Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Our future depends on finding gas fixes

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Two items out last week increase the scrutiny and highlight the impacts our sector faces, whether you believe it or whether you like it.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report strongly signalled the target for global warming must be 1.5 degrees or the consequences will be dire. 

Global emissions are still increasing and indicate warming is likely heading towards three to four degrees of warming, with catastrophic implications, we are told.

The report and our own Government say that by 2050 we have to be at zero net emissions.

If you think a change of Government will reverse the targets, it’s timely to remind you it was the previous Government that signed us up to the Paris Accord, which is driving these goals.

As we know, we are unique in that half our emissions come from livestock methane. 

We are, in effect, a rumen economy and unless or until the science comes with the fixes, reducing methane emissions will have a profound effect on individual businesses and the economy in general.

But don’t forget the other half of our emissions comes from burning fossil fuels and as a long, skinny country we need to shift folk and things around. We have also made a major commitment in the tourism industry, which, like primary production, is a major driver of our economy. Trying to make the tourist industry a zero emitter when we are as far from the rest of the world as you can get is an impossible task.

It is difficult to see how we can achieve these carbon and methane emission targets and maintain a functioning economy.

I’m reminded of an excellent cartoon from nearly 20 years ago when this stuff was first being talked about. An official was waving a report to attract Helen Clark’s attention and announcing the good news that the country was finally carbon neutral. She was pictured as an old-school hippy, complete with bare feet, mowing her grass with an ox pulling a scythe. I assume it’s rumen had been genetically modified.

The irony was that on the same day as the report’s release, there was much disgruntlement over the price of fuel and nothing will reduce emissions quicker than not being able to afford to drive your car.

But we mustn’t despair because there are potential solutions and fixes. 

A billion trees will soak up a lot of carbon but with officials eying up sheep and beef’s hill country the regional impacts will be profound.

Wairoa for example lost 2000 people when the Dickie forest partnerships turned up and this latest proposal would have a far greater impact on towns like this.

We are putting a lot of faith in potential technologies like feed inhibitors which could reduce methane outputs by 30%, the vaccine that could reduce outputs by 30%, genetic engineering or gene editing of the rumen microbes and the grasses the stock eat.

Let’s hope this sort of science comes through and delivers.

Otherwise wide-scale destocking and land use change are the only options.

The other announcement to come out was Environment Minister David Parker’s on the new rules that will be in place by 2020 to better regulate water use and improve the state of the country’s waterways. When you consider the implications of the previous issue, cleaning up the rivers sounds a doddle.

Many of us have already got our heads around these issues and are starting to implement changes to head in that direction, partly because of things like the Clean Streams Accord, which arose from the dirty rivers debate, those of us in regions where the regional councils have implemented plans forcing us to change and because we have accepted we have to do it anyway and it’s the right thing to do.

But it’s bloody expensive and will have big impacts on how we run our businesses.

It’s a tricky time being a farmer but with a global population of nine billion forecast in the not too distant future these folk need to be fed and that is what we do.

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