The New Zealand Government has proposed a scheme to tax agriculture-related emissions on farms, in a world-first move.
This progressive taxation bill will see farmers in New Zealand pay fees based on their emissions (methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide), as early as 2025.
This bill may encourage farmers to move away from emissions-heavy cattle ranching and sheep rearing and switch to more climate-friendly food farming such as vegetable farming. The aim of this bill is to tackle one of the world’s most climate damaging industries; animal agriculture.
Raising livestock for human consumption generates more greenhouse gas emissions (worldwide) than all the transportation emissions combined.
“It has been a very long journey and it is well past time we got going,” said James Shaw, the climate change minister and Green party co-leader.
The scheme comes as New Zealand sets it’s target to become net-zero by 2050, and will see farmers pay for methane gas emissions from their cattle as well as the nitrous oxide in the urine of livestock.
This legislation is a huge step in the right direction and not only brings attention to the damaging effect that animal agriculture has on the climate, but also helps to increase the accessibility for plant-based protein upgrades!
