This is such a joke…
Agri-industry climate plan ‘He Waka Eke Noa’ an absolute lemon
Greenpeace has dubbed the agri-industry’s He Waka Eke Noa climate proposal ‘an absolute lemon’ that will fail to cut climate pollution from NZ’s biggest polluter.
Greenpeace Aotearoa lead agriculture campaigner Christine Rose says, “The government needs to abandon the idea of industry self-regulation, bring agri-industry fully into the Emissions Trading Scheme and phase out the synthetic nitrogen fertiliser which drives agricultural emissions.
He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) is a partnership between agri-industry organisations, including Federated Farmers, Beef & Lamb and Dairy NZ. The partnership’s draft proposal, released six months ago, was expected to result in a less than 1 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The final recommendations, according to HWEN, are ‘expected to lead to an estimated reduction in methane emissions of between 4 and 5.5%, depending on the availability of technology options.’
“This proposal by agribusiness is a ham-fisted attempt to cook the books with unproven technofixes which don’t stack up, and emissions reductions from freshwater reforms that some HWEN members – such as Federated Farmers – actively oppose,” says Rose.
“There are no actual policies that will cut agricultural climate pollution in this proposal, and that’s not surprising given it’s the polluters themselves that have proposed it. The Government should biff this sham plan in the bin.”
Agriculture makes up half of New Zealand’s emissions, which the science shows must be drastically reduced to keep in line with 1.5°C. Greenpeace says that if intensive agricultural emissions do not reduce, other sectors will have to pick up the slack.
“Under ‘He Waka Eke Noa’, it will take around 99 years for agribusiness to pay the same climate pollution price that the rest of us pay at the petrol pump. That leaves the rest of the New Zealand public carrying the dairy can.
“The government cannot accept this cooked and crooked He Waka Eke Noa proposal from the country’s worst climate polluters. It is not ok for the biggest polluting industry to write its own climate policy, invent its own measures of success, and attempt to manipulate the public into thinking responsible change is being made.
…I think there is this belief now in NZ that you can brownwash your organisation by giving it a Māori name and pretending that is somehow progressive.
The corporate farming lobby are just taking the piss with this nonsense solution to a problem they refuse point blank to address.
Cows create the feacal load of 14 humans.
There are 10million cows.
That’s 140million humans pissing and shitting all across our lands and waterways.
Corporate farmers are refusing to acknowledge this.
There are two main problems with this nonsense solution.
The first is that ultimately dairy and meat are sunset industries the second synthetic milk and meat are cheap enough, so why prop a sunset industry up any further?
The second is this is all meaningless quibbling because it’s for a carbon neutral 2050 when climate change is impacting us now.
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Martyn maybe you should propose a Milankovich Cycle tax or even a Solar levy. These have far more influence on earths climate than agriculture ever will.
Agree about brown washing being a thing -it’s everywhere and only about 4% of people can even understand it.
Try and suffer through TVNZ news, WTF are they saying?
It’s the new way of crossing yourself showing you conform to the new woke religion and so you are spared the inquisitors.
The secondary purpose when branding a corporate or government department appears to be to confuse – as so few of the public actually speak Maori – and hence lessen accountability.
Case in point: the woeful NZTA “waka kotahi” (“boatload of comms consultants”?) or pretty much any underperforming government department.
Real food or synthetic food?
What will wealthy overseas consumers want?
Agriculture has been called a sunset industry before and it is still going strong.
So what will Greenpeace actually do about this?? Will they try to turn into a fundraising cause?? PS…Greenpeace, needs to drop the Peace bit from their name, they simple have not demonstrated any leadership on this in the last 20 years…
Greenpeace have showed a lot more leadership and initiative than the Green Party has. Nathan, your problem is that you are silly enough to disagree with their aims.
Sour Vino, I can ALWAYS rely on you to write something silly…thanks you for not letting me down
Those sunset industries are keeping this countries head above water. All the bitter urban dwellers see, is dirty polluting cows. So lets swap methane for carbon. All those lovely cereals and vegetables we eat all come at a cost that nobody talks about much. After all they are fashionable.. Every time a plough goes into the ground to start producing a crop, CO2 is released. Three tonnes per hectare. 20% of the world’s co2. Cows eat grass which is renewed maybe once in five years. So what shall we do then. Let’s put the boot into the arable farmers, make them pay. Then watch the price of all that good healthy stuff, Wheat, soy, vegetables double in price. Maybe we should just get off the farmers backs and stop dumping micro plastic in the sea and the Antarctic.FFS.
