A hallmark of western civilization and its extraordinary success over the past five centuries has been its ability to look ahead and think things through to achieve worthy goals. Looking ahead it is hard to see how energy and food are on a path that will advance civilization.
Agriculture is in the activists’ sights; the live export industry is a soft target as it has an enormous disconnect with the voters who will decide its fate.
The southern industry’s path is one of legislated reduction in livestock numbers. This battle will be won by the group who wins the hearts and minds of the general population. Now the so-called elites, university professors, animal rights activists and climate alarmists are well ahead – even though in the wash-up they are advocating for a poorer future.
Farmers have the best story in town, it is just we are not engaging with the masses.
If we want to maintain agriculture we must engage with the voting consumers. The activists are very successfully silencing opposition with guilt laden rhetoric. The four tenets of the west are freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom of association and property rights including our intellectual property rights. If we weaken any one of these you weaken them all. These tenets are eroded when we do not stand up for them. We are allowing debate to be stifled in some vain attempt to not offend the other side, they certainly have no issue offending us.
We should be able to question the validity and direction of massive decisions around energy and food security without being labeled climate deniers, fake experts, or climate skeptics. The ones pushing the carbon scare say the ‘science is settled’ which is possibly the most unscientific thing you could say. There appears to be enormous disengagement from the citizens who are disillusioned with the current system and oblivious to the dire consequences a low carbon future will hold.
‘Claiming a cow eating grass is bad for the planet is akin to saying fish are bad for the ocean’
Saying Carbon Dioxide is a problem is a bold-faced lie, as is saying biogenic methane from grazing animals is a problem. Claiming a cow eating grass is bad for the planet is akin to saying fish are bad for the ocean. There are countless examples to expose the lie, can anyone reconcile the following three facts with the current climate propaganda:
- Over the past 140 million years atmospheric Co2 levels have been falling from 2,500ppm to 300ppm and have risen to 420ppm since the beginning of the industrial revolution. (Berner 2001). If Co2 levels fell to 200ppm agriculture would collapse, at 150ppm all plant life would become extinct.
- The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have themselves conceded that the warming effect of each additional molecule of Co2 released into the atmosphere decreases logarithmically. This explains why there was no runaway greenhouse warming when our planet had Co2 concentrations of 20 times today’s 0.04%. (ch 6.1 Monckton 2017).
- Annual greenhouse contributions to the planet are: 6% (Co2) x 3.7% (human activity) x 1.2% (Australia) = 0.0016%. We are told we need to reduce this number by 7% a year. So, if we do this, we may make 0.0015% difference to the world’s atmosphere. For the old school it will make 15/10,000 of a difference.
The utopian renewable economy promising prosperity for everyone is a blatant lie, the countries which have gone down the unreliable’s path have shown every single time they are more expensive, unreliable and will drastically increase the cost of energy and food.
In Germany it has been shown that when wind is 20pc of electricity costs rise by 60pc when wind is 40pc of electricity costs rise by 100pc. (https: //doi.org/10.1039/c7ee03029k). The government is pretending they can solve our cost-of-living pressures with a strategy that will drastically increase the cost of living.
Increasing the cost of energy increases the cost of food, this relationship is inseparable. Why an industry which is trusted by consumers would perpetuate and promote the carbon lie is beyond me. Consumers are the only ones who put money into the supply chain which is distributed downstream to our farm gates, they rely on us to tell them the truth about our environmental, animal welfare and nutritional credentials. Why would we risk our reputation on a lie which will be exposed as soon as 2030 when we must acknowledge CN30 was never achievable. We are at a much greater risk of reputational damage from being dishonest than we are on jeopardizing trade deals, especially when we have a much more tangible and realistic metric in climate neutrality.
To be blunt, we should not fear deeply offending the seriously mis-informed people who are pushing this climate-catastrophe agenda, the policies they stand for are bad for the environment, animals, the atmosphere, and humanity. Until we engage with our consumers in a modern and relevant manner we will be misunderstood, ostracized, and punished through misinformation provided by animal rights and climate activists. Farming is the most noble and essential business on earth, not only do we sustain civilization we provide nourishment to millions of human beings.
There is a scenario where our northern live cattle export may be the next industry to go, just as the south west sheep live export has gone recently. One of our closest neighbors and trading partner is Indonesia, with 270 million citizens it is the fourth most populus nation on earth with 100-150 million of their most vulnerable spending 90pc of their income on food. A humanitarian catastrophe will be created to appease inner-city left-wing voters who have no understanding of the consequential damage their disconnected agendas cause to humanity and the environment. While we have the luxury of spending about 11pc of our income on food, we ignore the plight of humans less fortunate than us. As an industry we are constantly working to improve animal welfare standards so we can address the human right to have access to life sustaining sustenance.
As much as we cannot look to our governments to fix our problems we can and should vote them out of office if they implement policies that increase our cost of living and reduce the prosperity of our nation. If your cost of living is running away it is because the government is causing this by implementing the most un-scientific ideological scam ever perpetrated on humanity. If you are feeling pressure, can you imagine what the third world are feeling. There has never been a safer time in the history of humans to be a dissenter, 300 years ago you would have been burnt at the stake for speaking out. We do not live under a communist regime, speak up and stand up, if not for yourself do it for your children and grandchildren.
George King, Carcoar.
George King has contributed this article in his personal capacity as a cattle producer from NSW. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.