Greens no longer want to plant trees to save planet

Meeting the nation’s overly ambitious climate change targets is difficult enough and something Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is unlikely to achieve. This is partly because a recurring fact of life is that those who claim to be the most concerned about saving the planet will always complain that no action is ever good enough. In politics and public policy, making perfect the enemy of the good is sure to lead to disappointment.

A prime example was the refusal of government to repeal legislation in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that prohibits nuclear technology even being considered as a zero-emissions source of energy. Another example was the Greens’ refusal to support the Rudd government’s plans for a carbon trading scheme to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The Greens’ failure to compromise extended the climate wars and delivered inaction.

Certainly, many will consider the failure of the Rudd government’s carbon trading scheme as no bad thing. The examples that followed of organised crime taking control of the European carbon market to sell fake offsets is reason enough. But carbon trading also provides one of the least-cost ways for big companies to meet their own emissions reduction targets with the additional benefit of increasing the productivity of rural land.

The meltdown in support for the federal government’s Climate Active market for carbon offsets is another example of green extremism gone wild. Green groups are determined not to support anything that may assist the fossil fuel industry to remain in business. Unsurprisingly, big coal and gas are looking for ways to offset their emissions at scale. This inevitably has led to claims of greenwashing. The federal government and big business are being cowed too easily into surrender rather than argue for a bigger long-term goal. The Climate Active program is not perfect because it allows access to internationally generated permits, some of which may be of dubious value. But the campaign against it is misguided because it slows the development of critical mass in an industry that will be badly needed as finding ways to cut emissions becomes progressively more difficult.

Government plans call for carbon reductions not only in electricity but across the board, including industry and agriculture. Carbon permits can help as well as provide new opportunities to improve the economics of working the land.

That coal and gas producers are using offsets is beside the point. So far the groups speaking out in support of the carbon trading industry have a vested interest to do so. GreenCollar and Climate Friendly have built major businesses based on carbon farming and the offset market. Most of it is through high-quality schemes approved by the federal government under the revised safeguards mechanism, which is more credible than those offered in the voluntary and cheaper Climate Active framework.

But they are right to argue that rather than tearing down what is there, more energy should be put into making it work. This includes approving new methodologies that will unlock new stocks of credible domestic carbon abatement. Done properly, the market is not limited to Australia and potentially could be a major export industry that employs local people and leaves the environment in better shape.

Analyst Saul Kavonic summed up the situation when he said the carbon market had become the biggest driver of conservation of Australian biodiversity and habitat during the past decade, along with returning more money to farmers across the nation. He says green activists effectively are campaigning against planting trees. That is of little surprise but something to think about nonetheless.