When thinking about carbon emissions, the first things that come to mind are usually transport and energy. New Zealand, however, just took another approach: taxing cows’ burps and farts.
While the rest of the World struggles with war, famine and energy crisis, New Zealand found a new way to tackle climate change. From 2025, the polynesian country will start taxing cow’s methane emissions. Cow’s burps and farts, in short. Obviously, cows cannot pay taxes so the burden will fall on the farmers’ shoulders.
This is an interesting policy implemented by Jacinda Ardern’s liberal government, who pledged to make New Zealand completely carbon neutral by 2050. Damien O’Connor, New Zealand’s Agriculture Minister, said that “Farmers are already experiencing the impact of climate change with more regular drought and flooding. Taking the lead on agricultural emissions is both good for the environment and our economy.”
This is the first time in the world such a tax is implemented. So far, agricultural emissions fell under the radar because of the impact of much worse industries, like transport and energy.
According to some sources, however, food production makes up 37% of the total emissions. A problem that will have to be addressed in the future, and maybe even with measures like this.
Revenues from this tax will go directly into financing the sector with sustainable measures, the government claims. This tax comes after years of dodging the problem of the agricultural sector’s emission in the country.
When New Zealand presented the plan to go completely carbon free by 2050, no mention was given about the farming industry, which accounts for half of the country’s emissions. This tax is a delicate first step, which aims at reducing farming’s emission while not impacting farmers directly.
In fact, they will have three years to prepare for the tax (whose pricing hasn’t been disclosed yet) and put into measures checks and controls for the cows’ burps and farts. Probiotics that reduce cows’ emission, for example, are already being researched and will likely be available by 2025.
A strong opposition
This tax received strong backlash from the country’s main farming lobby: Federated Farmers. They claimed that such a burden will make farmers abandon their activity “so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute (pickup truck) as they drive off”, president Andrew Hoggard stated.
Hoggard said that their plan is to keep farmers farming, and these kinds of taxations will kill the sector, the small towns that it supports and eventually the economy. He fears that farms will be eventually replaced by trees.
Furthermore, New Zealand’s conservative opposition pointed out that this measure might actually increase emissions overall. If farmers decide to leave the country and seek business in places with less restrictions, this will put into the air emissions that would have otherwise been avoided.
Ardern’s popularity is already at an all-time low since she won elections in 2020. New Zealand will go to the ballots in 2023, and if she hasn’t found an agreement with farmers by that time this might cost her the prime ministry.
Argomenti
