Monday, May 21, 2001

NZ plans flatulence tax on farm animals

WELLINGTON: The New Zealand government is planning a flatulence tax on farm animals to reduce the country's greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming, a newspaper reported yesterday.

A new climate change policy, aimed at complying with worldwide Kyoto Protocol guidelines to cut greenhouse gases, suggests taxing farmers between NZ$4 and NZ$60 (RM6.40 and RM96) for each sheep and cow they own, the Sunday Star-Times reported.

The animals are agricultural New Zealand's biggest contributor to greenhouse gases through their flatulence, which emits methane gas, and dung and urine, which produce nitrous oxide.

New Zealand contributes 0.2% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, but 55% of that comes from the country's 46 million sheep and 9 million dairy cows and beef cattle, the Star-Times said.

It said every dairy cow produces 85.7kg of methane a year, each beef head 76.2kg and every sheep 11.9kg.

Farmers are preparing to bitterly oppose the proposal, the newspaper said.--dpa

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2001/5/21/world/2138kent&sec=world

-- (in@the.news), May 23, 2001

Answers

This story is a very good example of how a tabloid newspaper can take a tiny piece offactual information and re-write into something sensational and inaccurate.

New Zealand has an agriculture based economy, and any new tax on agriculture will impact on NZ's earnings. In this particular case a person associated with an environmental group suggested that a methane (flatulance) tax may be one way to offset a possible CO2 tax. The idea was proposed to the Green Party (not part of the government), but was never a govenrment proposal. Today the government released its next budget, and as promised, it did not contain any new taxes. Prticularly it did not include a flatulence tax.

Incidently, the rate of tax proposed in this article is higher than many animals are worth.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), May 24, 2001.

Irrespective of whether it will be implemented or not, it shows the lengths at which the left will figure out insane new methods of taxation.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 24, 2001.