'Reality check' time on emissions trading

Today’s net position report on Kyoto Liabilities, which shows a possible surplus, represents an important reality check for New Zealand. A reality check Federated Farmers will take to the Select Committee reviewing the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on Monday, 4 May.

“Today’s report really shows that New Zealand entered Kyoto with eyes wide shut,” says Frank Brenmuhl, Federated Farmers climate change spokesperson

“This tentative surplus is cause for economic concern. The 2008 drought lies behind the current decline in Kyoto liabilities and that tipped the entire New Zealand economy into recession, according to Westpac.

“The drought-induced local recession in the first half of 2008 is a foretaste of what an ill-conceived ETS will visit on every New Zealander.

“What Parliament needs to understand is that for the country to be green, New Zealand’s farmers need to be in the black,” Mr Brenmuhl added.

The Kyoto Protocol’s datum year was 1990, a year that coincided with the last major global recession. Given this, any economic growth almost ensured that New Zealand’s Kyoto liabilities would grow.

“The only way farmers could possibly meet Kyoto targets is to cut production. That means fewer exports, less growth but more unemployment as the main economic tap is turned down,” Mr Brenmuhl continued.

“That’s not a palatable proposition for a builder in South Auckland or a farmer in Gore. Yet it’s an economic prescription the Greens bizarrely welcome.

“Where’s the global upside if New Zealand artificially throttled back agricultural production, just to see some country in the tropics knock down more trees to increase their production?

“If we are to act globally then New Zealand must get farming locally. That’s the only responsible world view.

“Federated Farmers will tell the Select Committee reviewing the ETS on 4 May that New Zealand must follow the Danish Government’s lead. The world needs more food not less and the world needs it from efficient producers like New Zealand.

“If the Danes, one of the most environmentally aware countries on earth can exclude farm animals, then we ought to as well,” Mr Brenmuhl concluded.