In response to today\u2019s Budget 2018 announcement, Greenpeace Executive Director Dr Russel Norman said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Coalition Government has made a number of good decisions for the environment recently but it is set to continue to spend over $800 million a year subsidising greenhouse gas pollution from the agriculture sector by not bringing agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s $800m a year that could be spent on providing critical public services for New Zealanders; not to mention cleaning up our environment and accelerating the transition to a clean, low-carbon economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite acknowledging the urgent need for action on environmental issues, the Government\u2019s spending does not match this urgent need. In fact the biggest spend on climate in this Budget is to subsidise agricultural emissions to the tune of $800m a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Norman welcomed the Government\u2019s decision to invest in improving essential services like education, health and housing. He also acknowledged the funding boost to conservation, sustainable transport, home insulation, sustainable farming and the establishment of the Green Investment Fund, but points out how much more ambitious these initiatives could be with an extra $800m per year.<\/p>\n
Agriculture is currently exempt from the Emissions Trading Scheme, which requires other polluting industries to pay for the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agriculture industry is responsible for half of this country\u2019s emissions. But agribusiness still doesn\u2019t pay a cent for its climate pollution. Instead, taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we\u2019ve seen with the Government\u2019s recent decision to stop spending public money on irrigation, positive environmental decisions free up real money that can instead be spent on improving the lives of New Zealanders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Finance Minister Grant Robertson decided to end taxpayer support for large irrigation projects that would have encouraged dairy expansion, further polluting New Zealand\u2019s lakes and rivers. Estimates suggest that cutting irrigation funding has provided a welcome boost of around $50m to the Government\u2019s coffers.<\/p>\n
Norman also drew attention to the 2016 removal of the two-for-one subsidy on emissions units, which former Climate Change Minister, Paula Bennett estimated would positively impact the operating balance by $356m over four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Government has set an intention to clean up our environment and transition to a low-carbon economy. But that\u2019s not going to happen until we stop incentivising industry to keep polluting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the opportunity to become a truly clean, green producer of agricultural products \u2013 a unique selling point that\u2019s going to become even more important as synthetic milk and meat start to have an impact on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norman suggested that some of the $800m recouped from bringing agriculture into the ETS could be used to support New Zealand farms to transition to regenerative farming.<\/p>\n
Regenerative agriculture does away with costly and environmentally-damaging inputs, replacing them with diversification and innovative techniques that have been shown to rebuild healthy soil, reduce pollution, sequester carbon and protect biodiversity.<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n
Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n Current carbon price is $21.20. 2016 GHG emissions from the agriculture sector were 38.7 Mt CO2-e. This yields an estimated annual cost of emissions from the agriculture sector of $820,440,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This Coalition Government has made a number of good decisions for the environment recently but it is set to continue to spend over $800 million a year subsidising greenhouse gas pollution from the agriculture sector by not bringing agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,19],"p4-page-type":[7],"class_list":["post-3333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greenpeace","tag-climate","tag-food-and-farming","p4-page-type-press-release"],"yoast_head":"\n