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NO SECTOR CAN yet say it is doing enough to fight the climate crisis, according to a climate ambassador from New Zealand.
Kay Harrison, Climate Change Ambassador at New Zealand’s Department of Foreign Affairs, has said that Ireland and New Zealand must collaborate on solutions to fight the climate crisis.
She said that island countries like Ireland and New Zealand that have traditionally relied on agriculture are now examining the sector’s role in climate change before other, more industrialised countries.
In an interview with The Journal at the Dublin Climate Summit, Harrison said that overall, “if you look at the world, and you look at climate change, and you look at any sector, could you honestly say any sector was doing enough?”
“I’m not sure that we can ever sit back and say, yeah we’re doing enough on anything, because we haven’t done enough for the last 30 years on anything.”
“Agriculture has got its own particular challenges but I think the rest of the world is going to turn to New Zealand and Ireland in a few years’ time when they’re finished with their clean energy revolution and say, ‘have you got agriculture sorted, what do we do’?” Harrison said.
“We’ve been given this opportunity and challenge perhaps ahead of others and we need to get on with it.”
On Thursday, Ireland and New Zealand launched a joint initiative to support research into climate and agriculture.
The initiative is open to research proposals that would study how to improve the accuracy of greenhouse gas emission inventories from the agriculture sector and technologies for the selection of low-emitting cattle and sheep.
Agriculture is the sector with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland, much of which comes from cattle.
The Climate Change Advisory Council has advised that reducing the number of cows in Ireland would substantially help to reduce emissions in a sector that has emphasised carbon budgets as “challenging”.
Polling last year by Ireland Thinks for The Journal found that 23% of people thought the number of cows in Ireland should be limited to the current level and 22% felt it should be reduced.
However, 39% believed there should be no limit and that farmers should be allowed to determine their herd.
In New Zealand, the number of sheep has fallen from over 70 million in the early 1980s to 26 million as of 2019.
During the same period, beef cattle fell from 50 million to 38 million (with a low of 35 million in 2016), while dairy cattle increased from just under 30 million to 62 million.
Asked whether a reduction in herd numbers is something she believes Ireland and New Zealand should be implementing, Harrison said: “I think it’s not a simple ‘reduce the numbers’.”
“Our Climate Change Commission suggested that probably we’ve maximised the number of animals that we can sustainably hold on our land, but there are different pressures in different parts of the country as well in terms of whether or not that’s the best use of land there.
“We see numbers probably levelling off, but these are private decisions by private landowners that are constrained by what local communities through resource management will accept.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU has been clamouring to reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, which are a major source of energy for many European countries, particularly former Soviet states.
At the same time, it must avoid backtracking on efforts to reduce emissions and consequently put the planet in further peril.
“I think the first challenge to focusing on climate was Covid and the second challenge is this most recent situation [in Ukraine],” Harrison said.
“What I’ve consistently heard out of Europe is this is a reason to double down on renewables, this is a reason to double down on investment in the kind of technology and innovation that we need for the future.”
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s neighbour Australia has been listed among several countries with the biggest expansion plans for oil and gas production.
“New Zealand has specifically said it will not issue any further permits for offshore oil and gas,” Harrison said.
“We think it’s really important to send those kinds of signals to investors and also to level the playing field so that the kind of clean energy that we need to take over is as adopted.”
As the climate crisis threatens countries around the world, Harrison said that the “strongest hope that we have is in collaboration and cooperation and in this recognition that we are confronting so many of the same things”.
“We’re going to be much, much stronger than the sum of our combined parts by working together.”
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Places like New Zealand and Ireland are probably the greenest places in the world to produce beef and lamb meat where they are largely grass fed instead of relying on grain like what happens in other countries. Yes we should be exploring ways of reducing emissions further, but simply reducing herd numbers is not a solution unless demand for meat worldwide falls. What happened with the EU increasing beef imports from Brazil where rainforest is getting cleared to make way for grazing is absolutely ridiculous shows the level of nonsense and hypocrisy that is rampant at the moment instead of actual solutions which will help reduce emissions.
