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

Dirty deals

Mining brown coal in the Latrobe Valley

In 1840 Count Paul de Strzelecki travelled through the ranges that now bear his name in South Gippsland. So dense was the forest cover that his party was reduced to felling trees and walking along the fallen trunks - far above the ground on a tangle of vegetation. They reached Westernport Bay a month late, with almost no equipment left, and starving.

Most of that forest was cleared in the 19th and 20th centuries, but there are a few magical patches left - especially in the Tarra-Bulga National Park, where I spent some holidays as a child.

20 million years ago, the forests covering what is now the Latrobe Valley were very similar to the forests through which Strzelecki struggled. As trees died and plant material compacted, they slowly formed brown coal. The layers of brown coal there are up to 400 metres thick. In places it is possible to see entire tree trunks in the upper layers where digging machines are cutting away at the deep seam.

The brown coal layer forms an insulation blanket, and research is under way to see whether the much higher temperatures below that blanket can be used to provide geothermal energy: if so, it will be important to keep the brown coal in place, so we don't let the heat dissipate.

But this week Victorian company Environmental Clean Technologies (don't you just love that name?) has signed the first deal to export Victorian brown coal. The company will send up to 20 million tonnes of processed brown coal to Vietnam every year. (ECT has also been involved in the oxymoronic "clean coal" business.)

Last year the Victorian Government stopped a similar export deal. But they have been studiously silent about this one.

Gillard government Trade Minister Simon Crean - who could veto the export - said that the export of brown coal was good for the economy.

He probably won't be around when we are dealing with the jobs lost from the Great Barrier Reef tourism industry - or the countless other benign industries which will be ruined by climate change.

Starting a new industry of shipping our dirty brown coal into third world countries to burn for fuel is crazy policy.

The signs of the climate crisis are in our face, and yet we are acting as though it is only a question of the money we can make now.

We've just seen a change of national leadership because of a failure to act on the climate crisis. This is a test of our new leadership.

It's almost a test of sanity.

External Links

• Brumby's Dirty Secret: Coal for Export - The Age
• Brown Coal "Facts" - Victorian Department of Primary Industries
• La Trobe Valley Brown Coal - Victorian Department of Primary Industries
• The problem with brown coal - Environment Victoria
• Tapping the La Trobe Valley's Geothermal Potential - the National Interest
• Green Groups Angry at Coal Export Plan
• PM Gillard's first challenge
• Anger over coal export deal
• Coal Exports good for the economy: Crean

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.

The Year Without a Summer

Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland - in eruption this year

On 11 April 1815 the British ship Benares was in port at Makassar in the southern Celebes, when the officers and crew heard a growing fusillade of loud cannon fire. She sailed south to investigate.

It was the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and unbeknown to those in the East Indies, Napoleon had been restored to power in France a few weeks earlier for what would be known as the Hundred Days.

The Benares could find nothing, and returned to port, but on 19 April the explosions resumed with such intensity that they shook houses and ships.

The captain of the Benares again sailed south, under a sky dark with ash, and with cinders raining down onto the deck of his ship.

On the northern tip of the island of Sumbawa (two islands to the east of Bali) stood the volcano Mount Tambora, and it had erupted.

Once the eruption was over, Mount Tambora was fully 1,300 metres shorter than it had been previously.

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles - Lieutenant Governor of Java - wrote:

The area over which tremulous noises and other volcanic effects extended was one thousand English miles [ie 1,600 kilometres] in circumference, including the whole of the Molucca Islands, Java, a considerable portion of Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo. ... Violent whirlwinds carried men, horses, cattle, and whatever came within their influence, into the air.

Tens of thousands died, both from the blast itself and from famine caused by the rain of ash which buried crops.

The discharge from the Mount Tambora eruption was far greater than that from Krakatoa in 1883, and over one hundred times greater than that from the Mount St Helens eruption of 1980. The Mount Tambora eruption remains the most powerful in recorded history.

Following the eruption of Tambora, volcanic dust at high altitudes provided a shield from solar radiation, and led to much lower surface temperatures around the globe.

The following year, 1816, has been known ever since as "the year without a summer". In the bitter cold, crops failed and many died in Europe and the Americas. Percy Shelley entertained house guests in Geneva, and the weather remained so bitter that they could not go out. To amuse them Mary Shelley composed her masterpiece "Frankenstein" - the first work of science fiction.

This year we have seen the eruption of the Iceland volcano with the almost unpronounceable name Eyjafjallajökull. Ash clouds from the eruption have affected air travel, and they have no doubt prevented some of the sun's warmth reaching the Earth - which should reduce global warming for a time.

Those who want to make a killing from the climate crisis have been spruiking a geoengineering solution - mimicking the action of volcanoes by injecting millions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

This scary option has been identified as having many dangers - including interference with major weather patterns such as the Indian monsoon. It would also mean we would not see a blue sky during the years when these aerosols linger in the atmosphere.

Playing around with this expensive and risky option is one way to avoid taking real action to attenuate carbon emissions and live sustainably.

This year Victoria's Brumby government was the sole sponsor of an invitation-only conference of geoengineers and venture capitalists in California to discuss this Frankenstein solution to the climate crisis.

A further "debriefing" from the conference is planned in Melbourne shortly.

The Victorian government already has a shameful dirty brown coal legacy: when Hazelwood (the developed world's dirtiest power station) was due to close in 2005, the government extended its life to 2031. Spending money on geoengineering strategies takes us further backwards: it is not only dangerous, it leads Victoria away from a carbon-free, sustainable future.

There are enough natural disasters in the world without making our own.

External Links

• Victoria still talking to controversial geoengineering scientists - Clive Hamilton
• Mount Tambora
• The year without a summer
• Brian Fagan - The Little Ice Age
• The Royal Society on Geoengineering the Climate - Science, Governance and Uncertainty

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