Climate Bolloxolgy.

So the countries that we export too...where do they now get their beef and diary from...Brazil? Were they are destroying the rain forest to produce

Except almost all of Irish agriculture is for export.

After FG came to power the Irish farming sector was pushed to expand to unsustainable levels to boost the balance of trade figures. This has caused numerous issues with pollution of all sort across the country. Agriculture is certainly not blameless and the farmers are largely victims of this push to export growth.

And despite what many would have you believe, you cannot live of Beef and Milk.

No you cannot live of Beef and Milk alone......you need a little bit of love as well.

So What's your solution ? Drive on ? And who pays for that?

Or do you hope to be dead before the worst of it hits ?

They are not credits. They are allowances. This is nothing to do with sequestration or anything like that.

What happens is that a ‘cap’ is set at EU level. This covers the entire ETS sector which is industry, electricity generation , some aviation but not building heating, agriculture or transport.

Every year the cap is reduced. This means that industry will be forced to reduce its emissions by a certain amount by 2030.

You have to buy your right to emit in an auction and this right is tradable. (There are some free allowances for certain sectors which are vulnerable to imports but the principle is still the same, if you emit it costs you.)

every year we can expect the allowances to get more expensive as the cap is reduced. The pressure is on industry to become less carbon intensive.

All fossil electricity generation is subject to this. It drives up the cost that the electricity is sold at on the wholesale day-ahead market. Coal is hit hardest, wind isn’t hit at all. This is passed on ultimately to the consumer. Bigger consumers like data centres bear most of the cost.

This also has a counterintuitive result. Closing a data centre in ireland will have no downward effect on EU or global emissions. The allowances which are not used in Ireland will simply be used somewhere else in the EU.

This is a good article which explains the basics and indicates how the ETS might be expanded

https://www.euronews.com/amp/2021/07/16/why-is-the-eu-s-new-emissions-trading-system-so-controversial

https://youtu.be/OpEB6hCpIGM

Dairy is the one sector of Irish agriculture that is viable and they want to cut that

There's actually possibility in that - tractors are heavy by design , so a lot of that could be removable battery packs- they already have hydraulic systems - so swapping out heavy packs every few hours wouldn't necessarily be an impossible task -

And having huge batteries plugged into the grid when not doing farm work is a way to make money ...

Probably a contractors game for the high end stuff .. - leasing heavy duty batteries -

It would be money from America at that!!

Compensation tables will be nicely set up with the production bands for nitrates…

Jeez I’m jealous. Ye’re in for some haul of money though. Unfortunately not a word about methane etc here, and looks like there won’t be either. Damn.

I'm not downplaying anything, just rightsizing it in a context where it's usually inflated. Like breathless statements about food exports, that rarely mention the subsidies that support it. Or highlighting the portion of that's generated by drinks.

Or the way that Teagasc inflate the downstream employment relating to food, by including the job of the Tesco Ireland checkout operator selling you imported food.

I think the matter is well explained here:

Key quote for me "Whatever way you look at it, agriculture, forestry and fishing only account for about 3% of our GNP – even after you strip out multinationals’ profits."

So the point is, we certainly wouldn't starve if the whole agricultural sector went to the wall, and we wouldnt suffer much economically either. In this context it makes it a hell of a lot easier to reframe agriculture to serve other vitally important social needs such as preventing climate change.

The reason why this relatively easy economic argument isn't been made is because the farming lobby is one of the most powerful sectors of Irish society and nothing can be done by politicians to upset them. Bad reason to do bad things in my humble opinion.

The thing is that Irish farming produces milk and beef and lamb more efficiently than anywhere else in the world. Just like you say the Dutch produce vegetables more efficiently and for that matter China produce the unecessary tat that you consume everyday.

I dont hear you shouting to shut down Chinese factories or Dutch vegetable growers. No its just your begrudging attitude to Irish farmers.

If this were true then Irish farmers would be able to out compete their rivals without subsides, are you prepared to try that on for size ?