New Zealand delays plan to tax cow and sheep burps ahead of October election
The government says the plan would offer New Zealand meat a competitive advantage, but farmers argue the sector is already reducing emissions.
The Labour government, lagging in the polls, on Friday pushed back the start date of its climate plan to price the greenhouse gases that come from agriculture.
It is always interesting when polls fail to respond rationally to political extremes. In a rational world the New Zealand Labour government would not only be lagging in the polls, its level of support would have dropped to zero. Not because taxing cow and sheep burps is stupid, but because it is so transparently stupid that no rational person could miss it.
Yet we have to conclude that large numbers of people don't see it and that's interesting. Depressing, but interesting too. Mass conditioning is real and people can be induced to act against their own interests even if those interests are rational.
3 comments:
It could be that the Labour government's ratings didn't fall further because voters don't think they are serious, or think that whatever their party does, they are preferable to the alternatives. The polls probably just asked for voting intentions, rather than making an explicit connection to methane taxes. In the same way, if Starmer were to announce anything as stupid, some Labourites would still support him because they want higher wages or for the rest of their extended family to join them from overseas.
Nice marketing opportunity, though. "Scamb! It's a new cross between science and lamb!"
And that in a land with live volcanic activity that in good times merely ejects all manner of gas in the Rukarua area, but occasionally has a jolly good burp when Gaia chucks all her magma and nasty gasses skywards.
Maybe platypus don't fart.
Sam - I'm sure Labour voters did think along those lines, but giving tacit approval to obvious lunacy is what they did in response. Even if they don't think the government is serious, a thumbs down shot across the bows is all they had available. To my mind, chucking it away was demented.
Doonhamer - yes, they don't even begin to look at it more widely and more rationally.
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