The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ignored the 20% or so of Australia's greenhouse emissions coming from logging and clearance of forests and woodlands as a huge low-cost opportunity to address climate change, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Logging, from the Tiwi Islands to Tasmania, is not needed for domestic wood needs as Australia has more than 1.5 million hectares of to-be-logged plantations for its paper and structural timber market," Senator Brown said.

"The $20 billion the Rudd government has allocated for a 4% reduction in 2020 greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels could have far greater benefit in terms of reducing greenhouse has emissions if put to restructuring the logging industry, and ending land clearance, rather than featherbedding the coal and allied industries.

"This morning, the forest defenders group ‘Still Wild Still Threatened' closed the operations of Gunns' export woodchip mill at Triabunna in Tasmania.

"Logging and burning of forests is Tasmania's biggest greenhouse gas emitter - bigger than all the states' transport systems put together.

"Worse still, it is largely going to Japan for wrapping paper which ends up on rotting rubbish tips as greenhouse gases," Senator Brown said.

"Logging is an elephant in the Prime Minister's room," Senator Brown said.

Further information: Ebony Bennett 0409 164 603