A Promise Broken, a Victory Lost: the scandal of Wombat Forest logging

In the 1990s I was active in opposing the logging of the Wombat Forest.

In 1999, the Bracks government was elected, and in 2002 promised to end that logging, this being one of the conditions of receiving Greens preferences at that year's election.

John Thwaites (the Deputy Premier) announced the phasing out of the logging, with woodchipping ending immediately and final removal of sawlogs completed in 2006.

In 2019, during the VEAC process, the Minister stated, in writing, that no sawlogs would be taken out of the Wombat.

In 2019, the Victorian government announced that native forest logging would end in the State by 2030.

Last year, the premier, Dan Andrews, accepted, in part, the VEAC recommendations, and promised a national park for the Wombat.

However, there has now commenced, out of the blue, industrial scale logging in the very area proposed for the national park.

There are to be 175 logging coupes, so the undertaking is enormous. One of the coupes will carve through the very point where John Thwaites made his announcement to the community.

The coupes extend into areas that were never allowed to be logged even in the dark days of the Kennett era – in particular riparian zones and Special Protection Zones for threatened wildlife.

The first coupe logged had greater gliders present – no buffer zone was left around their habitat. Instead of leaving the required 100 metre buffer zone, machinery was working next to a tree with a wedge tailed eagle nest. Entire creeks have been compromised by bulldozing through them, compacting soil and disrupting drainage.

Despite the spin, this is not a ’salvage’ operation in any sense. VicForests is going in to get the large trees they were never allowed to take under the Kennett regime.

Numerous studies now show that:
1. logging of native forest increases fire risk, as the resultant regrowth is drier, sparser, and more fire-prone;
2. logging of native forest reduces water yield from that forest for the next 150 years, as regrowing trees take up water;
3. logging of native forest, particularly Victorian eucalypt forest, is one of the most carbon polluting activities humans undertake, as it releases some 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

The values that justified the dedication of this area as a national park are now being destroyed by VicForests.

VicForests remains an ongoing source of scandal. The Courts have repeatedly held that it has breached the law in its logging operations. It is now being investigated for spying on citizens. From the destruction of our forest heritage it has not even been able to generate a profit, let alone the kind of yield one would expect from so valuable a resource – assuming you valued it only for money.

Native forest logging employs very few people, and the favoured treatment this industry receives from government adversely impacts on the plantation sector by unfair competition that depresses prices. Plantations are already well able to supply all our needs from timber.

Has the Andrews government lost control of its logging agency, or is this agency doing its bidding?

Ships, Planes and Automobiles

HMS Prince of Wales (left rear) and HMS Repulse (right rear) under Japanese air attack 10 December 1941 as a destroyer desperately manoeuvres in foreground

It is not necessary to change.  Survival is not mandatory. 

~ W. Edwards Deming

A hundred years ago the most dominant nation on Earth was without question Great Britain.

A hundred years ago two American bicycle manufacturers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, had conducted the first powered flight, and this new and eccentric fad – a curiosity, really - was sweeping the world.

In October 1905, exactly a century after their great victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the British made a momentous decision. At stupendous cost, they laid down the keel for a new ship: His Majesty’s Ship Dreadnought, displacing an unprecedented 18,000 tonnes, carrying ten 12 inch guns, and powered by the new steam turbine engines. She made all other naval fleets obsolete. Just a year and a day after her manufacture commenced, Dreadnought was launched - the first of many ships in the new Dreadnought class.

As the world was beginning to take to the air, Great Britain, in order to protect its international position, engaged in a massive race with Germany to build giant ships – the Dreadnoughts.

The Dreadnought class of ships were so vast that if Germany were to match them, she would have to widen the recently completed Kiel Canal (or, as it was then known, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal). Britain laid down four of these ships a year, and then five, moving up in 1911 to the Orion class of super dreadnoughts. At the same time, Britain built numerous fast and heavily armed cruisers. Determined to protect her place as the ruler of the waves, and her prestige in the world, Britain did what had worked in the past – built more ships.

The cost of these ships beggars belief. It was by far the largest line item in the British budget, and soaked up about one tenth of the entire government expenditure in the decade leading up to the outbreak of the Great War. Indeed, the dreadnought arms race was a major contributor to the First World War.

Just a generation later, in August 1941, the Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill, met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the President of the United States, to sign the Atlantic Charter – ensuring American aid for the British war effort.

