(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) Desperate to maintain its status as Klaus Schwab’s favorite laboratory country, the New Zealand government is considering a draft plan to tax farmers for the methane emissions (colloquially known as cow farts and sheep burps) of their livestock, NBC reported.
“There is no question that we need to cut the amount of methane we are putting into the atmosphere, and an effective emissions pricing system for agriculture will play a key part in how we achieve that,” Climate Change Minister James Shaw said.
Livestock emissions have hitherto been exempt under the government’s Emissions Trading Scheme, according to which certain “sectors of the economy [are charged] for the greenhouse gases they emit.”
However, the World Economic Forum, which numbers New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern among its Young Global Leaders, has been pushing for developed countries to levy draconian taxes on farmers.
In a May 2022 article, the WEF touted the use of satellites to measure farmers’ carbon emissions.
“Satellites have detected methane emissions from belching cows at a California feedlot, marking the first time emissions from livestock—a major component of agricultural methane—could be measured from space,” a WEF reporter wrote.
Destroying the livelihood of farmers and competence of citizens is also a pet project of the United Nations, which released a “Global Methane Assessment” in May 2021 that called for a 45% reduction in world methane emissions by 2031.
“Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years and complements necessary efforts to reduce carbon dioxide,” UN apparatchik Inger Andersen said in a press release. “We need international cooperation to urgently reduce methane emissions as much as possible this decade.”
According to NBC, New Zealand’s proposal “would potentially be the biggest regulatory disruption to farming since the removal of agricultural subsidies in the 1980s.”
