The Coalition Government has committed to reducing New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions to between 51% and 55% below its 2005 gross emissions by 2035.
Climate Change, Minister Simon Watts, stated that meeting the new 2035 target would mean New Zealand was doing “our fair share towards reducing the impact of climate change”.
The Coalition Government has implied that man-made global warming cause’s adverse weather events and they remain committed to the economically destructive goal of net zero by 2050.
There was a February 2025 deadline from the UN under the Paris Agreement, to submit new emissions-reduction plans, yet of the 195 signatories to that agreement, only 13 submitted their climate action plans outlining emissions-reduction targets and strategies under that agreement.
While global powers like China, India, and the EU delayed or outright ignored the requirement, New Zealand lined up with just nine other nations to comply.
Major economies—including China, the EU, and India—failed to meet the deadline, while others like Canada and Japan are still sitting on draft plans. China and India have stated that they will not be enacting any of these action plans till at least 2050.
And the new president of the United States, Donald Trump has declared that they are pulling out of the Paris Agreement.
New Zealand has a minor emissions footprint of just 0.017% of global emissions with the biggest source of CO2 emissions being road transport but even so, the government set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture as part of its overall effort to reduce New Zealand’s emissions.
New Zealand has the lowest carbon footprint of any food producer in the world. Our agricultural industries produce and export enough food to feed 40 million people around the world.
Our farming methods are unique in that we use more greenhouse gas than we emit and we urgently need a government to go into to bat for our food producers, in international forums.
Particularly in light of the fact that Article 2 (b) of the Paris Agreement that NZ signed said clearly; no government should take steps that “threaten food production”.
NZ’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture as part of its overall effort to reduce New Zealand’s emissions by 50 percent by 2030, threatens our ability to continue producing the current levels of food production.
Given that 83% of global emissions come from countries that didn’t bother to submit, New Zealand’s commitment looks more like symbolic compliance than a move with real-world impact.
We have been indoctrinated with the lie that CO2 is bad for the environment and that we need to reduce our emissions down to zero if we want to save the planet from burning up.
This is the biggest lie of all and if by some chance we were ever able to get the emissions down to zero that would be the day that life on earth would stop.
CO2 is the gas of life, and we should celebrate CO2 rather than denigrate it, as is the fashion today."
It is a naturally occurring chemical compound that is present in the atmosphere which exists currently at a concentration of approximately 0.04 percent (400 parts per million) by volume.
Depending on the estimates anywhere from 3.6% to 5% is produced by humans.
That is actually 3.6% to 5% of that 0.04 per cent in the atmosphere.
If we take the top estimate of 5% that means that human emissions add up to 0.002% of the atmosphere.
I fail to understand how this 95% of CO2 can be disregarded and the claims made that the 5% produced by humans is going to cause the planet to burn up.
How does nature identify the 5% produced by humans and then only take that into account? Obviously it doesn’t but the climate change warriors would have us believe that that’s the way it happens.
I have yet to see anyone produce a scientifically proven answer to this claim that anthropogenic CO2 and Methane are going to cause catastrophic global warming.
Agriculture/food production produces carbon dioxide through what is known as a “biogenic carbon cycle” where plants absorb and sequester carbon.
In plain English it means that plants have the unique ability to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and deposit that carbon into plant leaves, roots, and stems while oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.
The argument from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) has always been that the methane produced by livestock digestion is more ‘dangerous’ than carbon dioxide by a factor of twenty-eight - even though methane is part of a natural biogenic cycle that can be traced back to the dinosaurs.
However, it now turns out those climate change ‘experts’ were wrong, and that the actual figure is only seven, not twenty-eight.
The IPCC admitted the mistake in their Sixth Assessment Report, explaining at page 1016 of Chapter 7, “…expressing methane emissions as CO2 equivalent of 28, overstates the effect on global surface temperature by a factor of 3-4”.
