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New Zealand introduces climate change meat tax – Can it be raised?


Essay by Eric Worrall

h / t Breitbart; When faced with Last month, the United Nations warned that 49 million people in 43 countries face a serious risk of starvationThe New Zealand government has chosen now to introduce a new climate change food tax.

Climate change: New Zealand’s cow and sheep tax plan

By Peter Hoskins
BBC News

New Zealand has announced a plan to levy a sheep and cattle tax aimed at tackling one of the country’s biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

It will become the first country to charge farmers for methane emissions from the animals they raise.

New Zealand is home to more than 5 million people, along with about 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep.

Nearly half of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane.

However, agricultural emissions were not previously included in New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme, which has been criticized by those calling for the government to do more to stem global warming.

New Zealand Climate Change Minister James Shaw said: “There is no question that we need cuts in the amount of methane we put into the atmosphere and an efficient emissions pricing system. Results for agriculture will play an important role in how we get there.”

As suggested farmers will have to pay for their emissions from 2025.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61741352

You might think that the New Zealand lamb tax is a matter of the rich, starving Africans or Afghans unable to afford New Zealand lamb. But that’s not entirely true – New Zealand exports a significant amount of unfashionable meats like piece of lamb to poor countries.

The trade is controversial – the fatty cuts of New Zealand lamb are blamed for the rise in obesity and diabetes among Pacific Islanders. But worrying about long-term excess fat, or climate change, is the huge problem of tomorrow, in a world where everyone has to deal with it. a real danger of running out of food today.

Why would Prime Minister Ardern of New Zealand deliberately ignore a truly global hunger crisis, and choose now to effectively impose a food tax?

We don’t have to look far back in history to find comparable episodes of political blindness and indifference.

Great Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49 It was caused mainly by potato blight spreading to Europe, but also by neglect, as English landowners and politicians placed impossible burdens on tenant farmers. their Irish people, because politicians ignore the problems their unreasonable demands cause.

When I first learned of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland, I read some terrible stories – of a priest who wrote about finding a little girl from his parish wandering the streets alone. When he asked her what she was doing, she complained that her father had been quiet and cold, and had stopped talking. Her mother died a few years ago, but her father managed to continue, until he starved to death, giving the last bits of food to his child in an attempt to save his young daughter. I don’t know if she survived, but with so many adults dying, it’s likely that she didn’t.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In the mid-1800s, the British Empire controlled half of the world, they were near the historic peak of economic and military power. It seems all the politicians in charge of the Empire need to do to ease suffering in Ireland is reduce or postpone the taxes and tithes they have levied on Irish farmers. But the British of that time chose selfishness over compassion.

I I wonder as I read this, how could the rulers of that time be so blind to all the suffering and death, how could they be so careless and insensitive as to let a million people suffer and die, when their a trivial effort. may have mitigated the situation.

I guess we have our answer now.



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