Carbon Footprints

Rural portal (free registration required) Farm Online is running a story Farmers missing $2.5 billion in lost greenhouse credits.

Farmers are being penalised to the tune of $2.5 billion over five years as result of the Federal Government’s policy not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol or introduce a national emissions trading scheme.

New analysis by The Climate Institute shows that reductions in land clearing could be providing farmers with an income stream of $1.8B over five years, according to the Institute’s chief executive, Corin Millais.

“This analysis follows a report for the National Farmers’ Federation which concluded that a domestic emissions trading scheme could provide farmers with income of $0.7-$0.9B over a five year period through payments for carbon stored in forests,” Mr Millais said.

“These two studies together suggest that ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and implementing a national emissions trading scheme could provide farmers with an income stream of $2.5 billion over five years.

It seems the Howard Government are keeping their heads firmly wedged in the sand on this one. In a follow-up article on the same site they are saying Australia won’t budge: Greenhouse catastrophe fails to move Howard

Australia has rubbished any suggestion of a global market to trade carbon emissions, the key recommendation of the UK’s Stern Climate Change report which has sent shock waves around the world.

[British Prime Minister] Blair, who labelled the Stern review the most important report on the future he had ever received as Prime Minister, said its conclusions were unequivocal.

“We are heading towards catastrophic tipping points in our climate unless we act,” he said.

Prime Minister John Howard’s initial reaction was limited to acknowledgment[sic] of global warming as a fact, and telling Parliament that nuclear power must be included in the Australian debate about new and renewable technologies to replace fossil-fuel power generation.

Mr Blair said the Stern report was “the final piece of the jigsaw to convince every single political leader, including those in America, China and India, that this must be top of their agenda”. Sir Nicholas [Stern, author of the report] said, “Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen”.

An effective global response required:

• The pricing of carbon, through tax, trading or regulation “so that people pay the full social cost of their actions”.
• Policy to support innovation and the deployment of low-carbon technologies.
• Action to remove barriers to energy efficiency, and to inform, educate and persuade individuals about what they could do to respond to climate change.

Sir Nicholas said the loss of natural forests around the world contributed more to global emissions each year than did the transport sector.

Is the Australian Government on crack? Is me too Johnny Howard a more convincing economic genius than Sir Stern? Does it make any sense to anyone that the government would pour millions of dollars into keeping farmers on land that may never recover, while disputing the basic science and economics of global warming? This government beggars belief. Fortunately for us all, and for the farmers, there are viable carbon credit trading schemes both within Australia and worldwide. Many Australian farmers are investigating local schemes such as the NGAC scheme in NSW and other initiatives to generate an income from reforestation projects. — DS

Technorati Tags: Australia, carbon credits, climate change, emissions trading, farms, global warming, John Howard, politics, farmers, Sir Nicholas Stern

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Climate Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.