What a load of rubbish. Saying that the diary industry is clearly an issue because we have too many f’ing cows is not have a go at agriculture in general. Diary farming has already f*cked the Canterbury plains before you even talk about global warming. There is simply not enough water in that region to breakdown the crap generated by too many cows. Agricultural can still mean many things without mountains of milk powder. Does the world not consume other agricultural products/crops?
To Wheel and Bonnie. I’m not saying that Dairy hasn’t fucked the Canterbury plains clearly it has and there’s too many cows there. In the context of Martyn’s comments, ditching cows for all arable farming is not the answer either. Bonnie says that cropping is doing their part in minimising tillage. Well we haven’t seen it yet and in my observations being a retired sheep and beef farmer, direct drilling or sowing doesn’t offer the same tonnages as compared to turning a paddock over. Market gardens would be some of the worst offenders. You can’t direct sow vegetables successfully , so out comes the co2. yet because we love our veges up until now they get treated differently. My son has be doing nutrient budgets for the last five years so I’m not ignorant of these facts. In my opinion if sustainable dairy farming was replaced with arable farming we would just have a different set of problems. If crop farmers use less fertiliser and direct sow rather than plough there will be less crop. It’s pretty simple. Either way the consumer will pay.
If you don’t know the difference between getting plant products to plate & animal products to plate in regard to land area, water & nutrient runoff then it would pay to learn more before offering simplistic advice. Worldwide the majority of crop is grown to feed animals & while NZ has a pasture base for most of the ruminant animals that are often on land not suited to intensive cropping the idea that cropping is releasing as much Carbon as intensive dairy is without merit. Cropping farmers also aim to minimize tillage & have to follow nutrient budgets that prevent runoff so they can not be accused of trying to get a free ride over emissions.
I’m well aware of the nutrient run off and water and fertiliser use Bonnie. I live right next to crop farmers and they use plenty of both with irrigation to cover when there’s not regular rainfall. Underground water supplies in many areas including ours, are under threat because of it and I’m talking crops humans consume not animals. All farmers contribute to environmental pollution and all farmers are trying to minimise the damage.
Are we going to be able to make synthetic milk and meat better than anyone else in the world such that the world is beating a path to our door to buy our product – probably not. And “sunset industry” – there will allways be people in the world wanting to buy the real stuff. The problem is we need alternative products to sell other than agricultural products so that we can have an economy, otherwise we have nothing. And I don’t know what alternative products we can come up with that aren’t already being produced overseas at better prices than we can….
once again NZ business refuses to pay the actual costs of doing business.
Just wait until they open…
Te minita mo te whakamamae me nga korero pohehe.
Greenpeace needs to drop the ‘Peace’ part from their name…they have not shown any leadership in that field for over 20 years.
And ban the importing of palm kernel.
The government describes our biggest polluter Fonterra as an “innovative food company” that will “accelerate New Zealand’s sustainable economic recovery” (New Zealand Government, 2022). I disagree, I see this industry as a rabble of tired factory farmers wearily trudging in gumbooted lockstep towards the holy payout every year, a twilight industry protected by lobbyists, PR managers and tinkerers. Instead of doing the obvious by reducing and optimising herd size, Fonterra scientists would rather try to genetically engineer stock to reduce emissions, attempting to alter nature itself to maintain status quo (or even increase environmental load). This is akin to inventing, building and using a reusable rocket ship to go down to the shops to buy a litre of milk, instead of just walking. Like the frontier pioneers in cowboy hats did. The ironic thing is that water sells for the same amount as milk in stores but farmers use thousands of litres of water a day just to clean yards and to flush sustainable cow excrement into our waterways. Fonterra and it’s ugly network of stinky stainless pipes is there to make money plain and simple, it’s written right there in the government release. Fonterra does not exist for the good of New Zealand consumers who have to pay the highest global price possible for food produced locally, which is neither fair or ethical. Progression for business at a cost to society and environment is not progression, and New Zealanders are being charged twice over for this single product. Fonterra is not sustainable or green. Fonterra in actual fact, stinks.
