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NZ farmers 'shouldn't pay for emissions if other countries aren't' (www.stuff.co.nz)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Because again, it's the right thing to do.

I would like to see nz farmers have more regulations but I don’t consider carbon emissions as that important. It would be fine if they pass but it would also be fine if they dont pass. I would rather see regulations for them to stop polluting waterways and something done about the local cost of meat and veggies.

Why not both? How do you think the price of meat and veg is going to change once farmable land is no longer farmable? Once extreme weather events become twice a year? It is in everyone's best interests to work on this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Where in the world is prior farm land not farmable because of climate change?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lots of places. Large parts of the Midwest United States, India, Spain, north Africa. And it is only going to get worse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s the right thing to do to maintain the support of the export markets we want to sell to in Britain and the UK. Especially the latter there’s already a big lobby against NZ meat, and if they get to a point where they can empirically show emissions per kg are way worse then we will lose access to the market.

The UK supermarket chains will pull the strings, exactly how egg production in NZ has changed to meet the domestic market expectations led by supermarket buying power. Farmers can’t ignore it, no matter how unfair it may or may not be.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

if they get to a point where they can empirically show emissions per kg are way worse then we will lose access to the market

This is a key concern for me. NZ's comparative contribution to carbon emissions between countries doesn't matter much if our trading options become more limited due to current and potential trading partners considering the emissions we produce.

It doesn't necessarily even matter if we're the most efficient producers of those products. We also need to be conscious of possibilities where NZ's primary exports that we rely on so much, like meat and milk, might simply be undermined by more carbon efficient synthetic alternatives as they improve.