Australia leading land use rorts again to meet even inadequate 25% target
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Friday 11th December 2009, 10:26am
by ChristineMilne in
When the Government's CPRS was being debated I am sure it was not clear to most Australians that the 5 - 25 % emission reduction target was never going to be achieved through emissions trading. In fact, domestic energy emissions were not projected to fall until 2034.
The Government's secret to achieving its weak targets was to be focussed on Copenhagen and a bid to try to change the rules on how emissions from land use change and forestry are accounted for so as to deliver a windfall gain.
Environmentalists have argued for a decade that the Kyoto Protocol rules are flawed because countries can opt to not include their emissions from logging in their accounts. We have called for full carbon accounting which if adopted would show the massive loss of carbon to the atmosphere through the logging of native forests.
The way forest is currently defined in the Kyoto rules makes no distinction between native forests and plantations. This means that land conversion (logging native forest to turn into plantation, for example) is not defined as a land use change whose emissions must be accounted for. On top of this, if an area of forest has been clearfelled it is still counted as forest so long as the country claims an intention to one day grow trees there again.
Currently in Copenhagen, talks are bogged down over moves by Australia and the European Union to continue to hide the full extent of emissions from logging and land use. Australia is negotiating to try to massage the rules regarding emissions from this sector (known technically as land use, land use change and forestry, or LULUCF) and offsets from the reduced emission from deforestation and degradation (REDD).
Australia is arguing that it will not implement a 25% emission reduction target unless it succeeds in having emissions from natural disturbances, such as bushfires and droughts, excluded from its accounts. It also depends on hiding its emissions from logging native forests and plantations by developing a controversial new methodology.
What Australia wants to do is to project forward its business as usual emissions from logging and only account for any emissions above that scenario. As long as we don't log any more than we say we have planned to log, we can pretend we're not logging at all. Now there's a rort.
Developing countries are seriously unimpressed by efforts from Australia and the European Union to create loopholes for themselves under the LULUCF rules of the Kyoto Protocol whilst expecting a more robust accounting system for developing countries under the REDD rules.
The breach of trust this represents has the potential to undermine the whole negotiations, not to mention make a mockery of any targets that are agreed. What is the use of a target which can be met through deceitful means?
The atmosphere cannot be fooled.
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Climate change is one of the
Climate change is one of the most critical challenges facing humanity today. The process of change unleashed by the rapid rise of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, historically and today, has the capacity to alter our economic systems, ecological networks and social relationships. To minimize the adverse impacts of climate change, significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed on an urgent basis. Yet achieving these reductions will be challenging given current reliance on fossil fuel–based energy systems for the achievement of economic development. Climate change and forests are intrinsically linked. On the one hand, changes in global climate are already stressing forests through higher mean annual temperatures, altered precipitation patterns and more frequent and extreme weather events. This problem should be taken action because we can't buy the world even with the aid of credit card companies.
Looks like the Government may be listening to the Electorate
Sorry I have lost the context of what is being argued in the article.
To me the 2 components that are being argued against for exclusion in any agreement:
a. Replacing any logging with replanted trees.
To me this is only logic, as long as the trees being planted are the same species as being logged. Australia has a major (probably 100's of thousands of buildings each year) need for hardwood timber for the building industry, and this can either be logged in Australia, under controls, or imported from Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea, or possibly Sth America, where ther are only minimal, if any controls. A limited replacement could be aluminium, but this would require huge quantities of electricity to produce.
b. Having emissions from natural disturbances, such as bushfires and droughts, excluded from its accounts.
Good grief, this is only logical. I would imagine that the emissions from this years bush fires would have been huge, and we have these fires Australia wide every year. Not to exclude them would be a sure way to never meet any reduction targets. The same goes for droughts that have the potential to wipe out millions of trees.
How in the hell can the Government be held accountable to stop either bush fires or droughts.
To me, the whole Copenhagen exercise should have been, Governments putting on the table, estimates / proposals of what they believe their electorates will be prepared to work towards (targets) to assist in reducing emissions. The whole exercise will be a waste of time if targets are imposed on Governments, including possible penalties, if their electorates will either never reach those targets, or totally reject the targets. Penalties are also useless if the Government electorates instruct the Government to not pay any penalty that were forced on them. Remember a Government that goes totally against the majority of the electorate wishes, will be replaced by a Government that will listen, and act to the electorate wishes.
