Economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan has delved into the issue of water quality and dairying in a two-part New Zealand Herald series co-authored with Morgan Foundation writer and researcher Geoff Simmons.
The pieces were published as the Ministry for the Environment invited submissions on proposed amendments to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. Submissions close on February 4.
It also follows publication of a report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, that details how a shift from sheep and beef farming to dairying has lead to increased leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus into waterways which in turn causes excessive growth of weeds and algae, choking waterways. The SMC rounded up reaction to that report here.
"Let's be clear up front; we aren't blaming the farmers," the Morgan and Simmons write in the first installment of the Herald series, going on to say that like bankers during the global financial crisis, farmers "are just responding to the incentives the market presents them".
The pair outline the physical nature of the problem faced with dairy intensification:
"It all starts with cow pee. Sure fertiliser can be a problem if applied excessively or at the wrong times, but in the main it's not the culprit. Rather it is cow pee - a simple urine splash from a cow is a massive concentration of nitrogen, equivalent to 1000kg of nitrogen per hectare. This is too much for pasture plants to take up by far. Given dairy cows pee a lot and over time the nitrogen seeps down through the soil to find its way into rivers and groundwater, the consequence from higher stocking rates are obvious."
In the second part, Morgan and Simmons propose a solution - a nutrient budget for farmers, who they believe, should also pay for the water they use to irrigate their land. They conclude:
"What the Commissioner for the Environment's report says is that the mitigation efforts farmers are making will not stop the rot, more and more cows is an environmental disaster. What we would say is the market structures around dairying are what's driving that quest for more cows - a level playing field would sort that and while on-farm investment would become less attractive, downstream investment would take up any slack."
Balance in climate coverage
Meanwhile, Morgan has penned a column slamming former MP and Herald on Sunday columnist Rodney Hide for his scientifically flawed take on climate change.
A January 5 column by Hide suggested historians look back on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition vessel becoming stuck in Antarctic sea ice over Christmas, as "the trigger that finally ended the public fear of global warming".
Wrote Hide: "The expedition's story now is that global warming melted a big iceberg creating the ice that trapped them. That's the climate alarmists' nuttiness in a nutshell: nothing proves them wrong; everything proves them right".
But Morgan, who delved into climate science in researching his book Poles Apart, was unimpressed:
"Temperature hasn't risen since 1997 - climate is a long-term phenomenon. Carefully selected start and finish years can always show something different, but the long-term trend is of rising temperature. As mentioned, no trained scientists are questioning this, just Hide and the losers that took NIWA to court to question their results - and lost".
Morgan goes on to argue argue that media coverage of climate change should represent the balance of evidence on the issue, rather than giving scientists and sceptics equal space:
"More of our media should follow the lead of the BBC which, in order to protect its own reputation for quality, has moved towards depicting climate change stories in a way that reflects the scientific opinion. That means the 3% of qualified scientists who are sceptical get 3% of the attention. That's called balance, and as a result Rodney would only be able to publish stuff he's actually researched".
