Logging industry in cloud carbon land
They never give up. Our logging industry is now saying it needs to be a major player to help solve Australia’s climate change problems. They claim our forests – that they plan to keep cutting down – could absorb 20% of the planned 60% target to cut emissions by 2050. How so?
A confidential document from the National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) sent to Kevin Rudd suggests they get together and set up a cosy team. No doubt it would include a bus load of spin doctors and a few public relations firms to fabricate stories about the climate benefits of logging.
They say that clearfelling, woodchipping, mashing up the younger stuff for biofuel production and then ferociously burning whatever carbon is left on site would help reduce CO2. Just don’t mention the pollution to the atmosphere via burnt or rotted waste paper, cars’ exhausts and fire smoke. Oh – and they threw in the ‘indigenous economic development’ line just to show how 2020 they are.
NAFI also wants all governments to pledge their never-was-commitment to the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement. This actually said governments would protect all valuable conservation and old growth forests immediately. But of course it didn’t; all it did was protect the people who destroyed these very forests through the oodchipper-friendly Regional Forest Agreements.
If Rudd goes along with this one, he’ll lose every point he’s so far scored by supporting Tibet and saying ‘sorry’.
If you get a chance – please tell him. Kevin.Rudd@nullaph.gov.au