Thus, it is highly likely that the total emissions calculated for New Zealand globally are overstated on a global warming basis. The oft quoted figure of 50% of emissions coming from agriculture is only correct if the wrong figures are used (methane emissions calculated as CO2 equivalent of 28).
This mistake by the IPCC has never been acknowledged or corrected by New Zealand Government officials and in fact those false assumptions from the IPCC have continued to underpin the Net Zero policy agenda.
Professor Dave Frame who advises the government and farming industries, and has been an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) participant, admits that New Zealand’s total emissions from all sheep, beef, dairy and deer ruminant methane over the last 100 years have caused some nonsensical fraction like one, one-thousandth of a degree centigrade change; In other words, an immeasurable, utterly insignificant amount per year. New Zealand only has 1% of the world’s ruminants, yet we are proposing slashing our sheep and beef industry by up to 20%.
Why would New Zealand, a tiny country that is already one of the cleanest and greenest in the world need to do much more? We already produce 80 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources.
We have the most efficient farmers in the world. The country is awash with trees. And we are so ‘green’ that urban development and roading covers less than one percent of our land area.
And the answer is that we wouldn’t need to do much more - if the Coalition Government corrected three fundamental errors in their climate modelling that are making New Zealand’s situation appear worse than it really is.
The first is their continued use of the IPCC’s ‘worst case’ emissions scenario called Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 which predicts such extreme sea level rise and flooding that it’s been discredited for policy-making.
The second major flaw in the Government’s policy framework is their claim that methane is twenty-eight times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The UN has accepted that 28 overstates the effect of methane on global surface temperature and has corrected it to a factor of seven. Yet our Government continues to use 28 in their projections. But if the correct value of seven was used, instead of 28, our total emissions would fall to a level close to our 2050 target.
The third is the failure to calculate the beneficial effect of carbon sequestration from grass pasture.
Emissions from agriculture are usually measured as CO2 equivalents and reducing emissions is done by way of fixing carbon in the vegetation and soils of the farming operations (known as ‘Carbon Sequestration’).
National data on net carbon sequestration by trees within farms equates to 29% of the total on-farm GHG emissions.
To recognise and encourage carbon sequestration on farmland, an accurate and comprehensive estimate of net emissions and removals from vegetation and soils on farmland is required.
A report prepared by Auckland University of Technology, estimated woody vegetation on sheep and beef farms may be offsetting 63 to 118 per cent of the gross agricultural emissions from this sector (Case and Ryan, 2020).
In contrast, the findings of a report prepared by the Ministry for the Environment indicated net carbon dioxide removals are 63 per cent lower than the midpoint estimate of the Auckland University of Technology report by Case and Ryan (2020), equivalent to 33 per cent of the on-farm agricultural emissions.
This MfE report claimed to provide a robust and up-to-date estimate of net carbon dioxide removals occurring on sheep and beef farmland.
But, whilst both of these reports are related to sheep and beef farmland only, neither of them takes into account the carbon sequestration from grass pasture.
Across the whole of the agricultural sector including all types of pastoral farming there is no account taken of the ability for grass pasture to sequester carbon.
The carbon sequestration from pastoral farming is currently ignored and surely this must mean that the basis for analysis of the GHG emissions from farming is based on flawed science and therefore gives an incorrect measure of the actual emissions from farming.
When people look at farming they think of greenhouse gas emissions yet farming systems are actually sequestering carbon and the carbon sequestration from grass pasture is totally ignored when discussing emissions from farming.
According to a paper published called Phase 3 Multivariate analysis of Greenhouse Gas emissions from sheep and beef farms – April 2020 (https://www.nzagrc.org.nz/assets/Publications/Multivariate-analysis-of-GHG-from-sheep-and-beef-farms_April-2020.pdf) it takes up to 7 tonnes of CO2 to grow a hectare of grass on the farm.
Grass pasture is produced in what is known as biogenic carbon cycle where plants remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and deposit carbon into plant leaves, roots, and stems while oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.
