Farmers are New Zealand's worst polluters. As Newsroom pointed out this week, they're responsible for 50% of emissions, while only generating 5.5% of GDP for it (making them inefficient as well as dirty). But while the government has been slack about ending subsidies and forcing them to reduce their pollution, the market is beginning to come to the rescue, with Nestlé forcing Fonterra to set a serious emissions reduction target. And now banks are getting into it to, setting targets to reduce their financed emissions. The response of those polluting farmers? First, threats to switch banks. Then, when they realise that no-one wants to do business with them anymore, whining about anticompetitive behaviour.
...except its not anticompetitive. Reducing lending to polluters isn't just socially responsible - its also good business sense. Because in the modern world - as opposed to the 1950's when these polluting farmers still think they live - every polluter you lend to is a risk to a bank's brand, and to the extent they resist cleanup, a bad business risk as well (in that Fonterra will likely stop taking their milk). And the louder they whine, the bigger those risks are.
The irony is that if farmers had accepted a carbon tax back in 2003, or being part of the ETS in 2012 or 2020, they'd be well on the way to meeting those targets, and wouldn't have nearly so much to worry about. But their own intransigence has boxed them into a corner, leaving them with high emissions and a need for much steeper cuts. But that's what you get for being a short-sighted, Ranger-driving knuckle-dragger. And the quicker they get debanked and go bankrupt, the better.