To do so Churchill chose to travel and meet with Roosevelt on Great Britain’s newest battleship, and one of the largest in the world: the Prince of Wales. At 44,000 tons this was more than twice the size of the largest Dreadnought and seemed invincible. Although the British had built an air force, their largest investment had continued to be in ships.

Shortly afterwards, the British sent the Prince of Wales along with the Repulse to the far east to overawe the Japanese, and to deter them from entering the war. The two ships rendezvoused in Colombo Harbour, in what was then Ceylon.

My father – a private soldier on his way to Singapore – stopped in Colombo harbour at the time, and on his way from the troop ship to the shore, passed close to the side of the Repulse, and could hardly believe a ship could be so huge. He said everyone was supremely confident in the safety of British interests at the sight of that ship – and of course the Prince of Wales was far larger and more modern.

When Japan entered the war (on 8^th December Singapore time) Admiral Tom Phillips took the Prince of Wales and the Repulse north from Singapore hoping to disrupt Japanese landings on the Malayan Peninsula. He had no air cover, confident his ships were a match for any aircraft. All historical experience supported his judgment.

At 11 o’clock in the morning on 10^th December – just 2 days after hostilities commenced - Japanese aircraft located the Prince of Wales and the Repulse and attacked with bombers and torpedo carrying aircraft. Within 2 hours of the first bombs dropping, the Prince of Wales slipped beneath the waves, taking with her hundreds of crew including Admiral Tom Phillips and Captain Leach.

The Repulse had already gone down 40 minutes earlier. They were the first capital ships ever sunk by aircraft in the open sea. My father was in Singapore when news came of the sinking. Morale plummeted immediately.

Six months later, in May 1942, the new super powers of the United States and Japan fought the Battle of the Coral Sea, in which for the first time in history the opposing ships in a naval battle never sighted each other, and never fired directly at each other, but fought entirely with their aircraft – sinking between them eight ships including two aircraft carriers.

In times of change, the temptation to hold on to old ways – to live in denial – is very strong. More than that, those who have become powerful through that old paradigm will fight to keep their privilege  even if it is not good for the nation or the world as a whole.

The British were uncomfortable with air power and even automobiles, because it was ships and trains on which they had built their greatness.

Ever noticed how British aircraft – and the pilots’ uniforms which go with them – are so closely modelled on naval traditions, complete with the gold piping on the sleeves? The interior of early British aircraft copied ships, just as British cars were all too often upholstered like the interior of trains.

In all her pomp and power, Britain retained its fixation on the old ways she knew and which had made her great, and spent vast sums of money on technologies for ships which were already becoming out of date.

It was the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in blue tropical waters off Malaya in 1941, and the loss of so many lives with them – as well as the inevitable loss of Singapore once those ships were gone – that showed Britain and the world that a new age had come – and had already passed Britain by.

A hundred years from now, the most powerful and prosperous nation on Earth will not be a nation which does things the way they’ve been done for the past hundred years.

After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles shrank the German armed forces to 100,000 men, without tanks or aircraft. The Germans – reduced to field exercises with cardboard cut out tanks mounted on bicycles – rethought the theory of warfare from the ground up.

In 1940, they faced a numerically superior French army – augmented still further by the British Expeditionary Force. The Allies were well-armed, well-trained, well-supplied. They were perfectly prepared - to fight the last war. Instead of the endless trenches, they had the Maginot line. When the Germans attacked, the Allies rushed north to meet what they were sure was an updated version of the 1914 Schlieffen Plan attack through Belgium.

And fell straight into a trap.

The Germans had revolutionised armoured warfare. They took just hours to break through the Maginot line at Sedan, in the south.

And then – contrary to the Allies’ expectations – they did not stop to laboriously consolidate ground they had won, but in just ten days sliced straight through the Allied lines of communications, through battlefields where their fathers had fought and died for four years - all the way across France to the English Channel, dividing the French army in half and only narrowly preventing the British army from escape.

The very success of the Allies two decades earlier sowed the seeds for their dramatic defeat in 1940, and it took years of hard fighting for them to learn this new kind of war for themselves.

Past success can inhibit future innovation.

In the 1930s Tasmania harnessed hydro power in the State, and was able to achieve some real success by way of industrialisation of the island State.

The initial success made this the unquestioned model for future action. There were a couple of modest initial projects, and then more dams were built.

And yet more dams.

Finally, in spite of the declaration of a national park around Lake Pedder, in spite of its remoteness from areas of industry, in spite of the great cost of engineering works in so remote a location, and in spite of negligible power to be generated by a dam, it became known that this area, and the Gordon River, would be flooded.

