Nick Smith's ETS is out of control. What was supposed to be a response to global warming has taken on a purpose that surpasses and replaces the original environmental reasons for which it was born. Nick Smith stated in Parliament a while ago that foresters now have a property right to the carbon credits created by the Government ETS legislation and a Government can not take away a property right. These property rights and the liability they create for the Government was given as the reason the Government gives for persisting with the July 1 phase in to the ETS of transport ...

"The food miles argument has now largely been debunked worldwide as a simplistic and incomplete story when looking at the carbon footprint," Mr Carter said about the Agresearch study which found that of the 1.9kgs CO2e produced per 100 gram serving of sheep meat, food miles contributed only 5%. Mr Carter quite correctly argues it is simplistic and incomplete to only consider the carbon emissions created by food miles when considering the global warming impact of eating a NZ lamb chop when overseas. This is because it ignores all the other factors and variables involved in production and processing of the ...

The Herald on Sunday ran an editorial "Meat the good and bad news" It related to the finding that our sheep meat has a lower carbon footprint than European sheep meat when sold in Europe, despite the food miles. This was the good news. The AgResearch analysis bears out what farmers have long been saying: that food miles are only a small part of the equation and that European and American sheepmeat production techniques have huge energy costs that farming of pasture-fed animals does not incur. Then the bad news. But the figures tell a darker story: 80 per cent of the carbon emissions ...

So writes Alister Doyle, Environment correspondent from Reuters Source: Reuters OSLO, April 7 (Reuters) - Grazing by cows or sheep can cut emissions of nitrous oxide -- a powerful greenhouse gas -- in grasslands from China to the United States, according to a study that overturns past belief that farm animals stoke releases. Adding to understanding of links between agriculture and global warming, the report in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature said livestock can help to limit microbes in the soil that generate the gas, also known as laughing gas. "It's been generally assumed that if you increase livestock numbers you get a ...