In a world-first, New Zealand appears set to introduce a scheme that will require farmers to pay for their agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, including the methane belched out by cows and nitrous oxide emitted through livestock urine.
Amazing how well New Zealnd deals with farming. Total, absolute, free market. Plus Pigou Taxes on externalities.
That’s the way to do it. Once the structure of the system is set leave well alone and the end result will be the best that can be done given the constraints of reality.
The constraints of reality are New Zealand’s “greenhouse gas” emissions make bugger all difference to global climate.
So how the hell do you set a Pigou tax? Where tax is supposed to moneterise the unwanted activity. Nobody’s got a clue what the cost of the emissions are in real numbers. So the tax is just a tax to raise revenue.
This is absurd – are the “externalities” to be metered? And if livestock, then why not humans and their
petscomanion animals too.“Excuse me for a minute, I need to pop out for an externality”.
TMB @8.21 “This is absurd”.
The whole fucking scam is absurd. Keep saying it and never, ever entertain their mental illness, ‘cos while people do so the retards will keep going.
It is said men go mad in herds and……. etc. etc.
@BiS,
And probably the UK’s too. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that even India, The US and China have nothing to do with it!
New Zealanders are the Ultimate Wogs.
Slightly off-topic, but somewhat food related, socialist idiot economist Ha-Joon Chang is lecturing us on English Breakfasts:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11300731/Woke-Cambridge-don-claims-English-breakfast-isnt-British-all.html
Of course, being a dimwit, he thinks hash browns are involved in the Full English. And that other nations also make bacon means bacon doesn’t count.
Mind you, he is so thick he’s the only fucker in South Korea who looked North and thought: “This capitalism and free markets lark aint up to much…”
As I have noted before, Cambridge has innumerable foreigners who feel the urge to lecture their host nation from a position of prejudice and ignorance. It occurs to me that an English don at Seoul National University who decided to lecture the Koreans on the nature of bimibap would get short shrift. And if a foreign professor in India talked about the Indians like that gargoyle-faced cunt in Cambridge talks about the English, the university would be burned to the ground in short order.
I’m excited to see where this Western plan of attacking the people who put food on your table leads!
“The economist, who said he ‘fell in love with the English breakfast’ when he came to Britain in the Eighties from South Korea, said bacon ‘is a result of the Danes industrialising the process of rearing pigs in the 19th century’. ”
I wonder what he considers the millennia worth of traditional practice of making salted and smoked pork back and belly throughout northwestern Europe to be then?
Questions we can answer:
So is the New Zealand government going to reimburse farmers for the carbon their lands absorb?
MC: Of course, being a dimwit, he thinks hash browns are involved in the Full English.
I think it was the DM scribbler who declared that “our beloved” (was the scribbler thinking about the NHS?) hash browns were a component of the full English B?
Tax pendantry: “that will require farmers to pay ”
No it won’t. the Farmers will be the collection mechanism, but it will be mostly the end-consumer that will actually end up out of pocket via higher prices.
Hash browns? Latkes aren’t they?
“The plan arose out of the He Waka Eke Noa scheme – a partnership between farming leaders, Māori and government.”
What is it with this Maori bollocks? Did the Maoris independently arrive at some scientific knowledge about methane and the environment? Why mention them at all?
I don’t know much about them, but they seem to be just the NZ Welsh. You know – facial tattoos, rugby, a language on government life-support, and liberals are frightened of upsetting them.
Please people just indulge Tim this is one of the famous Six Worstall Fallacies. Everyone is allowed to have a bit of cognitive dissonance and contradict themselves sometime.
‘… will require farmers to pay for their agricultural greenhouse gas emissions…’
But farmers don’t pay, the end user pays which is the intention of Pigou taxes.
‘ Total, absolute, free market. Plus Pigou Taxes on externalities.’
Interesting take on ‘free’.
The transaction is not on terms and conditions set and agreed exclusively by the parties to the transaction, but includes some prodnose tax on the transaction – so not free.
And I am still waiting for someone to demonstrate the externality of Human existence.
Hash browns? Latkes aren’t they?
Röstis.
MC
And if a foreign professor in India talked about the Indians like that gargoyle-faced cunt in Cambridge talks about the English, the university would be burned to the ground in short order.
Instead of dismissing her the response of the governing body was to promote her – speaks volumes….
Isn’t handicapping an industry that forms a significant part of your economy (and is a major trade exporter) a bit of a stupid idea?
You should see the New Zeland proposals on implementing UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (known as UNDRIP) which is most probably why they are acknowledging the Maori in the announcement.
Involves stuff like giving water rights to the Maori and a separate/parallel government
I’m struggling with the externality of N2O being dumped on your own land from cows pissing on it. The run-off must be a delayed effect and a tiny fraction of the whole.
But as to the farting/belching “scientists estimate that one cow produces 220 pounds of methane every year”. Ok, that’s 1/10th of a tonne of carbon, or about 8 USD worth of externality per cow at pre-corona prices. Then net off the methane given off anyway by whatever else happens with the land without beef and dairy, and humans farting more from eating the alternatives, call it 3 USD per cow, could even be close to nil but go with 4/10ths the starter number.
It’s hardly worth bothering with. Stick it on the output price perhaps.
But climate change is clearly not an emergency based on the piece as the suggested tax will start in 2025. This is good news. The govt of NZ officially declared an emergency in Dec 2020. Well, if they’re going to wait till 2025 to ponce about on this, it’s clearly a manageable problem best dealt with through Pigou taxation. So all good.
Couldn’t the Kiwis get the same benefit by simply banning baked beans for breakfast?
If we are to accept @Tim’s Pigou Taxes on externalities more is required
Fuhrer Arden must exterminate all wildlife in New Zealand for not paying their CO2, burb, fart, pee and poo taxes
That will be fun to watch
As I live in New Zealand, I am directly affected by this bollocks.My first thought on hearing about this was how stupid can you get and then I remembered that this is a Labour/Greens government.My second concern was that this will directly affect food prices as the cost will be directly passed on to the consumer.Still , this government is now on borrowed time as the recent local elections have shown a strong rightward movement overall with two of Arderns strongly endorsed mayoral candidates losing badly.
Johnd2008 @ 3.00. “how stupid can you get and then I remembered that this is a Labour/Greens government”.
This is what you get when proportional representation is used as your electoral system – the lunatic fringe minority parties get their wanking spanners on the levers of power and royally fuck things up.
Now if only they had retained FPTP they would be as sensible as we are here in the UK…..Oh.
Addolff.
I did notice that Matt Canavan was advocating that we should repeal our law forbidding the building of nuclear power stations. So I looked him up on Wiki and I must admit I was impressed. All the things Wiki deplored, I support.
Maybe I should put him at the head of the list next time there’s a senate vote?