Thursday 28th of March 2024

tree hugging government accounting...

 

mistaking wood for timber...

Governments in Hobart and Canberra have discovered that trees make their carbon accounts look good, but it’s a con.

You won’t believe this, but both the Tasmanian and national governments are into tree-hugging.

Tasmania’s environment minister Matthew Groom told a Legislative Council estimates committee last June that the state’s carbon emissions had declined by 90 per cent since 1990, meaning its legislated 2050 target had been reached “several decades ahead of time”.

This is remarkable. We know that in this hydro-powered state, emissions from the main source of carbon pollution, cars and other transport, have stayed stubbornly high. So how did Tasmania achieve such a monumental turnaround?

Surprisingly no Legislative Councillor asked the obvious question during Groom’s session, and Groom didn’t volunteer any information. He might have been embarrassed to admit that it happened because a depressed market forced Tasmania to keep its trees instead of logging them, as climate scientist John Hunter subsequently showed in an article in the Hobart Mercury newspaper.

The other part of the story comes out of Canberra.

Federal environment minister Greg Hunt hailed the outlay of over $1.2 billion to buy 93 million tonnes of carbon dioxide abatement last year as a “stunning” success. Notably, 58 per cent of the claimed abatement went to long-term contracts to sequester carbon by growing trees.

read more: http://southwind.com.au/2016/01/12/a432/

 

no worse federal Environment Minister than Greg Hunt...

Has there been a worse federal Environment Minister than Greg Hunt?

It’s hard to think of one. This is the man who has presided over the destruction of Labor’s carbon pricing system, making Australia the first country in the developed world to remove its price on carbon pollution.

The killing of Labor’s carbon legislation didn’t just remove the carbon tax. It also removed the mandated carbon emissions cap.

And sure enough, since removing the cap, carbon pollution has increased. Recent figuresshowed the biggest jump in carbon pollution from Australia’s electricity sector since 2001. Quite an achievement, Mr Hunt.

Think about that for a second. Environment Minister Greg Hunt made polluting the environment easier.

The big news in the environment portfolio yesterday came from the Federal Court, which threw out the Environment Department’s approval of the giant Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland. The reason? Apparently the department had stuffed up its approval documentation.

read more: https://newmatilda.com/2015/08/06/greg-hunt-our-first-minister-pollution/