 | The Bullroarer - Wednesday 14 November 2007 | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | A Public Transport And Green City Manifesto For The Federal Election |  |
4 comments on The Bullroarer - Thursday 15 November 2007
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I want to make a couple of observations on last night's ABC Catalyst program on offsets.
Tree planting; note it will take decades to absorb the CO2 from a one-off action such as travel ie a long slow catch-up. The baby trees have to get enough rain then perhaps a century later laid to rest without burning. Can you rely on this?
Cogen by Bluescope Steel; they said the boiler heated by flue gas from metallurgical processes counts as an offset. Bollocks, there is no likelihood that fuel burn elsewhere is cut back, so there is no overall decrease in CO2. Under a strict carbon cap however Bluescope could get good returns from either electricity export or internal efficiency gains.
Let's hope the new federal government takes a hard headed line on offsets. Otherwise we're back to climate dithering.
Hey Boof - I'm not much of an offsets fan either - too easy to exploit as a loophole.
I'd prefer a carbon tax, but a hard line on cap and trade would be a nice substitute...
The thing about tough cap and trade is that it is target driven whereas carbon tax may miss badly, particularly with the rebound from the revenue giveback. If we stay under the cap we are rewarded with no penalties so in a recession it becomes redundant.
However I fear that the generation, coal export, smelting and farming lobby groups have already 'got to' Rudd so that continued giveaways are a done deal.
I don't know how any tree planting can be considered as a offset considering we cut down all those trees in the first place and are continuing to do so.
It seems that at the moment at lot of it seems to be about appearing to do something without actually committing anything.
What we need is a fundamental change for which I don't see any real leadership.