By Simon Court, ACT MP
Food prices are already high enough.
That’s why it’s frustrating to watch politicians push climate policies that make producing food harder while achieving little for the environment.
Most New Zealanders want us to play our part on climate change. Fair enough. But people also expect a bit of common sense. If a policy drives up costs, hollows out rural communities, and doesn’t reduce global emissions, what’s the point?
In places like Helensville, people understand the connection between farming and the wider economy. Farmers buy goods and services from local businesses. They employ people. They export what they produce and bring money back into New Zealand. When farming does well, towns do well.
That’s why so many people are uneasy about what they’re seeing happen across rural New Zealand. Productive farmland is disappearing under pine trees planted for carbon credits. Land that once produced food is being converted into forests because the incentives say that’s the easiest way to meet climate targets.
Meanwhile, New Zealand farmers face pressure from policies that treat methane from livestock as though it’s the same as carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. It isn’t.
They’re different gases. They behave differently in the atmosphere and have different warming effects. Ignoring those differences doesn’t make climate policy stronger. It just makes it less accurate. The real problem is what happens next.
New Zealand farmers are already among the most emissions-efficient food producers anywhere in the world. Our dairy sector produces significantly lower emissions than the global average.
If an efficient farm here cuts production, the world doesn’t suddenly need less food. Somebody else fills the gap.
Usually that production ends up in countries that are less efficient than New Zealand.
The cows don’t disappear. The emissions don’t disappear. The food still gets produced. What disappears are New Zealand jobs, exports, investment, and productive farmland. That’s a bad deal for New Zealand and a bad deal for the climate.
ACT has long argued for a split-gas approach because it reflects reality. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuels should continue coming down. Methane should be managed according to its actual warming impact.
That’s not about lowering ambition. It’s about making sure the policy matches the problem.
The same applies to agriculture and the Emissions Trading Scheme. Taxing some of the world’s most efficient farmers won’t change the weather. It will make food production more expensive and push investment elsewhere.
New Zealand also has more room to move than many people realise. The Paris Agreement allows countries to set targets that reflect their circumstances and economic structure.
We should use that flexibility.
A climate target should pass a simple test. Does it reduce warming, or does it simply move production somewhere else?
Too much of the current debate focuses on meeting targets on paper instead of reducing emissions in the real world.
New Zealand can protect the environment without sacrificing productive farmland. We can reduce emissions without driving food production offshore.
But that requires a willingness to ask a basic question.
If a policy leaves global emissions largely unchanged while making New Zealand poorer, why are we doing it?
That’s not climate action.
It’s just moving the problem somewhere else.
