What joy! We have to crush the NFU for Gaia

The Guardian tells us of a new World Bank report. Which states that there are vast subsidies going to fossil fuels and farming which really must stop, right now. Not doing so will lead to Gaia boiling and of course none of us want that. Which does indeed mean that we all get to go crush the National Farmers’ Union. Which is, we can all agree, such wonderful fun.

Vast fossil fuel and farming subsidies causing ‘environmental havoc’

Sounds very bad indeed.

The “toxic” subsidies total at least $7.25tn a year, according to a major new report from the bank. The explicit subsidies – money spent by governments – account for about $1.25tn a year, or more than $2m a minute. Most of these are harmful, the bank says.

Now there’s a little twist here. Explicit means actual money paid out. Concerning fossil fuels in the rich world this near never happens. This is the subsidy of oil and or gas in places like Russia, Iran (the two largest) and certain other middle and lower income countries. We don’t do that so we don’t have to stop.

The indirect fossil fuel subsidies are a bit more difficult. Because the calculation is that everything should be paying VAT and also fossil fuels should be paying a full carbon tax. Any level of tax less than this is an indirect subsidy. We don’t do much of that - the UK is one of the very few places that does, by this calculation, already tax petrol and diesel enough to cover those. True, there’s red diesel for farmers and trains, so those would have to go. The special lower VAT rate for domestic fuels, that’s got to go to meet this World Bank standard. But that’s what they are talking about here and in this sense the UK is really doing very well indeed. Fix red diesel and VAT and we’d be fully conformant in fact. And, you know, since we want to save Gaia, why don’t we do those last two things?

Farming though, farming is a different thing. We do have that National Farmers’ Union demanding, as with the National Union of Miners of decades ago, that farming (mining) is special and there should be vast, gargantuan, subsidies to those who drive Range Rovers across their own fields on our behalf. The World Bank is telling us that this is not so.

In fact, the World Bank is telling us that we’ve got to stop subsidising farming at all. We should go the full New Zealand and just let them work as with any other business. Those who add value stay in business, those who don’t, don’t.

There can also be no arguing with this for of course we are all to do absolutely everything in order to save the planet. This is the science you know, the only way to save humanity from a fiery, boiling, death.

So there it is. In order to save Gaia we’ve got to crush the NFU. We baggsie the right to be first to tell them too.