And she got on a flight from New Zealand probably put out more pollution than all the cows in Ireland but we have to change
@Sean Callan: Ahh Sean, come on now …
Emissions have practically zero effect on climate. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04% approx. 3% of that is contributed by human activity (0.0012%)
Irelands emissions are <1% of that i.e. < 0.000012%. Now please COP ON.
It is shocking (& scary) to think that anyone who believes that 0.0012% of the atmosphere controls the climate should be considered eligible to participate in #government or to pontificate at a "summit" that amounts to nothing more than a disgraceful waste of time and resources. It does nothing for the perceived "global climate" which is a nebulous concept, at best.
@Neil Cassidy: Are you a member of the Flat Earth Society?
@Jerriko17: his calculations are only slightly out. Composition of earth’s atmosphere 78% Nitrogen 21% oxygen 1% other gasses of which 0.9% is Argon. 0.04 % Carbon dioxide is correct. The only area where he is incorrect is human activity contribution to CO2 levels in the atmosphere which is 15%. The 3% is the portion of all the CO2 that goes up into the atmosphere that the earth can’t deal with on its own. So no conspiracy theories or flat earth believers just the plain truth. So ireland does indeed contribute 0.0000012% to the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (3% of 0.04 divided by Irelands total footprint of 0.1) Hope that explains it for you
@Neil Cassidy: What a terrible argument. If one were to take 0.0000000000375% of their body mass in Botox, it would be fatal.
The percentage of CO2 may look small but it has a big impact. If you don’t believe it, you can do some experiments yourself:
https://edu.rsc.org/experiments/modelling-the-greenhouse-effect/1543.article
@Oisín Callan: That experiment was rubbish continually add co2 until it heats up then stop. There is no figures given there is no concentrations given. The levels of concentration of co2 in the atmosphere has remained remarkably constant at slightly less than 0.04 % since I was in school 28 years ago how is that possible if things are supposed to be in such dire straits. That is undeniable fact. What’s also undeniable is that Co2 like oxygen is essential for life on this planet which gets conveniently swept under the carpet amid all the hysteria. I have absolutely no problem in the world cleaning up its act, reduce, reuse, recycle but it has to be everyone most particularly the corporate sector which do the most damage instead of the wealthy guilt tripping the rest of us into paying for their mess
@Michael McGrath: The experiment is simply to show that the presence of CO2 causes an increase in temperature. Performing an accurate modelling experiment of Earth’s atmospheric composition is obviously going to be very difficult and not something anyone can do at home cheaply.
Thankfully there are thousands of people who have dedicated their lives to furthering our understanding of these phenomena, so we can reference their research:
https://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html
skepticalscience[dot]com/does-greenhouse-effect-exist-intermediate[dot]htm
The levels haven’t remained constant. They’ve been steadily increasing:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
As for the fact that plants need CO2, no one’s contesting that. Neither is anyone advocating for the complete removal of all CO2 from the atmosphere. The problem is the CO2 caused by humans, as that’s the part we can actually control.
skepticalscience[dot]com/co2-plant-food-advanced[dot]htm
@Michael McGrath: humans have contributed to 33% of the co2 in the atmosphere in the last 150 years.
Co2 is very slow to get removed from the atmosphere (120 of years)
Humans have contributed to 66% of the atmospheric Methane. It has short half life though ( 9 years) so it’s damage isn’t going to be as long term.
Farming produces 34% of all irish greenhouse gases yet receives massive subsidies from other Irish taxpayers to export up to 90% of what it produces.
There is 0% tax on all these greenhouse gases
yet a paye worker is paying massive carbon taxes to heat their house and drive their car to work to pay to 50% income taxes, what a joke of a country , run by the agricultural lobby groups !!
