Water vapour is the most harmful pollutant in New Zealand, not methane

The claim that water vapour is New Zealand's most harmful pollutant, ahead of methane, is a framing often used to downplay agricultural methane's climate impact. Water vapour is a short-lived climate feedback, not a primary driver: it rises largely as a symptom of a warming atmosphere (itself driven by greenhouse gases like methane and CO2) rather than as an independent forcing agent, per the IPCC, NASA, and mainstream climate science. Methane, by contrast, is assigned a well-established Global Warming Potential many times that of CO2 over a 20-year horizon (EPA/IPCC figures), making it a major direct contributor to New Zealand's emissions profile, the opposite of the claim made.