By Paul Homewood
As I reported the other day, farmers are up in arms about the new tax on imported fertilisers, which will result from the carbon border adjustment mechanism, an import tax on carbon-intensive products:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/09/budget-fertiliser-tax-raise-food-prices-warn-farmers/
Although this new tax could potentially impact all goods from countries such as China, which are not cutting emissions, it is clear that fertilisers are also targeted under Net Zero plans for the nitrous oxide ( N2O) they emit. This is a potent GHG.
However such small amounts are emitted and in the atmosphere that they will make virtually no difference to global warming, as Happer et al explained a couple of years ago:
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While its impact of N2O as a GHG is miniscule, the ban on imported fertilisers in 2021 in Sri Lanka had a devastating impact, cutting cereal output by 35%:
