The
Federal Election here in Australia is likely to hand power to the conservative
parties for the next six years, such is the maths of our democracy. The new
Prime Minister, who has been reported as saying the argument behind Climate
Change is “absolute crap”, campaigned on a “Scrap The Carbon Tax” platform. In
the ranks of his party are many who deny man-made Climate Change. Australia has been the great laboratory of land
sector solutions to Climate Change .The Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) is a
ground-breaking innovation. The new government has promised to dismantle much
of what had been built around the “Carbon Tax”. Does this spell the end of the
CFI? No. There will be a new CFI. Let’s look at comments made by the
new Minister for Climate Action, Greg Hunt:
Direct
Action Webpage
“Under the Direct Action plan, soil carbons will be the major plank of
our strategy,…
Speech
to Sydney Institute, 30 May, 2013
1. “The Carbon Farming
Initiative will be expanded to include a wider range of emissions reduction
methodologies.
2. “We will support the application of
methodologies that have been approved internationally, modifying for local
conditions where required.” This is in response to complaints about the slow
progress of methodologies, in particular the soil carbon meth.
3. “The current system of
methodology approvals has restricted people from engaging in potential
projects, both in terms of time and scope,” he says.
4. “The Clean Energy
Regulator, will be responsible for approving the methodologies. It will ensure
that the emissions reduction being claimed is genuine and verifiable”.
5. “At present, the Clean
Energy Regulator approves the viability of projects and issues recognition of
abatement once it occurs. This method will continue”.
6. “Methodologies that have
been approved to date will be maintained. “
7. “Registered projects
will also be continued. “
8. “We will unblock the
approvals process, create a 25-year option for land-based sequestration and
broaden the range of methodologies to include all forms of abatement such as
cleaning up power stations and energy efficiency.”
ABC
Online 5 September, 2013
“The Coalition intends to
place Landcare back at the centre of our land management programs. The grants
application process will be simplified and funding will be made triennially, to
allow continuity of funding for projects. It is a recognition of the valuable
work local Landcare groups undertake. We must ensure that they are part of the
decision-making process with funding allocated at a local level, rather than in
distant Canberra.”
House
of Representatives Speech, 25 May, 2011
“The coalition supports the science and agrees
to and supports on a bipartisan basis the targets that Australia has set but
disagrees clearly, strongly and absolutely with the primary mechanism brought
forward by the government to deal with this issue
“Let us give a fair reading to this legislation.
Its objective is to help Australians reduce greenhouse emissions by
contributing to the bipartisan five per cent reduction on 2000 emissions by
2020. It seeks to create incentives for farmers and landholders to undertake
voluntary land sector abatement projects. These are principles that we in the
coalition have set out, so the principles in this legislation are in agreement
with those that we have put on the table. It seeks to give farmers some sort of
incentive.
“We also want the inclusion of soil carbon in a
constructive way from the outset… we want the construction of an acceptable set
of rules around permanence… we want the construction of an acceptable set of
rules around additionality…"
No comments:
Post a Comment