"May I ask who is blocking you/us and why?"

"May I ask who is blocking you/us and why?"

This question came through after the latest Coalition Update email included the following reference:

"The sooner we become a mass movement, the sooner those people blocking us will feel the call of destiny and either join us or at least wave us through."

NB. The Carbon Coalition has supporters of all sides of politics as members. The Coalition is not aligned with any political party or pressure group.
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Q. "May I ask who is blocking you/us and why?"
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A. Where do I start? At the top: It is my personal view that the President of the United States George W. Bush is discouraging us by refusing to sign the Kyoto protocols that the US negotiated up until the last minute, then bailed out, even though it was given massive concessions to join the 160+ other countries that signed. No Kyoto, no mandatory ‘cap and trade’ system, no market for carbon credits in the US.

Next comes the Commonwealth Government of Australia which followed America’s lead (the only other nation to refuse to ratify). The attitude of the Commonwealth Government is not encouraging. Ministers don't return the Coalition's calls; even a high profile parliamentary secretary that I worked with before he was drafted into parliament does not respond, despite him requesting a briefing when I ran into him months ago; Federal Government agencies are reluctant to help us. All the evidence points to the Carbon Coalition being shut out by the Commonwealth Government.

Third comes the Government’s Greenhouse agency, which officially dismisses soils as a potential sink. (There are many areas of agreement between the Coalition and the Greenhouse Office, which we will outline in a later post.)

Fourth the scientific establishment. Defending the old paradigm that Australian soils can’t sequester much carbon, a belief based on research studies which typically focus on land managed according to traditional farming methods, rather than carbon farming. Or when they do include rotational grazing, they use too few paddocks and too short a time

Finally money is blocking us by not being available in sufficient quantities to allow us to make faster ground.

Who is standing beside us?

The vast majority of the nations of the world – 160 of them.

Many corporations in Australia and America, including power companies, want stricter regulation. The world’s airlines recently went public, pleading with Mr Bush to introduce a mandatory cap and trade system. Westpac is leading a corporate ginger group lobbying the Federal Government for mandaotry reductions. British companies are lobbying their government for even tighter controls than Kyoto imposes. Intelligent companies understand that it’s bad for business to have extreme weather events.

US Congress - A bill to establish mandatory limits on emissions came before Congress narrowly missed being passed by a handful of votes – with prominent Republicans in favour. 70 Senators wrote an official letter to the President last month demanding that he show leadership in this area. (Most oil and coal companies lobby the President against these moves.)

The US Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy are vigorously searching for many solutions, including soil carbon sequestration. The measurement methodology is the focus of two scientific teams who are in the proof of concept and validation phases on research and expect to report in 2009.

The Chicago Climate Exchange – the world’s first carbon market, has offered Australian farmers the use of an international trading instrument for selling our carbon credits on the voluntary US market. (Last week the first cross-Kyoto border deal was done, which indicates the wall is coming down.)

US State Governments – 13 have introduced their own mandatory cap and trade systems.

Australian State Governments – all 7 states and territories have formed a greenhouse initiative and lobby Canberra for stricter controls.

Enlightened soil scientists – who ‘get’ carbon farming and can see the methodological problems with the 'legacy' research.

Farm lobby groups – we are getting great response from farmers’ associations.

Farmers and graziers – wherever we speak we enlist the vast majority of landholders.

Time – is on our side. President Bush’s Administration comes to a close within 18 months. Peter Costello is reported to have made positive remarks about carbon credits in a speech in San Francisco. John Howard hasn’t said ‘never, ever’. I personally believe that he hasn’t been fully briefed on the matter and that if he knew the facts he’d change his mind.

Remember, the pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs.