Straggle Muster 155 - 13/5/2005

Don Nicolson, National Federated Farmers Board Member

Farting against the Wind

In the wake of the government's new carbon tax, it is timely to say that whilst the Fart Tax battle was won; the Fart war is not over.

Because of Federated Farmers staunch lobbying agriculture has been, rightly, differentiated from other groups. Federated Farmers successfully got the government to understand that monitoring farts or belches is technically tricky and that farmers have no immediate way of reducing gaseous emissions other than reducing stock numbers. The Government, insightfully, supposed that a big drop in stock numbers would cause a big drop in export earnings.

Aw, shucks! One and one is .?

However, after 2007 Government intends that non-farming businesses pay carbon tax or enter into "Negotiated Greenhouse Agreements". NGA's exempt a business from the impact of the carbon tax in exchange for moving to world's best practice in emissions. NGA's are available to firms whose international competitiveness would be threatened by the tax. To date, two NGAs have been concluded. It doesn't appear likely that this volume of NGA's will reduce the world's carbon emmissions much.

The abacus workers have calculated that the level of the tax, due to come into effect in 2007, should be $15 per tonne of carbon dioxide or around $600 million annually. Total tax revenue is destined to reach $45.7 billion this year, a massive 34% increase since 2000 but apparently we need more.

The clanger is that, costs added to non-agricultural businesses will result in flow on costs to agriculture and farmers cannot pass those costs on.

In sceptical conclusion - a quote from a Washington Post article by Dr Patrick Michaels, Professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.

"The "largest scale" of simulation of planetary climate is surely the average surface temperature, and it was apparent, even back in 1990, that the computer models used to simulate global warming were predicting much more warming than had been observed. Since then, it has become accepted that the "generally realistic" models were saying that it should have already warmed between 1.3 degrees and 2.3 degrees Celsius, globally."

It hasn't.

Don Nicolson
Federated Farmers

To sign-up for your weekly copy of the Straggle Muster newsletter click here, fill in your details and we'll add you to our list of "Musterers."

Return to the "Musterers' Archive" by clicking here.