The farm is therefore, using approximately 12 times more CO2 than it emits. A car owner cannot say that, or a coal fired boiler, or a private jet going to a climate conference. Farmers are not quite the villains they are made out to be.
It is only fair that if the discussions are to be held around the detrimental effects of farming on the environment, then the beneficial effects should also be part of the discussion to reflect the reality of the situation and bring some much needed balance to the discussions.
Unlike the current situation where the beneficial effects of carbon sequestration from grass pastures in agriculture, have been totally removed from the discussion and there is no balance.
The failure to include the beneficial effects, (from carbon sequestration through to security of food supply) highlights the inequity in the current discussions where agriculture is being unfairly portrayed as a destroyer of the natural environment, when in actual fact it is no worse or better than other parts of society as we see it today.
Farming is currently being asked to lower its carbon footprint to comply with New Zealand’s Paris agreement requirements when in fact if the true picture is used which includes the total carbon sequestration from all forms of on farm vegetation (including grass pastures), then the farming industry will be seen to be nowhere near as bad as it has been portrayed in discussions up to now.
The current proposed scale of the requirements on farming in relation to GHG emissions will only have the effect of endangering our country’s economy, our farmer’s economic survival and security of our food supply.
The reality is that farming is being dealt a rotten hand by the people who are supposed to represent it and the previous Labour Government did nothing to help the industry given their continued use of incorrect facts as a basis for making emissions policies, including their declaration of a climate emergency.
The magnitude of these climate errors is huge – and the consequences are so horrendously expensive and far reaching, that they will impact on the lives of all New Zealanders.
New Zealand's commitments under the Paris Agreement, particularly its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), could cost the country up to $23.7 billion by 2030, primarily due to the need to purchase overseas carbon credits to meet its emissions reduction targets.
Targets that have been set using figures which the UN has since stated are in fact wrong by a factor of four.
The New Zealand coalition government has committed to a strategy which aims to reduce emissions by 51-55% compared to 2005 levels by 2035, with a target of net-zero emissions by 2050.
New Zealand already has the lowest carbon footprint of any food producer in the world, so why would we need to commit to reduction targets that have the potential to bankrupt our country, particularly when we know that those targets are based on incorrect data which has been confirmed by the United Nations.
New Zealand has the lowest carbon footprint of any food producer in the world. Our agricultural industries produce and export enough food to feed 40 million people around the world.
Our farming methods are unique in that we use more greenhouse gas than we emit and we urgently need a government to go into to bat for our food producers, in international forums.
NZ’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture as part of its overall effort to reduce New Zealand’s emissions by 50 percent by 2030, threatens our ability to continue producing the current levels of food production.
Given all of the above facts, why are we in still allowing Labour’s Zero Carbon Act commitments and now the Coalition Governments further commitments to be such a danger to families, businesses, and our national economy?
The reality for New Zealand is that farming along with the New Zealand public, is currently being dealt a rotten hand by the Coalition Government which is supposed to represent it; and the previous Labour Government did nothing to help the industry given their continued use of incorrect facts as a basis for making emissions policies, including their declaration of a climate emergency.
I believe we would be much better served by following the example of Donald Trump and pulling out of the commitments to the Paris Accord.
We would get a much better result for the environment and NZ if we spent the billions of dollars on improving our own country’s emissions rather than sending it on to who knows where and not getting any value whatsoever for that spend.
In a major move towards reality in the climate change debate, the Act Party has announced its policy on emissions.
They announced a science-based climate policy that puts New Zealand's interests first. If the Paris Agreement cannot accommodate targets that reflect the real warming impact of New Zealand's emissions, then New Zealand should leave it.
“New Zealand's farmers are the most emissions-efficient in the world, yet they are treated like climate villains and punished by climate targets that ignore the difference between methane from livestock and carbon from fossil fuels,” says ACT’s Agriculture spokesperson Andrew Hoggard.
“The Paris Agreement provides a pathway for New Zealand to issue its own Nationally Determined Contribution. ACT is campaigning to do that in the next term of Parliament so we can have a plan that is ambitious for New Zealand and reflects the science of climate change."
