When is a safeguard not a safeguard?
Typically, schools have a 40km/h limit outside, to safeguard the children. If that limit was 200km/h, it would not safeguard anyone.
The earliest federal ‘Safeguard Mechanism’ was like that – it limited carbon emissions to far higher levels than were being produced – it was like imposing a speed limit higher than cars can go.
A lower safeguard is clearly a better one, but must apply to everyone. There is no point in limiting cars to 40km/h but saying trucks can go as fast as they want. But that is exactly what the new mechanism does, by ignoring farmed animals.
Methane emissions from animal agriculture represent at least 28 per cent of Australia’s emissions – the same as the 213 large emitters in the Safeguard Mechanism, and roughly the same as the electricity sector. To let the meat and dairy industries keep on pumping out greenhouse emissions undermines the Safeguard Mechanism, as well as licensing huge multinational corporations to go on producing unhealthy products, and subjecting millions of animals to appalling cruelty and gruesome deaths.
With the budget next month, now is the time for the government to impose stringent limits on these abhorrent corporations.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