Spurred by early benefits, the plan was to make Tasmania – so far from the major population centres of the world – the Ruhr of the south. As now seems obvious with hindsight, it was daft. Vast sums of public money were spent to build dams, in increasingly remote places and with less and less power generation.

With the plan to flood Lake Pedder, in which a priceless jewel was drowned to create a mere 27 megawatts of power (the difference from the scheme which would not flood the lake) it became clear that the dam building program was out of control, bankrupting Tasmania financially and destroying the very assets that made people love their State.

That dam went ahead, but massive opposition to the next project – the Franklin Dam – meant that in 1983 that dam was finally stopped, and with it, the power of the HEC in Tasmania.

Success can be a millstone around our necks. It can reinforce behaviour that worked in the past but will not work in the future. Sometimes our very success blinds us to the future we want.

History shows us again and again that it is very hard to prevail against comfort. And yet today, that is just what we need to do.

If you’d asked the British in 1905 whether there wasn’t a better way to spend all that money going into the dreadnought program, they would have said – “Look at the position our naval strength has given us. How can you suggest this is not the best thing for us to do?”

If you had said to them “Air power is the way of the future: instead of spending all this money on huge ships, why not become a world leader in aircraft?” they might have answered: “We’ll believe you when you can show one of these glorified box kites made of sticks and wire covered in doped linen can sink one of our ships.”

But when air power did do that, it was all too late.

In cases I have appeared in involving house fires, firemen have given evidence of an extraordinary phenomenon when some people are caught in a burning house. Frequently, when someone is deadlocked in their house and can’t get out, the fireman breaking in finds that person reacting to their impending doom in a strange way – by doing something very mundane and normal. So a woman caught in her burning house will take the broom and carefully sweep the kitchen floor.

Confronted by the unexpected, confronted by failure, too often our reaction is to try harder at the things that have worked before, rather than trying something different. All too often that means just digging a deeper hole for ourselves.

Edwards Deming took the Japanese industrial system – in ruins following the Second World War – and revived it into one of the most innovative production systems on Earth. One of the many useful things he said was: “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”

Right now, the planet is in meltdown. Financially, and environmentally.

Financially, we are looking for the confidence we have lost. We want more confidence in our markets. But in fact overconfidence – misplaced confidence – has got the markets where they are now.

By all means let us have confidence – but confidence not for its own sake, but built on a sure foundation. In order to have a sure foundation, some facts should be squarely faced.

There is no escaping the change which is coming at us now.

We have just had Arctic sea ice retreat to its historic minimum, and gushing methane from thawed tundra is bubbling up through the Arctic Sea.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Victoria’s average temperature is now 1 degree warmer than it was in 1950, and almost 2 degrees warmer than in 1900 – that’s equivalent to moving the whole State 400 kilometres closer to the equator. With each degree of temperature rise, we lose about 15% of stream flow.

Our climate is changing – and Victoria’s faster than the world average.

This is happening as a direct result of the burning of fossil fuels, and logging our forests which are vast carbon stores.

We have done comfortably from exporting coal, but that coal is now causing terrible changes in our world.

Our lifestyle is the envy of the world, but it is costing us the Earth.

A move to a carbon-neutral economy is inevitable, and we can either do it on our terms, or have it forced on us.

There are many statements that parade as wisdom in relation to this issue, but amount to no more than a desire to hang onto a past that is finished, such as these three:

“Coal will inevitably be our main source of power for decades to come”

As if we have no choice in the matter.

“Coal is too cheap to replace”

Just like asbestos?

Or this actual quote from John McCain during the 2008 presidential election campaign:

“Now, I believe — and you know, and you do, too — that we need to control emissions. But I’m not going to let our coal industry go bankrupt. I’m not going to tell — I’m not going to let coal workers lose their jobs. And I’m not going to let energy prices increase any more for our families.”

In other words – I’m not going to have any change, any uncomfortable reality. This is the modern equivalent of King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

And that's nothing compared with the current crop of Republican candidates. 

Australia should now aim to be a global beacon for carbon-free living. Moves to hang onto the old ways, like giving the coal industry hundreds of millions of dollars for the smoke and mirrors of carbon capture, are just part of the old paradigm.

Hanging on to the past too strongly condemns us to becoming victims of the future and the change the future will bring. I do not suggest we forget the past or devalue our past. Being true to ourselves means remembering our past – who we are – while at the same time being open to change.

