PFCR has not gone away, I know we have been very quiet lately but we are still here. A funding shortfall has brought our progress to a halt part way through the process that we set out on. The ETS and livestock emissions have been issues that the Government has quite successfully put on the backburner. As such it has been difficult to raise money or get others interested in partnering us. We are confident that we will achieve what we set out to do and do not want any more contributions at this stage. When we are sure that we can secure enough funding we may put out a call then.
The Greens policy to take $13k off each farmer every year and other emitters and give every household a $300 per household per year tax cut might refocus the minds of people who thought this had all gone away. It amazes me that people, including National supporter David Farrar, think that you can tax people at no cost to productivity. The Green’s policy has been labelled a great policy that will solve the global warming problem, and help people with a tax cut. The problem for the nincompoops who laud this is that a tax cut given at the expense of a tax increase for the productive sector punishes the sector that creates all the wealth and so will reduce productivity and the country’s wealth. This policy will solve nothing environmentally and make us all poorer.
Economically it is a disaster but also it brings in dairy farmer’s livestock emissions now and sheep and beef farmer’s later.
It was our hope that while National was in govt we could get a policy change and have livestock emissions recognised as climatically neutral. If National win the next election we can still achieve that. If National loses then the legacy of National will be that political expedience in failing to resolve this issue will leave farmers financially poorer for years to come. The election will be close.
The Greens policy may be good in that it brings livestock emissions in to the public mind again and so one thing we have done is succeeded in getting the ACT Party to take our position on livestock emissions in to policy. This will be the first time any political party has had a view on it and a policy on it.
This is the press release ACT put out about the carbon tax.
Carbon tax would be an abuse of government power says ACT
“The Green Party’s proposed carbon tax is an abuse of a government’s power to tax and demonstrates why they should never be part of any government” ACT Party spokespeople said today.
“The carbon unit that they want to tax is not even real; it is a highly politicised theoretical unit that is of too questionable a value to tax.
“Livestock farming supposedly produce carbon emissions that cause global warming but in fact what they do produce is of a cyclical nature and no scientific link has ever been established between these emissions and an increase in the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gas. It is scientifically fraudulent to treat these emissions as if they do and it is a gross abuse of the government’s power to tax these so called emissions on the basis that they do.
“Not only is there a complete lack of any scientific link between livestock methane emissions and an increase in the atmospheric methane concentration, there is a well recognised assumption that livestock farming, when in steady state, has no impact on the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gas, meaning it should not be taxed at all. These factors coupled with a failure to recognise the role agricultural soils play as a significant carbon sink and store and the failure to account for soil carbon losses occurring under forestry, show how scientifically corrupt it is to state that the production of a kilogram of milk solid or meat produces a given quantity of carbon, and that a hectare of forest removes a given amount. Yet farmers are told this by our Government departments and their own industry good organisations and now the Greens want to use this information against farmers. “It is a scientific fallacy they are taxing here.”
The ACT Party is the only political party in parliament to consistently oppose an Emission Trading Scheme, and would dump the ETS which it describes as irresponsible moral exhibitionism on the part of the current National Government and its predecessors.
“The ETS is an empty gesture by a government that seems too scared to stand up to the reality that the ETS is unnecessary, economically destructive, environmentally impotent and it is scientifically unsound. ACT believes policies that allow sectors the freedom to build resilience and adapt to the varying climate to be a more responsible government response” ACT NZ said
ENDS