In summary, the Government must only agree to what the majority of the electorate are prepared to accept. Sure the Government can in theory agree to anything, as long as they understand that the targets will probably never be met, and they will be probably be sacked if they accept any penalties that impact the general community. Remember Australians are a pretty casual lot, but if you try to lower their standard of living, you will, 1st have to take on the unions, then look for a new job after the following election, as an other opportunistic Governement is elected, who will pull out of any agreements.
You've just argued against multilateralism
Was that your intention, Grant? The position you articulate is effectively that all governments should go to these agreements and simply agree to do what they were going to do anyway. That's pointless.
The real point of these meetings is to get governments together to agree to do what they would _not_ ordinarily do, because they are doing it together. That is the whole point of multilateralism - get Israel and Palestine together in a room and get them to agree in that room to far more than they would do individually. Same for Northern Ireland. Same for deceleration of the cold war arms race. Nothing would ever happen globally if governments simply went to global meetings to rubber-stamp their domestic proposals.
Re the logging issue, the thing is, replacing old growth forest with plantation is not a zero sum game. There is huge carbon loss, because old growth contains large quantities of carbon in soils and undergrowth that are lost and not replaced in plantations. Plus there's the massive biodiversity loss. What the Greens argue for is to shift logging out of old growth and into plantations - there is plenty of plantation timber out there to use!
And no one is arguing that governments can or should be able to stop bushfires and drought, but we MUST account for the carbon emissions they cause, or we are fooling ourselves, but not the atmosphere. That's not a clever way to go about things - it'll lead to an ENRON style accounting debacle where all looks good on paper but in reality the story is very different.
Reply to Above
Tim, some of the points you make are fair enough, but you appear to have missed the point that there is no use the Government getting hyped up and agreeing to emission targets that will never be reached, or are not accepted by the majority of the community. Australians are going to keep using the cars, trucks, all their electrical appliances, etc, etc. that they currently have.
Together with the above, both State and Federal Governments have stated that they will be actively increasing Australias population by 30% over the next 20 years, so we can expected large increases in energy requirements / consumption, not only for community usage, but for all the industry increases that will be required to employ the extra population. They have also stated that we will need to keep the coal burining power stations avtive for decades to come, if for no other reason than to meet the large increases of peak loading that will be required for electricity with the population increase. A possible solution to coal maybe the conversion of existing power stations to natural gas, but the Government would need to probably finance the Electricity companies for the conversions.
As for logging, as far as I am aware, most of the plantations are softwood, which are quick growing. Hardwood (Gum and other hardwood species) are fairly slow growing, and the plantations take take decades to reach the size that building lumber is required. Maybe a shared approach, plant many hardwood plantations as is economically viable, use existing forests where necessary, import (as I think some companies are already doing) a covering amount, and replant where existing forrests have to be utilised.
With bush fires for example, being taken into account, I doubt that Australia would ever go anywhere near reaching any target. Every year we have major bush fires, and propably have since the aboriginals used to deliberatly set many areas on fire to regenerate growth. Fair enough that emissions should be documented and advised, but I still believe that it would be unrealistic to build their emissions into our expected targets.
One emission producer I missed is the good old motor vehicle (cars, trucks, buses, etc). Western society (except maybe some inner city high density areas) revolves around the mobility that motor vechicles provide. We need trucks to deliver goods, we utilise cars for general mobility / independence, and buses for transport. We also sell around 900k new vehicles a year (god only knows how many with a 30% population increase, I say the other day that China is expecting sales of 5 million / year within the next decade), so we have a huge number of people employed in this industry. Australians have been quite negative to hybrid cars (I believe that less than 1% of vehicles sold in Australia are Hybrids), but the State Governments could try to introduce a rego (Road Tax) like in UK, which appears to be based on the emissions produced. Therefore a working class family with one small car would effectively pay less Rego (Road Tax), on their small family car, than a wealthy person with their BMW etc. Last week the Governments raved about the Camry Hybrid which they are partially bank rolling. Good grief, the conbined city / country fuel consumption is being trumpted as 8.8 l/100k. My 2 litre Mondeo diesel averages 8.0 l/100k for city cycle alone, so what is so flaming good about the Hybrid Camry (except that you need to plug it into your coal fired electricity supply to charge the battery).