That rich openness to the world as it should be means being vulnerable and at times uncomfortable – both as people and organisations. But from that vulnerability springs the greatest creativity.

Confronted by the great challenges of our time, our approach to the future can achieve not merely change, but inner transformation – in a way that greatly enriches not just our future – but all our lives.   

Happy new year.      

Biocarbon

Single log truck in Goongerah, East Gippsland: despite government claims, we are still logging centuries-old forest.

As well as being beautiful and inspiring places filled with life, our forests store vast amounts of carbon.

We all know that we are putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We do do this not only by burning fossil fuels, but also by destroying biocarbon – such as forests.

In the debate in Australia there has been little attention paid to the role of biocarbon (carbon stored in living systems).

Our forests have a vital role to play both in holding carbon in the trees themselves and in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Part of the carbon cycle of life, they are both carbon “stores” and carbon “sinks”.

Native forest logging - unlike plantations – is a massive contributor to greenhouse gases. Sir Nicholas Stern found that ending the logging and burning of the world’s old growth forests would reduce global greenhouse emissions by more than the combined emissions of all the world’s transport systems.

Australian National University studies under Professor Brendan Mackey have found that Australian old growth forests often store over 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare. Clearing and logging native forests contributes about 20% of Australian carbon emissions.

When we log a hectare of forest, not only do we lose a good deal of carbon in the subsequent regeneration burn of all the timber and foliage remaining, but the paper and cardboard products soon deteriorate, releasing most of the balance of the carbon within a space of a few years.

Replanting with 80 year logging cycles only restores a fraction of the original carbon.

Over time, we lose at least 1000 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere every time a hectare of mature forest is logged.

In Victoria, logging in 2004-5 contributed over 10 million tonnes to Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions – that’s equivalent to 2.4 million cars – nearly all of Melbourne’s domestic fleet.

Australia has recently retreated from a paltry 5% target for reducing our greenhouse emissions. We could achieve four times that overnight if we just stopped logging.

External links

• Biocarbon, biodiversity and climate change Green Institute
• Bibliography
• Green Carbon, by Brendan Mackey

Will Julia succeed?

Will Julia Gillard succeed as Prime Minister in dealing with the issues facing Australia?

Kevin Rudd lost the trust of the Australian people - and his Prime Ministership - because he failed to take action on the climate crisis. Julia Gillard faces the same test.

Many people in the Melbourne electorate have told me they want real and immediate action on climate change and carbon emissions.

Here's some things she could do:

• Pick up the phone and negotiate with the Greens for a proper solution to the climate crisis.

• Join with the Greens (and at least two Coalition Senators) to pass a carbon tax - this would apply across all industries, not just mining, with the funds directed towards transitioning to a low carbon economy.

• Remove perverse taxes that encourage fossil fuel use - such as car leases that require minimum kilometres to be driven, the diesel fuel rebate, and sundry others.

• Allow tax deductions and/or salary packaging for people who cycle to work.

• Ditch the $2 billion+ corporate welfare funding for "Clean Coal" geo-sequestration pipe dreams that defy the basic laws of physics, and direct this towards a 100% clean energy program based on concentrated solar with salt storage and wind power.

• Commence planning for a very fast train project to link Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane.

• Introduce national building standards for 6 Star Rated buildings and retrofit of existing building stock (remembering that proper management of these schemes is basic).

• Protect native forests from logging to keep their carbon where it is, (and to secure our water supplies and to provide habitat for endangered species).

• Outlaw the burning of native forest woodchips as a "renewable energy source" - it clearly is not renewable and our forests are worth much more than woodchips.

• Commence an initiative to transition Australia to net zero emissions by 2020 - as outlined, for example, in the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan produced by Beyond Zero Emissions

Over to you, Julia. You can do it, and you will be praised by history - and our grandchildren - if you do.

Replace Hazelwood

Hazelwood - the dirtiest power station in Australia - and beyond

Per unit of power generated, the Hazelwood power station has been measured to be the most carbon polluting power station in the industrialized world. It produces 17.0 million tonnes of carbon dioxide pollution every year - over 5% of Australia's total. That's so much carbon pollution that Kevin Rudd could meet his paltry climate change target overnight just by closing Hazelwood.

Hazelwood burns brown coal - one of the dirtiest and least efficient means of generating electricity. In also uses a staggering 27 billion litres of water every year - water that could be returned to the struggling Gippsland Lakes system.

