Today’s decision by the Greens to support a new method of carbon offsetting in publicly-owned forests is “fiddling while the forest burns”, according to Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.
Green’s leader, Senator Larissa Waters, indicated her party would vote with the government this afternoon to allow a new ‘method’ to increase the supply of carbon credits. However, three Greens Senators say they’ll cross the floor to support the disallowance motion.
“The task of stopping Australia’s expansion of coal and gas is going to become a little harder today,” said Dr Denniss.
“In voting with Labor, the Greens have shown they now support putting publicly-owned forests into the ‘carbon marketplace’, and have tied the protection of trees and koalas to the expansion of gas and coal.
“Native forests are one of nature’s best carbon storage units – they truly are the lungs of the planet. The climate science makes clear that we need to protect these forests and stop expanding fossil fuels. Allowing fossil fuel pollution to increase because a forest wasn’t logged might take pressure off politicians but it wont take pressure off our climate.
“If Australia only saves forests so that polluters can increase their fossil fuel use, the science says there is no benefit to our planet.
“There is no way to sugar coat it, the parliament’s decision today is a setback. The unconditional protection of our native forests is one of the cheapest, easiest and most urgent things we can do to limit the effects of climate change.”
Just last month, The Australia Institute released new research, Koalas for Coal: How the INFM method ties Koala Protection to Fossil Fuel Expansion, which concluded that the proposed new regulations would make a bad system even worse.
Australia Institute research has long proven that selling carbon credits to polluters – a core pillar of Australia’s climate policy – is plagued with integrity problems and faces questions over its effectiveness.