It’s simple, we need biomethane plants, put in all the food waste and cattle manures and you will have a great start. However locals will object, just like what’s happening in gort at the moment, planning permission is a joke
@David Hynes: what is the locals main reason to object if the alternative is to let the methane leak into the sky?
For a large part it’s about incentives, isn’t it? For years we’ve incentivised industrial-scale cattle and sheep farming. Time is now to incentivise farmers towards other types of farming or other/complimentary uses of the land.
Switch to tillage may bring us more food security as environmental benefits. Land rewinding or the solar farms, like the solar farm Wicklow that allowed the farmer to keep most of his sheep under the panels, can also be incentivised and have net positive effects on the climate.
@Urban Living Dublin: you are talking through your absolute hole again. There is very little industrial scale beef and milk production in Ireland. Larry Goodman is one of the few and guess who he’s connected to. The vast majority of Beef lamb and Milk is produced with outdoor grass fed animals which is one of the main selling points of Irish produce abroad. I love the way Irish farmers are getting slammed here for allegedly being the main cause of global warming in this country yet the EU signed deals to bring in beef from Brazil which on one round trip would cause more carbon to be put out than the entire Irish agriculture sector for a year. Also as I have said on here many times before that the Irish farmers cannot even offset their carbon output with their own grasslands because the govt sold their credits to FDA companies and its also skewed because they cannot export the production carbon with their goods. Again its all just carbon musical chairs where the big polluters just buy their way out and the small guy collectively has to shoulder the blame
@Michael McGrath: sigh, it is hard to argue with someone who clearly lives in an alternate reality, I suspect because his paycheck depends on ignoring reality, but here goes.
Fine, lets not call it industrialisation, but intensification of cattle and sheep farming is a very real phenomenon in Ireland. As you well know, from 2010 onwards the Government incentivised expanding the so-called national heard under Food Harvest 2020 and Food Wise 2025. Since then, we’ve seen a reduction in the number of farms, an increase in cattle (e.g. dairy cow numbers grew by ~50%) and an increase in average farm size. This represents undeniable intensification and concentration of cattle farming.
What are the consequences? The EPA reports that agriculture now represents 37.1% of Ireland’s emissions, which is mainly methane from livestock. The intensification of livestock farming is paired with an increased use of industrial fertilisers to produce enough grass and fodder for feed. While some studies show that pasture could be a carbon sink, the trend of pasture management in Ireland is in the opposite direction, which not only increases our emissions, but also destroys the local environment.
I’m not attacking farmers in this, I’m attacking the incentives that push them to make business decisions that wreck our environment and will make us miss our emissions targets. Farming in Ireland is massively subsidised at taxpayers expense. I’m ok with this for reasons of food security and for the preservation of an industry on which so many depend. I’m NOT ok with subsidising an industry that will destroy our environment and will cost me even more money in massive fines due to environmental and climate breaches. I’m perfectly find with paying for farmers to change their methods to more environmentally and climate friendly ones. This will also help Ireland’s green farming reputation abroad, which may currently be waning.
The same incentives to concentrate farming into the hands of a few will also work against the farming community itself. While many Irish feel a connection to agriculture, this will significantly decrease when farming is increasingly relegated to an elite. Political sympathy towards the farming sector will decrease, particularly when this sector is seen to be freeloading off the efforts of sacrifices others have to make. You only have to look at the Netherlands to see what the consequences for the sector will be. There, 50% of pig farms will be forced to close in the next few years due to the sector’s failure to meet environmental standards. Most Dutch agree with this measure and care little about the consequences for farmers.
Regarding the mercosur beef deal, I agree with you. But it also shows the weakness in our system that an international deal can be seen to threaten Irish agriculture so much (even though the additional beef import of mercosur is a fifth of what Ireland exports every year). Perhaps we should diversify?
