After the drubbing they took in elections to the European Parliament the Greens are significantly less politically powerful, but still wield influence over policy.

To paraphrase the Norman Lamont comment about the Thatcher government he left: being in office but not in power, the Greens in Europe are out of office but still very much in power. They have left a legacy that ensures the thinking they drove is still very much alive.

Denmark was a soft target for the green movement’s wish to see agricultural emissions curbed. The Danish government and a group set that included parts of agriculture and the food industry are proud to claim a world first in imposing a ‘cow tax’ on farmers based on the carbon output from livestock and its impact on climate change. The industry and public seem perversely excited about this world first.

It is not, however, a decision based on sound science, in that it is a blanket imposition of a tax whether or not individual farmers are making matters better or worse. Those questioning the decision have been left like the little boy questioning the Emperor’s new clothes. Even the mainstream farming lobby has been forced to go along with the misplaced euphoria around this latest tax burden for farmers.

Many would like Denmark to be a blueprint for action elsewhere but despite the public relations spin, this is an ill-conceived solution to a problem that needs to be tackled globally. It is the wrong solution to the right problem, but it gives little incentive for science and farmers to find different ways to make a difference. This is without even going into the reality that anything a small country like Denmark does is irrelevant in the global context of the true drivers of climate change.

Like the UK, Denmark could take itself back to the stone age of technology with no impact on a global problem. We would still all be ordering cheap products online that drive China’s economic growth and its relentless need to produce more electricity, still largely from coal. The imposition of taxes like this on agriculture may make people or governments feel they are doing something, while in reality they are exporting the climate change problem to where it can be ignored.

Another big problem with this is that as a small, albeit relatively efficient farming industry, Denmark does not live in isolation. Its farmers are not rich enough to shoulder this burden of extra taxation. Moral and commercial logic means it needs to be passed on to consumers.

However the retailers who back this legislation can import products from elsewhere in the EU or even outside Europe. That would will leave farmers the losers. The logic of this outcome is the gap between what consumers say they want in terms of green products and animal welfare and their price-based decisions in what they pick from the supermarket shelves.

This need for value was intensified by food price inflation and trading down. That is not going to change quickly. Decisions around imposing taxes on a sector like agriculture are generally made by well-heeled, middle-class people, mostly with publicly funded jobs, rather than by the vast majority struggling to balance budgets that have taken a huge hit over the past 18 months.

Post-Brexit, the UK could impose a tax like this if it wanted and in parallel restrict imports, but this would be a political non-starter. That is not just because the UK Government knows consumers like cheap food and it has no commitment to changing policy towards one where food security is based around local sourcing and short supply chains.

Denmark is small but part of the single EU market – and is surrounded by EU member states with industries ready to take full advantage of any market openings based on the price advantage they could offer. This is the danger of plans that sound good, but are not based around a well-thought-out economically coherent plan.

If the policy of imposing taxes on farmers became EU-wide, as some in the green lobby would like, it would make Europe less globally completive in food. As the word’s biggest trader in food and agriculture, with a huge balance of payments export surplus, the eurozone cannot afford that.

This is perhaps why Arla, as Scandinavia’s biggest food company, has questioned the logic of any green initiative that is not voluntary for farmers and food companies.