New Zealand Government. (2022). Retrieved from
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/prime-minister-visit-united-states-0
Agree. Fonterra stupidly promoting the global extinction of our species because they are too greedy and myopic to even conceive of that possibility.
The world is at a turning point.
Plant based diets are absolutely critical to cut emissions.
The Vegan Society and other global societies are in the pockets of big meat. They all only sell it packaged as ‘for the animals’ when plant based diets increase IQ, lengthen life, promote good health with less doctors visits,, esp in aging. AND are critical to saving the planet.
Years ago California corrections did a plant based diet experiment, and recidivism dropped hugely in those who elected to take part in the program. It was canned.
All this is supported by data.
That’s all well and good. But do we know where these vegan/plantbased foods actually come from and how they are grown? What chemicals are used in their production?
Your first paragraph is absolute bollocks.
You may be right, New View.
We have already passed the turning point, and are already plunging towards extinction.
But that is too big a concept for you, isn’t it?
Google human societies that have over-exploited and destroyed their local environment, causing the collapse of their society and the conversion of their land to desert.
Now ask yourself: Is it so unlikely that the human species is doing the same to its entire planet?
InVino “ plant based diets are absolutely essential to cut emissions” according to Frank. I’ve tried without much success to explain why land based diets have huge environmental problems as well. People like you will never get it. Like I’ve explained 20% of the worlds co2 coming from turning over ground for cropping. World wide vast amounts of fertilisers and water are used for growing grain and other land based food. To say most crops feed animals is nonsense. People are starving because no grain is coming out of the Ukraine. I’m not saying we need more Dairy, we don’t but those who believe land based food is environmentally friendly are delusional.
“ in the pockets of big meat”
LOL
Plant based diets whether canned or fresh – seeing that term brought back the memory of what Cretan people had been eating for centuries, with a large part of their diet using green vegetables that we would think as weeds. Must look that up. People like me have to increase our diet knowledge. Here is a link that links up with Christopher McDougall’s book Natural Born Heroes which is a stunner as it takes in so much drama about WW2 and Crete and also takes you into the Cretan diet and they sound very hardy and active people.
Dr Phil Maffetone is referred to favourably as being knowledgeable about diets.
https://philmaffetone.com/the-heros-journey/
Video 49m from Christopher McDougall – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgCNQ5yWc2M
Video 15m ” ” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUPOyvuoS30
The Green Party will come to rescue with their pollutant trading scheme, where urban dwellers dutifully separate their packaging waste every week and manufacturers carry on producing if they promise to plant an offset tree. Solved.
I think there is this belief now in NZ that you can brownwash your organisation by giving it a Māori name and pretending that is somehow progressive. Haha spot on Martyn, it seems to be the warm fuzzy trend now with the corporates, Although in regards to He Waka Eke Noa it is hardly surprising to have such a name, as our biggest corporate farmers are Landcorp/Pamu and Iwi/Tribal owned entities
Labour probably employ 250 consultants at 400K each to find an appropriate maori name…for anything. Even police operations.
It would be cheaper in the long run to pay dairy farmers not to farm whilst we cull the national dairy herd to a sustainable level.
Beef cuts for the poor instead of tax cuts for the rich.
” …I think there is this belief now in NZ that you can brownwash your organisation by giving it a Māori name and pretending that is somehow progressive ”
Oh yes those corporates love a new marketing slogan while they continue to do absolutely nothing to address dangerous business practices which in this case is poisoning New Zealanders water supply and will be responsible for the health effects decades into the future where as in the usual Kiwi tradition no one is EVER held accountable for anything.
And don’t expect anything will change if the Nasties make it in to government. They as a party are totally compromised so business as usual is what their supporters expect and will get post 2023.
Humans just need to shit more! That’ll show them farmers and pesky cows who’s the boss!
But seriously. Does a cow have gender issues?
Tane/Male etc etc ………You pose a very thought provoking question …….do cows have gender issues? it is up there with the meaning of life.
I guess both questions can only be answered by our brightest and best academics…….perhaps the good professor Kidman has the answers.
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