How long will we keep kicking the can on climate change?
OPINION: The world warming up has been on the agenda for a very long time now - the Kyoto protocol was signed at the end of 1997 - but the bulk of the population haven't taken it too seriously. Now people are starting to wake up to the fact that human life on earth is having an impact on the global climate. To keep the temperature rise to less than 2 degrees (and ideally 1.5 degrees) it's going to take a combined effort from everyone. Whether or not enough people can be bothered doing anything about it remains to be seen. New Zealand's approach to reducing our carbon footprint will be very different to a lot of other countries because we don't have the low-hanging fruit that are quick easy fixes for other countries. For example, the majority of our electricity production comes from renewable sources. READ MORE: * Climate change blame game only stalls progress * Farmers see some positives in Government approach to climate change * Dairy farmer ambassadors take on climate change The biggest proportion of New Zealand's total emissions comes from agriculture, at around 49.2 per cent, and of this 22.9 per cent is from the dairy sector. A large proportion of these emissions are methane and nitrous oxide, which are known as biological emissions. As a dairy farmer, reducing these emissions is a big challenge for me. It looks like science will deliver us a few more options down the track but we can't continue to sit around and wait for these, we need to start focusing on it now and asking ourselves how we can reduce our emissions. From an agricultural point of view our best bet is to continue to drive efficiencies on farm. Between 1990 and 2005 the emissions intensity of milksolids produced in New Zealand decreased by 29 per cent. We also know now that current mitigation options available to farmers could reduce biological emissions by approximately 2-10 per cent. There is also scope for by retiring pockets of marginal land on farms and planting into trees. All of these options have positive spin offs for water quality as well. On our farm we are reducing our stock numbers and changing our calving date so that our feed demand is better aligned with our feed supply. This will allow us to run a more productive and efficient farm. Good record keeping and data collection will also be key to help understanding our farms emissions profile, this will help us Identify areas we can improve. If we as a country can bring long-lived gases to net zero and reduce then stabilise short-lived gases then we will be on the right track, and we'll be able to show all those sceptics and can kickers that it can be done. Andrew Booth and his wife Vicky sharemilk 430 cows on 174 hectares in Titoki, 30 kilometres west of Whangarei. He is a Climate Change Ambassador for dairy sector group Dairy NZ.