Due to its excessive carbon emissions, the station was, in 1992, scheduled to be decommissioned in 2005.

Knowing this, International Power nevertheless bought Hazelwood in 1996 for $2.35 billion.

When the time came to close the power station in 2005, in a move which shocked environmentalists, the State government extended Hazelwood's life until 2031. This is a measure of the government's commitment to serious action on climate change.

Peter Batchelor, the Minister responsible for extending the life of Hazelwood, had the temerity to blame the Greens for his refusal to replace Hazelwood!

Having reaped this windfall, International Power still wanted more, and lobbied hard against energy efficiency measures.

Several different environmental groups have done the work on how we transition out of Hazelwood. There choices in doing this - including

• whether to use gas as an interim measure,
• which renewables to use,
• how much to pay for the alternatives, remembering that if you commission even more renewables, you can take advantage of economies of scale; and
• how long to allow for the replacement,

- but moving out of Hazelwood within two years is not hard to achieve.

Spain already produces more solar power than the output of Hazelwood power station - twice as much. Hazelwood has a net output of 1.47 gigawatts. Madrid is further from the equator than Melbourne, but with the smart use of gross feed in tariffs to give incentives for renewable energy, Spain now produces 3 gigawatts of solar power - and growing.

Spanish solar arrays

What's missing at the moment is the starting point: a political commitment to get rid of the Hazelwood dinosaur.

With fellow Greens Samantha Dunn and Colleen Hartland MLC at the "Replace Hazelwood" rally

External links

• Hazelwood tops the international list
• Wikipedia on Hazelwood Power Station
• The Unfettered Self-Interest of International Power
• International Power's confidential submission to the Task Group on Energy Efficiency
• Solar Power in Spain - Wikipedia
• Replace Hazelwood - Environment Victoria
• International Power Australia - website of Australia's largest private power generator, and amongst its worst polluters

Water Wars

The State government has announced an easing of water restrictions. What a relief. I guess that must mean, in the run up to the election, that the water crisis is over.

Melbourne’s storage reserves have fallen from near 100% capacity in 1996 to 33.9% capacity in April 2010. According to the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, within 10 years, climate change, continued population growth and drought could result in shortfalls of drinking water of approximately 100 billion litres per year for Melbourne alone.

And of course, there is no escaping the impact of the climate crisis on our water shortage. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Victoria is now 1 degree hotter than it was in 1950. For each degree of temperature rise, we lose 15% of stream flow. We've now had 13 years hotter and drier than the long term average, and we've never had a run like this before. We are way out of our historical experience.

Faced with these challenges, the State government has

• built the north south pipeline to take water away from the stressed Murray Darling system and bring it to Melbourne;
• commissioned another brown coal burning power plant,
• announced that it will abolish our green wedges and expand the urban boundaries of Melbourne to take a population of 5 million, and
• continued to plan new freeways.

They have failed to offer the leadership we need in this crisis.

Premier Steve Bracks said on 13th November 2006, in the lead up to the last State election:

Recycling and conservation will secure Melbourne’s water supply ... The energy generation [of a desalination plant] is enormous, the intrusion on the community is enormous and, of course, it’s extraordinarily expensive ... really, what a hoax it is. We’re into long term solutions.


Despite this assurance, the Victorian government has committed to an unsustainable, high carbon intensive desalination plant. The Kilcunda desalination plant will produce 150 gigalitres per annum at a cost of over $4 billion and an additional 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 to Victoria’s annual greenhouse emissions. Water bills will double to pay for it.

Site of the proposed desalination plant at Kilcunda

For half of the cost of the plant, and a fraction of the carbon emissions, we could instead implement a 5 point plan for water:

1. Stop logging Melbourne's water catchments. The cost of stopping this is just a few million dollars. Stopping logging now won't recover what we've lost, but will save us at least 15 gigalitres per annum in lost water between now and 2050, or enough water to fill 6000 Olympic-sized swimming pools every year.
2. Introduce stormwater capture, treatment and use, saving 50 gigalitres of water, and even more with proper storage facilities.
3. Upgrade the existing Eastern Treatment Plant to Class A water, giving us an additional 72 gigalitres per annum
4. Government replacement of existing single flush toilets in Melbourne with dual flush, saving 15 gigalitres per annum
5. Introduce a 50% subsidy on water tanks, saving 25 gigalitres each year.