@Urban Living Dublin: sigh it’s hard to argue with someone that hasn’t a clue what they are talking about. Herd numbers increased from 50 to 75 cows per herd an increase in the average not a total increase due to the amount of farmers leaving the sector. Total amount of cattle in Ireland in 1973 6.9 million total amount of cattle in ireland in 2022 7.3 million. So hardly the massive increase in herd numbers that the powers that be like to use. And yes you are blaming farmers and no my paycheck doesn’t rely on farming my dad retired from farming 25 years ago and planted the lot
@Michael McGrath:
There were about 1.1m dairy cows in Ireland in 2010 and about 1.6m today (CSO figures), so this represents an increase of close to 50%.
Growth in total cattle and sheep numbers since 2010 are indeed lower, but this growth has still been very significant. Since 1973, emissions per cow have significantly increased, although I will concede that emissions per litre of milk has slightly decreased. But what matters is that although cows have become much more productive, the emissions from the dairy sector have outpaced this even more and now threaten the viability of other, more economically productive industries, due to the emissions restrictions we’ve signed up to.
The point also is that, while the climate and environmental issues wasn’t as pressing in 1973, it is a huge problem now and our agricultural sector is simply trending in the wrong direction. Like it or not, there will be undeniable consequences and the IFI can gaslight politicians and the population into inaction for only so long. The choice is between change through incentive or change through disruption. If I was a farmer, I’d know what I’d prefer.
@Urban Living Dublin: total herd numbers is all that counts and its basically the same. Again you are ignoring the White elephant in the room that farmers have basically no way to offset their carbon footprint. They can’t use their own grassland of which the credits have been sold to FDI companies to offset their footprint how is that right. It paints farmers wrongly as being the worst transgressors and let’s big business off scot free for doing nothing mitigating other than buying their way out of it. This is the b.s that goes on in the world that makes people sceptical of the whole scenario. Big countries offset their carbon by buying other countries excess credits its rubbish
@Michael McGrath: it is emissions and environmental damage that count and rural Ireland is in a worse place on those than in 1973. If tomorrow they discover a cow that belches half the amount of methane or poos half as much than we’re back in business. But in the absent of this miracle cow, we need to reduce the high emissions and environmental damage by other means. I think many taxpayers in Ireland would be happy to see these reductions incentivised by helping farmers reform their methods. This includes incentives such as using land for different or complimentary purposes. Perhaps these purposes might also provide a more stable form of income.
Regarding the credits you mention, I haven’t heard much about, but happy to read any evidence of what you describe if you post some.
@Urban Living Dublin: the problem is if we diversify the carbon emissions world wide go up, can you not see this. The demand for macdonalds, for steak etc isn’t going anywhere so while Irelands emissions go down the beef will be produces in a less economic friendly way causing emissions to go up world wide. Now unless you don’t think what happens elsewhere in the world effects us then why are you advocating to have the beef produced in a less environmentally friendly way. You are another example of the green lobby being clueless unfortunately.
@Urban Living Dublin: “due to the emissions restrictions we’ve signed up to.” This is the problem. We need to do a UK and unilaterally withdraw from those restrictions and targets until carbon emissions are allocated fairly.
15% of our electricity usage is now going to data centres used to store other countries data yet the emissions are allocated to Ireland. A massive proportion of our beef which is produced in an environmentally friendly way due to our climatic advantages is exported and consumed abroad yet the co2 emissions are allocated to us.
The food is going to be consumed whether its produced here or in some country that doesn’t sign up to targets, the same for data storage. The green loonies need to get their head around what they are trying to do. Put carbon taxes on imported goods and charge governments for these co2 emissions. That will force us to stop using cheap goods manufactured in Asia and make us look to reuse the goods we have. It will also make our agri exports more expensive and less attractive to outside consumers. Big business and governments in big wealthy exporting countries won’t agree to this though so its left to us to wreck our economy for no discernible benefit.
All we do now is listen to experts, experts on this and experts on that.
Just look at the state of the world today run by experts!!!!!!!! Running into the ground ffs
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