Our proposed NDC would:
- Recognise a split gas approach that treats long-life gases like carbon dioxide and short-lived gases like methane differently. That is critical for recognising the efficiency of our agricultural sector.
- Revisit the Emissions Reduction Plans. ACT will reset these around realistic targets, the split-gas approach, and genuine environmental outcomes rather than compliance with a framework designed for industrialised economies with fundamentally different emissions profiles to ours.
- Keep agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme. New Zealand dairy has a carbon footprint 46% lower than the global average. ACT opposes methane pricing because taxing the world's most emissions-efficient farmers won't change the climate. Putting a price on that isn't climate policy – it's a tax on the world's most efficient food producers, which makes your groceries more expensive while shifting production to countries that do it worse.
“Under the current approach, prime farmland gets converted to pine trees, farmers face new costs for emissions they're already managing efficiently, and global emissions don't drop – because other countries with higher-footprint production simply fill the gap. That's not an environmental outcome. That's an economic and environmental own-goal.
"Current climate targets treat methane from a cow the same as carbon from a coal burner. That just isn’t scientific. The result is that New Zealand farmers are being told to cut production while other countries increase output. That's not reducing global emissions, it's sending our jobs, our land, and our food production offshore – to countries that produce it less efficiently and with a higher carbon cost. It's exporting jobs, investment, and food production overseas.”
ACT Climate spokesperson Simon Court said:
“ACT will submit a new Split-Gas emissions target that focuses on actual warming. Long-lived gases will continue on a path to lowering emissions, while biogenic methane will be managed under a No Additional Warming approach.
“We will also permanently keep agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme. Taxing the world's most emissions-efficient farmers won't change the climate. It will just make food more expensive and push production into less efficient countries.
“Last year, ACT made it clear that the Paris Agreement is broken and that New Zealand deserves a better climate deal. Today, we are putting forward exactly what that better deal looks like.
“New Zealand produces dairy with a carbon footprint 46% lower than the global average. We should be expanding our production, not retreating. ACT is the only party with the courage to stand up to the UN, rewrite the rules, and secure a future where farming grows.”
The simple choice the Government has to make is related to our current climate change commitments. We are currently committed under the Paris Agreement, from the Labour Governments updated agreement from 2021 (the Labour Government committed to a Nationally Determined Contribution [NDC] to reduce emissions by a 41% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030, and a net-zero target by 2050).
The current Coalition Government has committed to New Zealand's second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, (Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced that New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035).
If New Zealand doesn’t meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement, it could cost the country up to $24 billion by 2030, primarily through buying carbon credits from other countries to offset those emission targets if we fail to meet them (which is considered to be quite likely).
New Zealand has the option of meeting its pledge to halve net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 entirely with domestic policies.
However, the most recent analysis from the Ministry for the Environment showed that there was a shortfall of 84 million tonnes of emissions that would need to be made up by paying other countries for overseas carbon credits New Zealand needs to honour its Paris Agreement commitments.
Where does the money go?
The money from climate change commitment costs, goes to the United Nations to support projects that reduce emissions, adapt to climate change impacts, and help developing countries achieve low-emission, climate-resilient pathways.
We have no idea how much of our contribution will actually go towards actions to combat climate change or in actual fact disappear in overhead costs to fund the bureaucrats who are managing the process.
I firmly suspect that nearly all of the money goes to subsidise the bureaucrats rather than actually making a difference.
The reality is that we should back a science-based climate policy (like that proposed by the Act Party) that puts New Zealand's interests first. If the Paris Agreement cannot accommodate targets that reflect the real warming impact of New Zealand's emissions, then New Zealand should leave it.
Considering all of the above facts, we need to ask the question; Do we bankrupt New Zealand buying overseas carbon credits, or do we spend the equivalent amount on climate change actions here in New Zealand and kick-start our own economy whilst also actually making a difference to the environment.