Extract from The Guardian
In just three years the
rate of land clearing will create enough additional carbon dioxide
emissions to cancel out emissions savings the government says it will
make by paying farmers $670m to stop cutting down trees.
Lenore
Taylor Political editor
Monday 29 February 2016 00.01 AEDT
A land-clearing surge in Queensland is set to
create additional carbon dioxide emissions in just three years that
are equivalent to those the federal government claims it is avoiding
by paying other farmers over $670m to stop cutting down trees,
according to a new analysis.
The Queensland land clearing along with weakening
land clearing laws in several other states are threatening
Australia’s chances of meeting the climate change targets it
pledged in Paris last year and raising questions about the
coalition’s “Direct Action” climate policy.
A new study of Australian tree-clearing by
environmental services company CO2 Australia – obtained by Guardian
Australia – has quantified the recent blow-out in greenhouse
emissions from the weakened laws, after a decade in which declining
tree clearing played a key role in Australia meeting its climate
change commitments.
The Queensland Labor government wants to repeal
laws passed by Campbell Newman’s government that led to the sudden
rise in tree clearing, but may not succeed in doing so and is facing
fierce resistance from the Liberal National party and others.
Land clearing in Queensland, along with weakening
land clearing laws in several other states, is threatening
Australia’s chances of meeting the climate change targets it
pledged in Paris last year.
Tentative moves by federal environment minister
Greg Hunt’s department to assess whether the clearing contravenes
federal laws have also prompted a backlash - particularly from his
own National party colleagues.
But the CO2 study, commissioned by the Wilderness
Society, shows the turnaround in clearing threatens to wipe out
emission reductions bought by the Turnbull Government’s Direct
Action scheme and jeopardise Australia’s chances of meeting its
promise to reduce greenhouse emissions by 26-28% by 2030.
The study quantifies the impact on emissions of
the discrepancy between the federal government’s data on Queensland
land clearing and state government data, as well as the absence of
accurate national data to predict land clearing emissions as NSW and
Western Australia also move to relax their rules.
Part of the blow-out in emissions from land use
and tree clearing was quietly acknowledged in the federal
government’s latest report on Australia’s greenhouse emissions,
released a few days before Christmas, which projected that emissions
from land clearing would rise 24% from 2013 levels, from an average
37m tonnes to an average 46m tonnes a year up to 2020 and 44m tonnes
a year between 2020 and 2030.
In 2013-14, 300,000 hectares were cleared in
Queensland alone, double the rate in 2011-12. Between 2012 and 2015
land clearing emissions in Australia rose 11 times faster than any
other sector.
Between 2012 and 2015 land clearing emissions in
Australia rose 11 times faster than any other sector.
But Queensland government data also released last
year revealed a far higher rate of clearing than the federal data
would suggests, a rate that would take national land clearings
emissions to 55m tonnes a year between 2020 and 2030.
At that rate land clearing would emit an
additional 118m tonnes of carbon dioxide over that decade – on top
of the higher rates the federal government is already factoring in –
a blow out of over 10% on the reductions the government pledged to
make by 2030 in the agreement forged last December in Paris.
Queensland government data shows a far higher rate of land clearing
than federal data suggests.
Professor Stuart Phinn, director of the remote
sensing research centre at the University of Queensland, said
Queensland’s approach was “world’s best practice.”
“The Queensland approach is based on a long time
series of satellite imagery, tied to field measurements of the amount
of vegetation on the ground,” he said. “It’s been developed
over 15 years.”
Both studies use Landsat satellite imagery, but in
Queensland field officers drive out to check that changes in the
satellite images are being correctly interpreted.
The federal government insists its national data
collection system has been ticked off as compatible with the United
Nations climate change accounting process.
Hunt’s office has been contacted for comment.
But Lyndon Schneiders, national campaigns director
of the Wilderness Society, says the new data shows Australia is
“lying to the world and lying to ourselves” about the true state
of greenhouse emissions.
“Land clearing across the country has spiralled
out of control in the last three years ... at exactly the same time
as the national government is spending up to $2.7bn, in large part by
trying to reduce land clearing,” he said.
“... the state governments, particularly in
Queensland and also in NSW, are handing out tree clearing permits
like confetti.
“The whole system is in disrepair. We are making
commitments a nation ... yet we are relying on data that is
completely different to the data that is being generated out of the
states, so we are lying to the international community and we are
lying to ourselves.”
