Why Not Pay Farmers to Reduce Emissions?

“The Climate Commission final report unfairly calls for the pricing of agricultural livestock emissions.

“Pricing livestock emissions is grossly unfair and unjustified” Robin Grieve Chairman of Pastural Farming Climate Research said today.

The Climate Commission in its final report is calling on farmers to be taxed for their methane emissions, despite acknowledging that these emissions when stable cause no increase in global temperatures.

‘The only reason the Climate Commission has given for reducing livestock emissions of methane is because the reduction is needed to offset CO2 emissions which they say cannot be reduced quickly enough. They want farmers to reduce methane emission so that CO2 emitters can carry on emitting and if farmers do not subsidise the CO2 emitters in this way they will be taxed.

‘There is no science underpinning the methane emission reduction targets and no justice or fairness in what they propose. If they want farmers to reduce methane emissions to allow CO2 emissions to carry on at a higher level, they should pay farmers for doing so. That is the only fair way to do this. Farmers must fight the imposition of an unjustified tax and call on the Government to reject imposing an unjustified tax on a sector that is extremely vulnerable to international competition and is, therefore, unable to pass increased costs on to their consumers.

The farmers message to the Government should be if you want us to subsidise CO2 emitters, pay us.

Please share this BFD article so others can discover The BFD.