Farmers want certainty
OPINION: We've been having constructive conversations with the Government recently around climate change and emissions from food production, but now is the time to see these conversations turn into action.
It seems to me that they are asking the wrong question. I have put a lot of time into trying to understand the climate change story and the question I think we should really be asking is, ‘should we pull out of the Paris agreement immediately, or in a few years once it collapses when people work out what is the true cost of net zero?’
The official narrative sounds just peachy. Simon Watts, our Minister of Climate Change, writes, “We are confronting climate change head-on, ensuring a cleaner, more resilient, and prosperous future where our people, economy and environment thrive”.
Isn’t that wonderful. Seriously, who could not be on board with that.
The problem is though, there are places in the world much further down the net zero road than we are, and they are starting to crash into the difference between ideology and reality. Both Germany and the UK have invested heavily in wind and solar electricity generation and their electricity is some of the most expensive in the world. It does not matter how often you say wind and solar generation is cheaper than coal and natural gas, if they really were cheaper, they would not need to be subsidised.
At least Barack Obama was honest in 2008 when he said that “under my plan, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”.
In the UK, these skyrocketing energy prices are starting to hurt, and people are starting to notice.
In a speech on the 18th of March 2025, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the British Conservative Party, said a few interesting things about net zero.
“Net zero by 2050 is impossible.” She also said, “Anyone who has done any serious analysis knows it cannot be achieved without a significant drop in our living standards or worse, by bankrupting us.” And, “It’s fantasy politics. Built on nothing. Promising the earth. And costing it too”.
She is not the only one noticing. In an article on 27th March in The Telegraph by Matthew Lynn, the headline reads ‘The tide is turning against the fantasy economics that prop up net zero’.
The sub-heading said, ‘Many of the things we take for granted are about to become prohibitively expensive’. Neither Kemi Badenoch nor Matthew Lynn are climate skeptics.
The fact that in New Zealand we are even talking about withdrawal from Paris is a huge shift in the Overton window. Trump’s election and the subsequent US pulling out from the Paris agreement has really put a ferret in the chook house. We are now allowed to point out the insanity of what is being proposed.
What is being proposed is we are going to stop using abundant, cheap (because they are abundant) energy-dense fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas because they put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
We are not allowed to use nuclear, which doesn’t put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because that would solve the problem. We are instead going to try to replace that energy with intermittent low-density energy and therefore expensive to collect from wind and solar. If you think pumped hydro, hydrogen or batteries can be used to store the energy economically, you have not been paying attention.
What is proposed is replacing the 3.5 million cars in New Zealand with EVs. And we’re going to charge them with wind and solar? If a million EV owners get home from work at 6pm and plug in to a 7kW fast charger the demand would be 7000MW. As I am writing this, Transpower says total demand for the whole of New Zealand is 4487MW. The numbers do not add up.
The idea we are transitioning away from fossil fuels is profoundly ignorant, superstitious nonsense.
Go and have a look at “Our world in data Global direct primary energy consumption”. Oil, coal and natural gas make up more than 80% of the total energy used by humans. Nuclear and hydroelectric are about 15%. That leaves less than 5% from burning wood and dung. Oh, yes. Some of that 5% is wind and solar.
The world has spent hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars, pounds and Euros and yet only a tiny fraction of our energy comes from wind and solar that will need replacing after 20 to 25 years. The so-called transition is not happening.
There are people whose income depends on the net zero narrative being believed. They are not going to be happy with what I am saying, but reality plays last.
We can either pull out of the Paris agreement now or we can wait until the peasants start reaching for the pitchforks.
John Riddell is a Waikato dairy farmer