The CO2 report confirms that at the same time land
clearing laws are also being weakened around the country and in many
states, there is patchy data to quantify the increase in tree
clearing or its impact on greenhouse emissions. It says there is no
connection between what the states are doing with vegetation
management laws and what the federal government is promising to
achieve in reducing greenhouse emissions.
“There is a conflict between the emission
reduction objectives of the Australian government ... and the recent
trend for state and territory regulatory reform that has, in a number
of cases, reduced barriers to vegetation clearing,” the CO2 report
says.
“There currently appears to be little incentive
for state and territory governments to seriously consider the
greenhouse gas implications associated with vegetation management ...
reform.”
In
New South Wales, the Baird government is scrapping the Native
Vegetation Act, which prevents the broad-scale clearing of native
vegetation. Conservation groups have walked out of talks on
replacement legislation because it offers what they consider to be
unacceptably weak protections.
In 2013, the Western Australian native vegetation
regulations were relaxed to allow up to five hectares of clearing at
a time, without a permit, and the re-clearing of regrowing forests up
to 20 years old.
The Queensland government, concerned about the
land clearing rates, also requested that Hunt’s department write to
some landholders with land clearing permits asking for information
about possible breaches of the federal Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act, but those letters prompted a fierce
backlash from agricultural groups and from National Party senator
Barry O’Sullivan who
attacked the “green activist inclinations” of the federal
department.
In late December, the federal environment
department wrote to the landholders saying it was “concerned”
that some of the clearing could have an impact on one of the “matters
of national environmental significance” the EPBC act is designed to
protect. These include nationally-listed threatened species,
migratory species, and the Great Barrier Reef marine park, but not
greenhouse emissions.
The federal department then sent another letter to
the landholders three weeks ago expressing “deep regret” if the
previous letter had caused them distress.
“We are keen to ensure, at the minister’s
direct request, that all assistance is provided to ensure you are
able to continue your business as soon as possible, in accordance
with the law,” the February 5 letter states.
Up until 2013 land clearing rates in Australia
were declining and that was the primary reason Australia had been
able to meet climate change goals.
Australia “overshot” the greenhouse gas
reductions it promised under the Kyoto Protocol largely because of
land clearing restrictions in Queensland that had already been agreed
at the time. This allowed Australia to “carry over” 128m tonnes
of emissions reductions into the second stage of the international
process, which ends in 2020, and meant we could easily meet the
target we had promised for that date. Five other big developed
countries announced
in Paris that they had voluntarily cancelled emission reduction
“credits” achieved by overshooting their first Kyoto protocol
greenhouse targets, but Australia refused to follow suit.
Over its first two auctions the emissions
reduction fund has paid around $670m to buy 51m tonnes of land sector
greenhouse gas abatement, according to the Clean Energy Regulator.
Much of that - but not all of it - was avoided tree clearing. The
blow-out in land clearing emissions contained in the national
figures, but using the Queensland government figures for that state,
adds 18m tonnes of emissions each year, undoing the ERF-purchased
land sector emissions reductions in just three years.
Stage right, Malcolm Turnbull is deliberately running a small(ish) target strategy, based in large part around his own popularity, which remains streets ahead of Bill Shorten’s.
The expectations that he would be big and bold were so strong some assumed the sudden shrinking scope of the Coalition’s tax policy was a sign of chicken heartedness in the face of political attack. And perhaps that was part of it.
Some, including me, saw evidence the prime minister had abandoned his lofty promises about evidence-based political debate in favour of a scare campaign that would do his predecessor proud. It was hard to conclude otherwise, with all the talk about Labor’s negative gearing policy “smashing” house prices and the new slogan, “vote Labor get poorer”, when the scant available evidence suggested a one-off reduction of between 1% and 2%.
But the abandonment of the GST hike coincided with a very deliberate decision about the Coalition’s re-election plan. They are calculating that at a time when voters are uncertain about the economy and weary of political dysfunction and upheaval they don’t want big change or grand plans, they just want competent, sensible government. They want smart ideas and careful management. Or “modest, incremental reform” as cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos put it this week. They want Malcolm Turnbull to give them enough of a reason to confirm their inclination to vote for them, the inclination they have been expressing to every pollster since he became prime minister.
