New Zealand Farmer Tax

On today’s Bullseye New Zealand wants a farmer tax for their cows’ and sheep burps and farts. Seriously.
Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced that her government will push ahead with a proposal to make farmers pay for their livestock’s ‘gas’ emissions in a bid to combat climate change. “This is an important step forward in New Zealand’s transition to a low emissions future and delivers on our promise to price agriculture emissions from 2025,” she said. As you may know, New Zealand is a major livestock and meat exporter, and has around 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep.
According to CNN, agricultural accounts for half of the country’s total emissions, including 91% of its biogenic emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide in the short term. The Prime Minister said that “No other country in the world has yet developed a system for pricing and reducing agricultural emissions, so our farmers are set to benefit from being first movers.” As with any legislation there are concerns and opposition. New Zealand’s farm groups are have raised concerns about the high costs this will impose on the industry. Andrew Morrison, chairman of farm lobby group Beef + Lamb New Zealand, said in an email to farmers, “we will not accept a system that disproportionately puts our farmers and communities at risk.” Andrew Hoggard, president of the rural advocacy agency Federated Farmers, said in a statement “We didn’t sign up for this. It’s gut-wrenching to think we now have this proposal from government which rips the heart out of the work we did. Out of the families who farm this land,” he said. “Our plan was to keep farmers farming. Now they’ll be selling up so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute as they drive off.” The premise of the proposal is to incentivize farmers to reduce emissions without imposing damaging costs. In a statement, the government said the revenue raised will be “recycled back into the agriculture sector through new technology, research and incentive payments to farmers.” The big unanswered question for me is just how are they going to measure burps and farts?

[@patricksharp1063]

First they want to tax the plant food we make when we exhale, and the plant food we make when we burn organic material, like coal, oil, gas and wood.
Then they want to tax cows for farting natural gas, which is naturally escaping from the ground, because whenever dead organisms are buried underground in a reducing environments, their decay produces natural gas, CH4 or methane, which escapes upwards through the soil. All these are natural chemical cycles that occur in Nature constantly. You are being taxed for things you cannot control, cannot see, quantify, or even show scientifically that these essential organic compounds are at the same time pollutants, where in truth, CO2 is essential plant food, while CH4 is food for essential chemotrophic bacteria like Methomonas. Most politicians as well as the public have zero understanding of the chemical cycles of organic material.

[@paulk1322]

I can't believe it, what next.

[@CaptainAndy99]

Push up the inflation rate and bye bye Jacinta.

[@jenmahara7291]

tax the big polluters the ones making the big $$$$ you know petrol gas coal or at lest make the payed taxes to the countrys they in