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Common sense on climate from Government

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Written by

Trevor Ammundsen

Published on

November 18, 2025

We should stop worrying about cattle’s effect on the climate.

Readers of the Portal Ponderings may remember my earlier arguments that we should be using the so called Hedgerow method of counting carbon absorption rather than the Plantation Forests method commonly used. Firstly a reminder on the difference as regards New Zealand; Plantation Forests says that only measurable forests, primarily commercial pine forests, can be used to calculate absorption whereas the Hedgerow method acknowledges that other greenery such as native forests (The Ureweras and Fiordland for example) and grasslands can also be used as after all they also absorb carbon dioxide. If we used the Hedgerow method we would see that we have no carbon dioxide problems in this country and have already met the commitments we have made.

While the Plantation Forests method is not really accurate it is easier to use and produces a more negative outlook, which is important if you are of the political ilk that would like to see the destruction of our Dairy Industry. The previous Greens / Labour government was only too keen to bring in legislation to support this type of thinking which has resulted in tax payers giving almost a billion dollars a year to people, many from overseas, who have bought up our good farm land to plant in pine trees.

Mark Twain once said “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason” and the benefit of this can be seen with our new government making sensible corrective changes to our climate change laws which will benefit the country. Amongst the changes they announced in early November is a change to the ETS (Emissions Trading System) whereby we are no longer restricted to Plantation Forests for calculations of absorption. It will now be possible for farmers and other land owners to have things such as bushland, native forest re-planting, waterway planting, re-wetting of peatlands and so on also considered. This is a major step forward allowing farmers for example to have the good work they may have done environmentally used to offset the perceived negative effect from bovine flatulence.

This change will probably lead to some business types (energy distribution, transport for example) investing in farmland or parks and using the offsets calculated from the good environmental works offsetting their carbon obligations. Such a reduction in demand for carbon credits will benefit our environment and hopefully see a sell off of overseas owned Christmas tree plantations back to New Zealand farmers.

I wrote above about the “perceived negative effect from bovine flatulence” so I will explain this comment before some people feel the need to write in to explain how wrong I am and how evil cows are. Methane is emitted out of most animals, cows and humans included, and this is called biogenic methane which should not be mixed up with fossil methane. Biogenic means it is part of a biological cycle and is well explained by Dr Kevin Trenberth (top climate scientist with over 600 published papers) who states about biogenic methane that “the methane comes from carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere and taken up in grass during photosynthesis, and it ends up as carbon dioxide again”. Because of the lack of effect on the climate of biogenic methane the climate industry ignores the 60% of world methane created by humans, as it is biogenic, yet does not extend the same largesse to cattle. Slightly hypocritical I feel.

We should stop worrying about cattle’s effect on the climate. A North Otago farmer, and environmental award winner, Jane Smith, explained the figures regarding the carbon dioxide cycle on a cattle farm with the carbon dioxide uptake by photosynthesis on a hectare of pasture being up towards 30 tonnes which exceeds the 20 tonnes produced from various areas by 3 grazing heifers. So no problem really. This has been acknowledged in peer reviewed research from the Oxford Martin School, since accepted by the IPCC, that the climate effect of ruminant’s methane has been overstated by almost 400%.

Let us hope the Government brings pasture land into the calculations of carbon offsets so all of the expense and stress heaped on farmers in an attempt to have them lead a Don Quixote style charge at the climate windmill, can be directed into the betterment of their enterprises and the country’s economy. As I have said previously, we do not have an emissions problem, we have a maths one.