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Comment by rvense | Hacker News Reader

They haven't been working this much land this intensively for millennia. So-called "conventional agriculture" is an experiment that's younger than my dad. Although this tax is only about carbon, the negative effects of the Danish agricultural sector on the rest of us who have also been living here for millennia are too many to mention. They provide next to no jobs and result in a few percent of GDP. In return, they are killing our seas with algae, poisoning the rivers and groundwater, and taking up sixty percent of the surface area.

Fully half of my country is used to grow pig feed, and most of that meat is exported.

The rest of the world can grow its own fucking bacon if it wants it so badly. This country needs less agriculture. There's no "but".

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The runoff argument is a good one. That’s an externality that’s easily forgotten.

However, if Denmark stops exporting pork and tells everyone to grow it itself, what happens when those countries stop exporting products that Denmark doesn’t make? Is Denmark going to produce its own computers?

I understand the frustration and the argument. Maybe there’s something else Denmark can and should export.

> I understand the frustration and the argument. Maybe there’s something else Denmark can and should export.

Like pharmaceuticals? Or aerospace, robotics, high end machinery (Grundfos for example), or sea freight?

Before COVID the Danes also produced massive amounts of fur from mink, they've been culled due to the pandemic and nothing much has happened.

> However, if Denmark stops exporting pork and tells everyone to grow it itself, what happens when those countries stop exporting products that Denmark doesn’t make? Is Denmark going to produce its own computers?

Trade wars due to a country's economical decisions about what they prefer to produce or not is not a reality. Or if it is I'd like to see some examples.

Other countries would import their pork from somewhere else, or produce their own pork, while still selling their computers to Denmark because that’s good business?

I'm not against exports in principle. I'm against the destruction of my local environment for the profit of a group factory farm owners which as far as I know number in the hundreds. 0.5% of this country is wild nature - again 50% is pig feed! - and we need more wilderness and more forests both to maintain our biodiversity and capture carbon to reach our 2030 goals. This cow tax is actually part of a larger deal that also sets aside money to buy land back from farmers to achieve that.

And if you're asking me whether I think it's fair that we can buy computers from Asia for around the price of the raw materials and labour, and not have to worry about the environmental devastation of both the production of them and the handling of them when they're discarded, the answer is a firm no. I want environmentalism both here, in China, and in Africa. Production should be sustainable, and if I then have to eat less meat or make my computers last longer, then that's just how it is. Just because I want something doesn't mean I have a right to it when what I want has such a profound impact on others.

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