Now you might say the past few weeks haven’t looked a lot like competent, sensible government, and you’d be right. And you might say we haven’t seen all that many smart ideas from the government lately and that would be right too. And it’s going to take all of the prime minister’s oratorical abilities to present “modest, incremental reform” as a reason for people to accept there has never been a more exciting time in the whole of history to be alive, especially when their wages are rising more slowly than they have for 18 years.
But it would be foolish for their opponents to bank on the Coalition being this bumbling for long. Behind the scenes they are working hard to fill the policy void, with the head of prime minister and cabinet, Dr Martin Parkinson, taking on the role of coordinating tax policies around about the time the goods and services tax hike was abandoned and strong signs at least some of those policies will be announced sooner rather than later.
The prime minister has reassured the states that, contrary to his treasurer’s indications, they will be getting some interim funding for hospitals. Loud complaints from states – including Liberal-led ones – about an imminent crisis in public hospitals would not be consistent with a safe-pair-of-hands federal campaign. Obviously the substance of these assurances is yet to be tested, that will happen when the detail is revealed at the April meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, but the political intent is clear. A small target, a number of cautious but “smart” policies between now and the election, and the overriding message, don’t risk Labor, there’s no good reason to change.
Stage left, Bill Shorten is running a high-risk campaign, using values-based policy to overcome his shortcomings in a head-to-head popularity battle, and to address the same sense of economic insecurity to convince the electorate that a change would be worth it, that there are very good reasons to switch, policy reasons critical to their well-being and to Australia’s sense of social equity, policies diametrically opposite to those in Tony Abbott’s first budget, which they rejected with such vehemence but which in some part the Coalition has not abandoned.
In 1993, the first election I covered properly and by far still my favourite, John Hewson risked bold policy in an election nobody thought he could lose. It was a high-wire campaign, balancing on policy detail, sometimes stumbling over it (remember the birthday cake, and also the pie shop). But it was a contest between leaders advocating things they really believed.
In 2016, Bill Shorten is risking bold policy in an election nobody really thinks he can win.
He’s had to take risks with tax policy, proposing negative gearing and capital gains tax changes that will have some impact on the value of housing, and other tax changes that create real categories of losers, in order to credibly fund the “Labor values” policies he hopes will jolt the electorate into paying attention – policies on health and hospitals and education and training and protecting jobs.
Shorten knows he has to surprise voters, shock them even, he has to change people’s minds, he has to give people an overwhelming reason to take the risk of change, make them reconsider their poor opinion of him, convince them he stands for something and there is a reason to return to Labor despite the utterly destructive, self-interested, inward-looking spectacle they made of themselves the last time the Australian people trusted them to run things.
Turnbull’s negative campaign on negative gearing is all part of the plan to paint Shorten as the risk. He overdid it this week but the direction is clear.
Shorten’s negative strategy is to paint Turnbull as a fraud, someone who claimed to be different but has the same policies and baggage they disliked in Tony Abbott. Every time the right wing of the Liberal party takes on Turnbull over things such as a Safe Schools campaign or climate policy and forces some kind of internal compromise, or awkward paper-over backdown, Labor HQ gives a quiet cheer.
Liberals argue those issues are of secondary importance to most swinging voters, that they matter to the media and the opinion “elites”, but Labor argues they just matter, and that they also go to trust and authenticity, and if a leader is judged harshly on those attributes, it can be lethal.
And as we saw this week, if the electoral fight is around Labor’s risks – whether their policy is credible, whether their values are sound – by definition the debate is on Labor’s turf, and the prime minister can look curiously like an opposition leader. Talking about the other guy’s ideas all the time depletes the authority of office.
So that’s the backbeat of election 2016, one side appealing to values and one to hope and natural hesitation, one trying to turn scepticism into inspiration and one to reassure and explain, the Coalition saying Labor is a risk and Labor announcing risky policies anyway, ones they’ll defend because they believe the social services they fund are needed, and worth it, risks they’re prepared to take because, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Despite Monday’s 50:50 Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote is 35% – far too low to even think about victory. Bill Shorten has sounded a bit confident, more like he believes in what he is saying, but he’s still some way short of inspiring – which is what he needs to be to pull a campaign like this off. Turnbull is trusted and liked, has the advantage of incumbency and shouldn’t be under-estimated as a campaigner.
But then again, internationally, candidates who are seen as authentic and risky are doing shockingly well against candidates who are running more conventional campaigns and playing it safe.
2016 might turn out to be more fascinating even than 1993.