Cow Wars!

Almost 20 years ago, hundreds of furious New Zealand farmers jumped into their tractors, farm bikes and trucks and ploughed up Wellington’s main street towards parliament to kick up a stink against the so-called “fart tax” – a levy on livestock methane gases, proposed by the then-Labour government to reduce emissions.

A cow named Energy was led up the building’s granite steps and left an unwelcome mess in her wake. In doing so, she provided the opposition movement with a powerful, if indelicate, visual metaphor: rural New Zealand was ready for a mudslinging match with the capital.

Just months later, the government abandoned the tax.

That was then. And the government bided its time: 

But last month – 19 years after Energy’s memorable performance – the current Labour-government proposed a not-too-dissimilar plan to the ill-fated “fart tax”, with a crucial difference: it had been broadly created by farmers themselves. 

All the farmers? Well, maybe not: 

“As everyone knows, the farming lobby is one of the strongest,” says Dr Adrian Macey, an adjunct professor in climate change research at Victoria University of Wellington and senior associate at the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. But there is growing division within the sector, he says – those who are “ready to be part of the solution”, and those who feel “very oppressed by not only climate change measures but all government regulation”.

Who can blame them? 

Macey says the plan could pave the way for other countries to follow suit. “[New Zealand] is probably the first country to set a hard target on agricultural methane and the first country to put a levy on it,” he said. “We’re showing world leadership on what you can do with the sector – no one has gone there before us.”

Don't mind if we all just sit back and watch to see what happens, then, Adrian?