Rather than using the same kind of energy intensive solutions that got us into this mess in the first place, why don’t we try to be smart, innovative and sustainable, so Melbourne has enough water for the future, and doesn’t suck the rest of the State dry?

External Links

• Stop Logging Melbourne's Water Catchments
• Watershed Victoria
• Melbourne Water
• CSIRO's Tom Hatton on Water
• The Gist of It
• Melbourne water usage, Greenlivingpedia

Why the CPRS is worse than nothing

Solar Concentrator Array - see the website of Beyond Zero Emissions

Some commentators say that it’s hypocritical of the Greens to vote against Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). The line they run is that the CPRS may not be perfect, but it is a step in the right direction - better than nothing.

Have these commentators read the legislation, or have they merely confined their research to the government's spin? There is no way the Greens will support this CPRS because it is a "continue polluting regardless scheme" and will make the climate crisis worse.

There's no room for complacency or playing politics on this issue. Here in Victoria, we have now had 13 years of above average temperatures and below average rainfall. There has never been a run like this before. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the average mean temperature of Victoria is now 1 degree warmer than in 1950, and up to 2 degrees warmer than 50 years before that – the equivalent of moving the entire state 400 kilometers closer to the equator.

As Professor David Karoly said: It is clear that climate change is increasing the likelihood of environmental conditions associated with extreme fire danger in south-east Australia.

We all know that the targets in the CPRS are scandalous – they’ve been set by polluters, not by scientists. Even the UN Bali Convention on climate change in 2008 flagged modest targets of 25% to 40%. We have thumbed our nose at the world by adopting a derisory 5%.

The compensation paid to big carbon under this scheme is huge – a reasonable estimate is more than $20 billion. It will be the only new source of revenue to run at a loss.

What do we get for that massive outlay of cash? According to treasury modelling – nothing. We get no reduction in emissions at all in Australia – the little we get will all be imported because there's no limit on overseas offsets!

There won't be a single coal fired power station closing down under this scheme. So why are we doing it? It's because the organized lobbying of big coal has been successful.

The CPRS gives free permits to coal power over the first 5 years. This provides windfall profits to polluters and encourages dirty coal power to continue.

The CPRS actually encourages the growth of highly polluting Energy Intensive Trade Exposed (EITE) industries (such as aluminium smelters) by allocating them 25% of permits free of charge, increasing to 45% by 2020. This is in direct conflict with the recommendations in Garnaut's final report.

The worst part about this scheme has had very little coverage. Once this CPRS is set up, future governments can’t really change it. This is because this scheme makes permission to pollute (a social evil) a property right.

Remember the film “The Castle”? Under our Constitution (see s 51(xxxi)) the federal government can’t acquire property except on "just terms". This means that any future government which wants to take away these rights - or diminish their value - will have to pay huge sums in compensation to the polluters.

The coal industry and their lobbyists are digging a hole they can’t get out of, and they won’t stop digging. They are quite happy to drag us down into the graveyard made by their coal mines – so long as they can clutch their their riches as they go down.

According to Kevin Rudd, the climate crisis is the great moral challenge of our age. So give us real leadership to confront it. Leadership does not mean doing no more and no less than the rest of the world – although in fact we are doing less.

Australia is uniquely placed to take a lead in solving the climate crisis. On the one hand we have 40% of the world's coal exports and we are one of the highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gas. On the other hand, we could cut our greenhouse emissions significantly overnight by stopping native forest logging, and we have abundant resources of sunshine and wind, and other renewables.

We can stop burning coal and meet our power needs from renewable resources. The answers are practical and affordable – and they are inspiring.

Let's ditch this CPRS, and adopt the positive alternative of a carbon tax. And let's start funding the transition to renewable energy - something we are uniquely placed to achieve.

For the sake of our children and the planet, we must make these changes - or have other, far more uncomfortable changes, forced on us.

External Links

• Brian Walters speaking on the CPRS (photo and transcript)
• Friends of the Earth on the CPRS
• Greenlivingpedia Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
• Christine Milne at the Climate Action Summit
• Beyond Zero Emissions presentation

Christmas cheer

Today my chambers in Little Lonsdale Street are having their Christmas lunch. There have been some good tales, fine wines, and hearty food.

As we have been regaling the past year, and toasting the year ahead, thousands of delegates are meeting at Copenhagen, and the omens for a planet-saving outcome are poor.

The Australian government has been the target of particular criticism. Our carbon output is high, our figures are rorted, and yet we claim to be taking action on the climate.

This is not leadership: it is digging a deeper hole for our children.