Labor’s enviro policy to incinerate forests for power

Labor has said it would allow our forests to fuel furnaces for electricity generation if it gets in.

Governments in the past and even now justify leveling native forests for woodchips because they were merely using the “waste”. But they’ve come up with an even lower value product than woodchips; it mimics a method that was being used around 100 AD. Europe was seriously deforested by the Romans to make charcoal to smelt metal. Now we are deforesting the land for industrial uses but to make electricity. Electricity that is being increasingly generated by solar and wind.  

This backward position was writ large on the wall at the ALP’s National Conference in mid-December. It is inserted into Labor’s proposed new Federal Environment Act.

Most of us realise that the ALP is a lap dog to the F’ers within the CFMMEU. Will they compromise and ‘balance’ our forests and wildlife until forest ecosystems collapse, just to pander to union bullies?

For the uninitiated into industry rhetoric, simply calling it ‘waste’ or from ‘sustainable’ logging means nothing. ‘Waste’ can account for 99% of what is cut down – be it for woodchips, firewood or incineration for electricity generation.

The ALP’s endorsement of rubbish incinerators to generate power is also a major step backwards. It would see serious toxic pollution as a ‘solution’ for dealing with towns’ and cities’ ever-growing rubbish burden.  

Peg Putt from Markets For Change said:
“This constitutes a complete revocation of Labor’s previous position. It refused to endorse the burning of native forest biomass because it could deplete large terrestrial carbon stores and because it could have adverse impacts on biodiversity.

“We thought that Labor was being slippery on the issue ever since, and during the inclusion of native forest biomass into the RET… Now they have made public the extent of their about-face in favour of the logging industry and of clearfell logging that it implies. Not to mention the damage to forests and climate.

• Category Featured, News
• Topics Burning Forests for Electricity?!?, Climate Change, Federal politics, Forests and Climate Connection, Logging and Clearfell, Politics