If the “progressive” politicians in Wellington have their way, New Zealand’s cows and sheep will soon be taxed for the flatulence they produce.
It is one of the most outrageous proposals to come of the hysteria over “climate change.” The liberal-dominated government of New Zealand is apparently willing to jeopardize their countrymen’s livelihood and very food supply over livestock that they claim are emitting too much “greenhouse gas” into the atmosphere via belching, farting and urinating.
New Zealand website Stuff reported that the scheme unveiled this week will impose levies on livestock herders, as a means of presumably offsetting the carbon dioxide emissions and other waste products of the country’s grazing animals.
According to Reuters, New Zealand is home to 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep.
To calculate what they must pay in reparations, farmers will tabulate the amount of livestock they own, the size of their farmland, how much meat and dairy product they produce and how much fertilizer they use.
The good news is that farmers can get a “rebate” of sorts if they plant enough trees.
According to the scheme, farmers will also benefit if they use “burp-fighting technology” and cultivate breeds that emit less methane.
Farming is a prime industry in New Zealand. In addition to providing food for itself, in 2019 the country exported $58.3 billion NZD in goods to countries throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas, with farming and forestry products comprising $46.4 billion NZD of that amount.
The New Zealand government is hailing the plot as a world first. But the country’s farmers are feeling betrayed by their elected officials in Wellington and Auckland. Federated Farmers, the industry’s primary lobbying group, said that forcing farmers to replace grazing land with trees would “rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand,” the Associated Press reported.
Do you think farmers in America could face a tax for animal emissions?
Farmers have been trying to hammer out a deal with the government on an emissions reduction plan that would not curtail food production. “Our plan was to keep farmers farming,” said Andrew Hoggard, president of Federated Farmers.
But Hoggard said the plan revealed this week would have farmers selling their lands “so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute (pickup truck) as they drive off.”
Unfazed by the criticism, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told farmers that they should be able to make up for their losses by charging more for “climate-friendly products,” France 24 reported.
The farmers of New Zealand may do well to make note of their brethren abroad, who — as Daily Signal noted — have arisen against government-mandated “green” policies.
Such is the case in the Netherlands, where farmers blockaded the roads with manure and burning bales of hay. Farmers in Sri Lanka overran the presidential palace. Agricultural workers in Germany, Italy and Poland have taken a similar stand against their own leaders.
Some have speculated that Giorgia Meloni’s huge win in the Italian elections came in no small part to that country’s population being frustrated by climate mandates from beyond its borders.
The lunacy about “climate change” threatens domestic farm production as well. Earlier this year the Biden Administration announced new reporting regulations that would put enormous strain on small-scale farmers.
The regulations would have the effect of squeezing the smaller farmers out of business in favor of large corporations that can afford extra employees to comply with the mandates.
To recap the situation in New Zealand: The government wants to regulate cow burps and farts and will attempt to compensate by increasing prices of what goods are produced.
This has happened before many times already in modern history. Socialist policies and farming do not go together well at all. It sows misery and reaps disaster.
But that doesn’t seem to register with left-leaning politicians, who never seem to venture forth from their own realms so as to see the real world beyond the trappings of power. They don’t perceive how the policies that they inflict the masses with are leading to hunger, suffering and death. A few are now daring to come forward to challenge the prevailing narrative in media, that human activity is incompatible with the environment. As they do, perhaps more will follow.
It seems that a pattern has emerged, where those who produce the food that we eat are being systematically targeted. The weapons vary: regulation, taxation, etc. How long before it becomes brute force? Compelling farmers to abandon the fields and barns, many of which have been worked by families for generations past. The rationale: Farmers are contributing to the demise of the planet.
The perpetrators of the climate change hoax are either ignorant, shortsighted or absolutely diabolical. If they have their way, there will be no more farming. There will be no more food brought to our table. And then many people will die. One has to wonder if it is intentional.
Those who would starve their fellow man would do well to remember something, however. That the instigators of many revolutions have been farmers. When a person has nothing else left to lose, he or she is capable of doing things that otherwise would be banished from thought.
It could well be that the governments of the world are inadvertently raising up the next generation of revolutionaries, who will set things right by any means necessary. The raw strength that plows the land can also be made to bear on those who work evil.
