Random Nature #199

Image:  When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came to power just over a year ago, one of his first actions was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.  Notably, that only commits Australia to a maximum eight percent increase in its emissions by 2012.  Only one other nation was given an increase as a goal--Norway at one percent.  Making Australia's goal even easier to achieve are the following: 

- In 1990, there was a lot of land clearing going on in Australia.  That significantly boosted its emissions baseline under the Protocol.  

- Australia has greatly reduced its land clearing, and that's a positive in Kyoto math.  Thus while Australia's actual emissions are up nearly 20 percent since that inflated 1990 baseline, it's only credited with a 9 percent increase.  That clever double counting means that Australia isn't far from its goal.

- One-third of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions come from coal.  It's the world's top coal exporter, and it gets about 77 percent of its electricity from coal.  Even if Australia isn't anxious to quickly convert to expensive renewable energies, it is a (liquefied) natural gas exporter.

However, Rudd is like most world leaders when it comes to the environment...bold talk, meek action.  For instance...            

As Opposition leader, Rudd described climate change as "the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time". He identified the need for Australia to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a huge 60 per cent by 2050. Rudd told us we couldn't afford to wait for the rest of the world; Australia needed to lead the way.

Yet the Government has now committed to a lowly 5 per cent emissions reduction by 2020, only likely to increase if the rest of the world follows suit.

He says he'd increase the commitment to 15 percent if there was a global pact on climate change.  Note though that these use a higher baseline--the year 2000.  Yes, despite the reduction in clearing, Australia's overall emissions still rose.  Rudd claims that even a 5 percent reduction is substantial because Australia's emissions are forecast to rise 20 percent over that period.  In other words, his own forecasts show him failing to meet the Kyoto goal.           

Trees for Kyoto Math:  Which is more important, land that grows food or land that grows trees?  With modern civilization and continuing population growth, it's pretty safe to say the food production is more important overall...though obviously a balance needs to be struck.  The Kyoto Protocol began an alteration of that balance.

Cattle farmer Neil Graham can see the landscape changing around him as his neighbours sell their properties for plantations, unable to compete against the Rudd Government's generous tax concessions for forestry companies.

The passing of legislation by the Government last year to provide tax concessions to spur the planting of carbon-sink forests has created disquiet in many farming communities, including around Mr Graham's picturesque cattle property at Dairy Plains in the Meander Valley of northern Tasmania.

...

"The Government has tunnel vision: they think planting trees will solve everything. Both farms and native vegetation are being replaced by plantations, all driven by federally funded tax schemes. It's wrong."

With the Rudd Government proposing the conversion of 34 million hectares of Australian land into plantations as part of its climate change strategy -- more than the 28 million hectares currently farmed -- leading voices predict that dozens, if not hundreds, of rural communities will disappear.

The use of the term plantation indeed indicates that the trees will be farmed.  From a climate change perspective, one would hope that most of the wood will be used in ways that keep the carbon sequestered.  Heck, and one day these plantations may be a source of ethanol.

It's not just tax concessions that could motivate a major conversion to forestry.  

Mr Keogh, the Australian Farm Institute's chief executive, said Treasury modelling for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) projected that up to 40 million hectares of new tree plantations would be established up to 2050 -- as Australia sought to offset carbon emissions -- with the bulk of these being in high rainfall areas of northeast NSW and southeast Queensland.

That includes headwaters of the Darling River.  Downstream, the Murray-Darling Basin serves as Australia's breadbasket (previous blog here).  Both the surface and groundwaters in the basin are overused, which is why there's drought despite relatively normal rainfall.   

"Depending on where the forests were planted, the new plantations could cut runoff in the Murray-Darling Basin and lead to a decline in irrigated agriculture. Conversely, without these plantations, the impact of the ETS would be much greater because emission prices would be much higher," he said.

The growth of the plantation industry sparked political heat last year when the Nationals and Greens combined to oppose, with rural industry leaders, the passage of laws to provide generous tax concessions for carbon-sink forestry plantations.

Yet, Australia's Greens claim to support sustainable forestry when opposing the logging of old growth forests.

Other Trees:  Last month, after Prime Minister Rudd failed to walk the talk...   

Climate change activists brought a Gunns woodchip mill to a standstill in a dawn protest yesterday over the Rudd Government's modest 5 per cent carbon reduction target.

Activists from the Still Wild, Still Threatened group, which has labelled Kevin Rudd a "climate cowboy" and ministers Penny Wong and Peter Garrett "climate criminals", broke into the mill at Triabunna, on Tasmania's east coast, about 4.45am yesterday and chained themselves to a conveyor belt about 20m above the ground.

Spokeswoman Ula Majewski said the protest was aimed at the Government's pitiful decision on carbon emissions and at Gunns's "continued decimation of Tasmania's extremely carbon-dense forests".

Tasmania's climate is fairly similar to Western Oregon's as well.  Peter Garrett, former lead singer of the great band Midnight Oil and a longtime social and environmental activist, is the Minister for the Environment, Heritage, and the Arts.  However, he's fairly radical and proved to be a loose cannon during Rudd's campaign.  Thus, the Prime Minister created a new job--Minister for Climate Change and Water--and gave it Penny Wong, a political savant also from Rudd's Labor Party...which is center-left.

Meanwhile, Still Wild, Still Threatened monkey wrenches in an attempt to prevent the logging of Tasmania's southern forests.  Carbon emissions obviously aren't their concern except as the issue can be used to save old growth forests.  

In the following, note that David Llewellyn--again of the Labor Party--is Tasmania's Minister of Energy and Resources.  And, I converted hectares to acres.

"This coupe has been on the harvesting schedule for many years and approximately 90 per cent of the Florentine is protected in formal reserves or is unavailable for harvesting," Llewellyn says. "And a recent visit by the World Heritage Committee's scientific panel found production forests are not a threat to World Heritage areas."

Llewellyn, who labelled Still Wild Still Threatened members "industrial terrorists" following the Triabunna mill protest, says the Upper Florentine is managed as a source of high-quality specialty timbers, eucalypt sawlogs and veneer logs.

"The current active coupe in the area is not being clear-felled. It is being harvested using a variable retention system. About 49 acres is being felled within the 89 acre harvest area. Variable retention retains elements such as old trees, stages, logs and tree ferns. No clear-felling will occur within the production forest in the Upper Florentine Valley." He says there is little acknowledgment that 79 per cent of Tasmania's old-growth forest is in reserves and 87 per cent is unavailable for logging. "In 90 years' time there will be more forests in Tasmania than there are today and forestry is the only carbon positive sector in Australia."

How many left-of-center politicians in Oregon would dare to take a position like that?