percent discount and a two for one deal on surrender obligations when they entered the ETS, even though 100 percent of their CO2 emissions caused the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gas to increase. The science of methane emissions from livestock in NZ is that almost none of them cause any increase in the concentration of any real greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and methane makes up seventy five percent of farm emissions, so O’Connor is expecting farmers to pay the same percentage as industry emitters did, even though seventy five percent of these farm emissions do not cause the same increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas industry emitters did.
‘The 5 percent of emissions the Minister refers to that farmers will have to pay for are of bogus emissions of the discredited carbon unit also known as CO2 equivalent in any case. Most of these ghost emissions do not correspond to the emission of any real greenhouse gas which causes any increase in any real greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. To charge farmers for 1 percent of these bogus emissions is an injustice and O’Connor needs to brush up on his science before he makes any more claims about what is a huge concession.
The Ministers statement was reported in Stuff https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/300031013/lower-methane-cows-from-a-catalogue