Soloman, S. (2022, August 11). How New Zealand’s Climate Fight Is Threatening Its Iconic Farmland. The New York Times. Retrieved August 18, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/business/new-zealand-carbon-farming.html.
Many investors are now buying farmland in New Zealand due to its pledge to be carbon neutral by 2050. Carbon farming, where landowners plant trees in exchange for carbon credits(currently worth 80 New Zealand dollars), has become a large part of the pledge. Although good for the environment, many are concerned with the economical change due to these large carbon farms. The main concerns are that these carbon farms will provide nowhere near the amount of jobs the farmland had previously provided when used for livestock and agriculture.
This article showed how difficult it is for a country to fight climate change as well as how the agriculture industry is affected. Although it is the backbone of most countries, agriculture is not a common subject in most people’s daily lives. The fight against climate change largely affects the industry due to many of the current methods of reducing carbon emissions requiring large areas of land to be set aside. Another factor of climate change includes livestock farming and chemicals that are used in the agriculture industry. However, by reducing farmlands, countries risk a lack of food and jobs. This raises the question of whether reducing farmlands in favor of reducing carbon emissions is worth it. I also wonder how much each project would cost and if there are better alternatives. Personally, I support the reduction of farmland to reduce our carbon footprint, and it may even force people to waste less food. However, I think there should be a limit as to how much farmland can be converted into carbon farms or other carbon reduction methods as we still need a stable food source.
This is a great article for your topic, Walden. I think your follow up paragraph shows you already have an understanding of the dilemma we face and the hard choices that come with it. And you’re right to mention food waste too. That represents waste water and energy and land and unnecessary carbon emitted. So, with countries going carbon neutral, some argue that planting trees to take in carbon allows the carbon emitter to just keep doing business as usual… as long as the plant enough trees to “offset” their emissions. What do you think about that? Is it a viable way to reach climate goals?
I think that planting trees does not “offset” a carbon emitter’s actions, even if they plant enough trees to sustain the carbon they emit, it is still not a viable way to reach climate goals because they are not reducing carbon in the air but just keeping the amount of carbon in the air the same. Thank you so much for the reply!
I really like the point you talked about how people in New Zealand could be possibly be wasting food and a lot of money simply by trying to be carbon neutral in this way by planting trees and crops. I think that there has to be much better and more efficient ways to do this. I wonder if another approach could be taken to go carbon neutral such as buying solar panels or wind mills for people or the government?
Thanks for the reply! I think that if governments were to use some funding to make a movement to make every household green, the country would greatly impact the climate in a positive way!