Our farms have reduced gross emissions from livestock
Our farms have reduced gross emissions from livestock
I would like to comment on the comparison of the effect on climate change gases of livestock (32 per cent) with transport (22 per cent) as reported by the Chronicle from a recent Whanganui District Council meeting.
This comparison is unfairly based on gross emissions, rather than net emissions.
Whilethe transport system produces carbon from oil products, livestock produces carbon from grass-based systems which remove carbon from the atmosphere in as part of a continuous cycle. The overwhelming majority of our district's farms only release atmospheric carbon that has been captured from the atmosphere by our pasture-based systems and hence has little impact on climate warming.
Although it is true that methane produced by livestock may be a more potent greenhouse gas, it will only cause climate change if this amount increases in the atmosphere due to increased stock numbers or to some inhibition of the breakdown of methane to carbon dioxide and then into the grass.
In fact, our farms have reduced gross emissions from livestock in the period 1990 -2017 according to NZ statistics for the Whanganui-Manawatū region, which records a reduction of livestock numbers.
Over this period sheep numbers have reduced by 3.63 million; beef 160,000 while dairy cows have increased by only 208,000. Even a recognition that sheep produce less methane on a stock unit bases compared to dairy cows; this leaves a substantial reduction in greenhouse gases.
If increasing carbon in the atmosphere is warming global temperatures, then the reduction of stock numbers has reduced the rate of climate change since 1990, while transport emissions have increased this rate of change.
Councillors need to support our districts farmers in their continual desire to improve the environment, rather than being recorded as using inappropriate comparisons.
I in recent years came across a case here in Whanganui of trial by jury convicting with no evidence. For the last 4000 years that has been an impossibility unless the evidence has been manufactured. One name for good justice is the rule of law.
We have something similar in the letters of Paul Baber and Brit Bunkley in the last two Chronicles. Criticism - unbalanced when you can't find something good about a person - is spelt out over President Trump and Todd Muller. A corollary of their attitudes is to find faults with your political opponent to support your choice, in the case of our two correspondents, Joe Biden and Jacinda Ardern, both left-wing.
For the sake of simple argument, could we put an imaginary scenario to them and answer who would they vote for, Donald Trump or Jacinda Ardern where President Trump works solidly to save unborn children while Prime Minister Ardern says abortion is a health issue, just like amputation of a limb?
NZME must carry some culpability over this civilisation-changing crime in our midst, injustice of the first order held by so many journalists throughout the world.
FR HALPIN Whanganui
Your letters
No response from minister
I have written to Andrew Little, four times, requesting information from him, as Minister of hatched matched and dispatched.
I'm asking him to tell me at what stage of development from zygote onwards the development within the mother is recognised legally as being human, or if you wish, a human being.