Actually I believe the Federal Government is in a no win situation. The Australian public will severly punish any Government that lowers the Australan standard of living, (for example no Government has ever been game to reduce the construction of the Australian McMansions) especially through large increases in taxation (a carbon tax), which would in turn push up all costs, increase inflation, and as a result, push up interest rates. Some how the Government needs to work out a way of reducing emissions with minimal impact to the electorate, and by their announcements of planning to heavily subsidies increases, they have also recognised this. A very simple way may be to mandate that all electrical appliances sold after 2012 must have 4 start energy ratings, and as most appliances die after a couple of years, you must reduce emissions over a 5 year period.
Anyway it will be interesting to see what, if anything comes out of Copenhagen, and if the majority of the Australian public actually accepts any agreement.
See below!
I was going to reply, and then I read Jim's comment below.
The Australian people _will_ get with the program if we have a government willing to lead. This has been done time after time after time in human history. We humans don't like the idea of change, but when we are led there, we embrace it warmly. I have no doubt the same could be done here.
And I am so sick of people equating big TVs and big cars with high standard of living!
Leader-less society
Grant appears to believe in a society devoid of leadership. The politicians follow in his model. In this society the random outpourings of our media (which are only designed to maximise advertising revenue) sets the public agenda. The role of the politician is then only to become increasingly expert at interpreting the public agenda and not seeking to influence it.
This is a frightening world as the media do not have the public interest in mind when designing/selecting their content. It is a world that randomly lurches along according to the wants of the narrowest and most short term interest imaginable.
What we really need are leaders who are prepared to set the agenda and to lead the public to the best long term outcomes that can be achieved. Contrary to what Grant says, most people are in fact prepared to make a sacrifice for a longer term gain. Everyone who has bought a house on a mortgage has done precisely this thing. For many of us the very act of making a sacrifice is part of what makes life worthwhile. Part of what creates a high feeling of personal worth is an ability to use our resources to help others. This is not captured in Grants concept of maintaining a high standard of living.
The concept of standard of living has been badly hijacked. In a number of ways our standard of living is much poorer than it could be. This is mainly because of the free for all where private interests set out to influence our behavior in their narrow commercial interest and at the cost of our own standard of living.
It is well established that for the last 50 years or so the general level of happiness in the western world has stopped increasing with GDP. GDP has long since ceased being a reliable indicator of our standard of living.
If we narrowly allow GDP to set the agenda then this false measure of standard of living will increase right up to the point that it fails utterly because we have ignored the externalities to the point they undermine the whole facade.
I agree with Grant we should focus on standard of living. But we shouldn't be trapped into his false notion of what standard of living really is. Living sustainably in a manner that doesn't threaten the standard of living of our descendants would rate to most people as very satisfying aspiration and a central tenet of a set of precepts for that define a high standard of living.
I wish for everyone a higher standard of living and one that breaks free of Grants conception of what that might be.
Great post Jim
Great post Jim :)
GDP is a a very blunt measure. In GDP terms:
A car crash > an uneventful trip
A crash that involves a write-off, and is replaced by an Australian built vehicle > a car crash involving just a repair
A crash that involves a fatality > a crash that doesn't involve the funeral industry
A crash that involves an extended hospital stay and rehabilitation > a fatality
etc, etc.
I'd rather have the uneventful trip, and forgo the GDP boost to the economy.
Instead of trying to increase our GDP our governments should try and boost our GDH (Gross National Happiness). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness.
What standard of living?
Thats right. You will base your acceptance on standard of living, according to what the new socialists tell you to. Personal choice is no longer an option in the green utpopia.
crisis of democratic legitimacy
There have been some long winded commentaries here so I'll keep this short. The failure in Copenhagen suggests a genuine crisis of legitimacy for those countries whose elected representatives can be identified as pursuing cynical policies in pursuit of the interests of fractions of capital. Coal, obviously, and Rudd as handmaiden to it. It is starkly obvious that citizens will have to drive change rather than rely on those elected parliamentarians who feed off an exhausted class warfare model of politics. I sincerely hope that the Greens are already planning to co-ordinate the sort of extra-parliamentary mass movement that we so clearly need. This is no time for faint hearts - when our legal and political institutions can do no more than commit us to the politics of planetary death then we have the democratic right to disobey the normal rules.
