On social media some people have been calling it the “fart tax”, even though more than 90 percent of methane emissions from livestock comes from burping; methane is generated by the ruminants’ digestion and the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in the grass they eat.
The accurate term for the tax is a carbon tax, which is aimed at increasing the cost of high-carbon products so that their consumption drops.
That is a good mechanism together with the popular carbon emissions quota trade mechanism, which controls the total quota of carbon emissions and allows businesses to trade their unused quota for money.
The carbon tax might be a good choice for New Zealand, which is a major exporter of wool and dairy products. However, the same might not apply to other countries where the economic structure is different.
In the United States, it is common for people to leave the lights on when leaving a room. The energy bill might not hurt residents of the world’s only superpower, but such energy waste is responsible for greater carbon emissions than livestock.
Europe has been following very strict carbon emissions standards. However, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has curbed Russia’s natural gas supply to the EU, forcing Germany to restart thermal power stations.
In China, various sectors have been working hard to reduce the number of thermal power stations and increase clean energy sources. But some in the West hate the Chinese for consuming meat, even though an average Chinese resident consumes far less meat than a Westerner.
It is time people realized that different economies have their own ways of reducing carbon emissions and there is no one-size-fits-all formula for reducing emissions.
