Greenpeace says today’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory release from the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) underlines, yet again, the case for halving the bloated dairy herd.
The report shows that since 1990, New Zealand’s gross emissions have increased by 21 per cent, and agriculture is the largest emissions contributor, at 50% of gross emissions. Greenpeace Aotearoa lead agriculture campaigner Christine Rose says the report comes as no surprise, when we’ve known for years that intensive dairying is driving agricultural emissions.
“This Government has not put in place a single climate regulation to reduce cow numbers. Dairy is our most polluting industry emitting more climate pollution than the entire energy sector. The only credible way to substantially cut agricultural emissions is to halve the dairy herd.” said Rose.
“The failure to act on agriculture makes Ardern’s climate change “nuclear free moment” empty rhetoric. Industrial dairy is New Zealand’s biggest polluter because there are just too many cows and too much synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. The climate and biodiversity crisis requires the Ardern Government to reduce the size of NZ’s grossly bloated huge dairy herd.”
The latest Greenhouse Gas inventory showing dairying is New Zealand’s largest emitter comes off the back of recent revelations that New Zealand officials argued to remove the term “plant-based diet”, from the IPCC summary despite it appearing in the report more than 50 times. It comes at a time when Minister for Climate Change James Shaw recently admitted to be ‘bending over backwards’ to accommodate the agricultural sector’s excuses for climate inaction.”Climate Minister James Shaw must stop giving special treatment to the industrial dairy sector, and instead put the climate first. The latest IPCC report – and the greenhouse gas inventory, shows urgent action is needed, as agricultural – especially industrial dairy emissions continue to rise,” said RoseNew Zealand is among the world’s worst performing on carbon reduction and one of the highest emitters per capita. The IPCC report released last week highlighted the urgency of acting on agriculture by changing how we grow food.”A safer climate and cleaner, regenerative organic food system is right around the corner if our political leaders phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and invest in the regenerative organic farming revolution,” said Rose.
It is about time Greenpeace understand for poor people climate change comes in down the list of priorities. Survival is all that matters. In a perfect world we could all afford organic vegetables and free range products. Dairy brings in a lot of money for this country and this money pays for all the good things we enjoy health education welfare etc. We need to work on less side effects and still maintain the same output. There are a number of ways to do this which should be tried before we throw the baby out with the bathwater .We have the brains we just need the will from all sides
Farmers also get a very lot of money and help from our government for flooding, droughts and disease outbreaks. In fact they get more than their fair share of the NZ pie. Also many poorer NZers whom you are referring to Trev, can’t afford meat and many other NZ produced products. Now given these people get an awful lot of government aide do you think this is fair that our farmers keep throwing their shit in our faces and I am not talking about cow shit Trev.
Farmers also get a very lot of money and help from our government for flooding, droughts and disease outbreaks. In fact they get more than their fair share of the NZ pie. Also many poorer NZers whom you are referring to Trev, can’t afford meat and many other NZ produced products. Now given these people get an awful lot of government aide do you think this is fair that our farmers keep throwing their shit in our faces and I am not talking about cow shit Trev.
When is greenpeace going to talk about the other 50% of NZ’s emissions?
Most people understand we need food and can understand the difference between intensive dairy which should be banned in NZ against sustainably stocked dairy.
Greenpeace drops the ball by making it easy for the other polluters in NZ to avoid scrutiny.
Rio Tinto and Methenex are heavy carbon emitters, both subsidised by our government with rarely a peep from commentators.
Mandatory sustainable building measures are non existent. Government bought in healthy homes for rentals but failed to make sure there was an emission analysis for new builds that had to be met so that solar panels, water savings, green measures (garden space) or landfill requirements need to be met which has spiked our construction industry into the dinosaur age (currently we have a situation where people are demolishing perfectly good mansions from 10 years ago to upgrade to the latest mansions…. not very good for our carbon emissions, landfill, building resources (labour and materials) and society).
Importing in truck drives on low wages and the rise of small businesses constantly getting deliveries via truck/van has artificially bought down the cost of polluting truck/van transport filling up our roads, while trains continue to linger.
Electric bus contracts only for local and central government, has failed to materialise so that diesel buses and polluting public transport are still running in NZ, paid for by tax and rate payers.
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