Your correspondent from the Clearing the Air conference reveals her unfamiliarity with the topic in her coverage of the Gisborne farmers. She seemed surprised that carbon credits for growing trees must be repaid when the trees are cut down and the wood made out of the “captured” carbon is dispersed to indeterminate ends. If you can no longer account for the carbon, you have to give the money back.

As for the idea that modern dairy farming is “what God made [cows] to do naturally,” I don’t believe that the first waka to New Zealand encountered 5 million cattle snuggled in between the kauri trees.

Farmers do face a rough situation, caught by hidden costs that could have hit any of us. These costs should be spread across everybody who eats the meat and drinks the milk, but since “nobody” is paying the poor catch the worst of it.

The ETS, done globally, would fix that. Applied domestically to an export product, it dumps on the farmers. Our farmers need a global solution that at least includes major competitors to our key exports, and domestic support in the interim. The poor require us to stop leaving the pain to them.

– Martin Roberts
Avondale, Auckland