Green no more?
OPINION: Your old mate has long dismissed the Greens as wooden bicycle enthusiasts with their heads in the clouds, but it looks like the ‘new Greens’ may actually be hard-nosed pragmatists when it comes to following voters.
He says food producers are very worried about the proposed bill.
“Even more galling is that no trees that farmers have planted in the last two decades to improve water quality and help with other environmental outcomes may be used as an ‘offset’ because the [required] methane cuts are [stated] in gross terms.
“So the only method is to halve the amount of feed to a ruminant animal, but that will in many cases create animal welfare issues.”
McGiven says the Bill showed him “what a complete farce the recent Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) consultation was with industry."
While farmers are unhappy about the unrealistic targets, environment group Greenpeace is also upset with the Zero Carbon Amendment Bill but for different reasons.
Greenpeace executive director Dr Russel Norman says the Bill grants no ability for enforcing its climate change targets.
“What we’ve got here is a reasonably ambitious piece of legislation that’s then had the teeth ripped out of it.”