Anthony says to bring on anarchy!
Anthony - Give me some details on what sort of rules would be broken in this democratic right. Can I decide to kill someone because I disagree with their politics? Is this not anarchy? Can I kill you???? I'll justify it as for the greater good (in my opinion). Or is that going too far - perhaps I should just injure you. But how badly? Kneecaps seem to have been popular it the past.
Or should it be incarseration. - you know just like Bush did with the Quantanimo Bay. Who will decide what is for the greater good? Im very interested. Have you read 1984?
I doubt Anarchy Would be an Issue
Anthony, well written.
Actually I was a non-com in the military (admittedly the Reserves), but my unit was put on standby, I think it was in either the mid 70ś or early 80ś when we were told the Federal Government of the day was expecting major problems with what may happen, and that the military could be required to restore order. As it turned out, it all fizzled out, but I remember having to live in a barracks for a week until we were stood down.
People need to remember that any Government has the military to control any public disturbances, and in many, many countries through out the world, the elected Government of the day, governs because it has the military support. Just look at a number of SE Asian countries that are our neighbors. Or, quite recently, a quiet, holiday nation to our north where the Government tried to implement legislation that was against the indigenous community so the military took over the nation.
If the Australian Government was besieged by anarchist elements who took actions that threatened stability, and the state police forces could not suppress the disturbances, I have no doubt that the Feds would move the military (in one form or another) to resolve the problems.
We may live in a democratic country, but there are also many agencies (eg. ASIO, Military Intelligences, State Police Intelligence teams, Federal Police Intelligence teams, and a number of other intelligence agencies) that monitor the community for potential groups that may cause problems, and some these agencies have already been used with terrorist threats.
Having said the above, I doubt very much that it would ever come to the point where State Police Forces could not restore order, especially as the Federal Government is allowing them to equip with heavy crowd control hardware and military based weaponry (eg. military automatic weapons, armoured cars, heavy riot gear, protective shields, suits, tear gas, etc.)
If I was an anarchist, I would think very carefully before stirring up major trouble in the future, as I could wear some heavy pain, which the courts will not be able to protect me from.
Is anarchy what we should be worrying about?
The last century was the bloodiest and most violent there has been in the history of the human race and I would ask you one and all to just think for a moment about who was actually responsible for this violence. How many of those wretched millions were done to death by anarchists? Just in the interests of open debate I am prepared to concede the Arch Duke Ferdinand - though many anarchists would dispute this. By far the greatest culprit in the genocide stakes are "responsible governments" who were recognised as such by other responsible governments and many could even claim the legitimacy of popular support.
Now let us look at this mantra that I keep hearing, "democracy." In effect what this really means is that once every three, four, five or whatever number of years, one is permitted to enter a polling station and record a vote for one of a number of suits, the vast majority of whom support the same socio-economic system and belong to parties whose policies are indistinguishable one from the other. Whichever party gets to form the government they will proceed to govern in the interests of the corporations and big business in general and they will legislate along lines that were not prominent in their electoral compaigns. They will form alliances without any consultation with the population as a whole whom they will do their utmost to withold information from. Let us not forget that John Howard, with no real opposition from the ALP, joined in the invasion of Iraq against the wishes of the vast majority of the Australian population.
So is this the system that I am supposed to lay myself down and die for? And before I get bombarded with all the usual crap about all other systems being worse, how do we know, we have not tried most of them. Besides the horse and cart was the best means of transport in its day, but that did not prevent us from seeking something better.
In conclusion, in this age when elections are nothing much more than beauty contests, and our freedoms are being removed from us on a daily basis, it is naive to expect much real change to come about via governments - had the Libs been returned in 2007 I can see little that would be happening any different today, and that includes the shenanigans in Copenhagen. In short, if you want real change dear citizens, you are going to have to get off your arse and go out and fight for it.
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