The Government has taken an entirely sensible approach in its decision to legislate to prevent Fonterra and others in the dairy industry from being prosecuted for the emissions they produce.

Its announcement this month has sparked self-righteous outrage among those who think the dairy industry should be punished through litigation as a way to solve the emissions issue.

If the industry was doing nothing to curtail its emissions to land, water and air, I could understand that wrath, but nowhere in the opponents’ statements do I see any acknowledgment of the moves the dairy industry is making to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Fonterra, for example, aims to achieve net zero farm methane emissions by 2050 and is working on a plan to completely decarbonise by 2037, when it intends to stop using coal.

As part of this process Fonterra is currently switching its gas-powered plant at Fonterra’s Edgecumbe dairy factory over to electricity at a $250 million cost.

Fonterra is trialling electric milk tankers and is rewarding low-emission farms with incentive payments.

Litigation may give the zealots and the sanctimonious smug satisfaction but for most Kiwis that is just a hiding to nowhere.

Most of us would acknowledge we must work towards eliminating all industry emissions, but stamping your feet and demanding it all happen now in the dairy industry could just be a disaster.

New Zealand is heavily reliant on the industry for the wealth it brings us.

The mainly cooperatively owned industry (which means it is largely owned by the farmers who established it) directly employs 55,000 people.

Unlike many other big businesses such as our banks, most dairy profits stay in our economy, much of it in rural New Zealand.

The dairy industry with its cooperative spirit has become an important and successful investment opportunity and job source for Māori.

It has given Māori the opportunity through Treaty settlements to reclaim a little of what they lost (or stolen) from the land confiscations of the 1860s.

The prosecution that the Government opposes, is being brought by the activist Mike Smith, who recently received the right by the Supreme Court to press ahead with his case.

In my view the industry should be celebrated, not prosecuted.