Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

After the global climate talks last month, surely the argument for keeping trees in the ground has never been more compelling, with Tasmanian forests in particular providing a powerful case for preserving our forests. Indeed, in Glasgow, Australia and over 100 other countries signed an agreement promising to end deforestation by 2030 in a landmark pact that, if put into practice, would play a critical role in slowing and preventing catastrophic climate change. This is, quite simply, because forests act like a carbon sink, sucking carbon from the atmosphere and stemming global warming. In fact, they're so good at it that the only reason the federal government can claim Australia has so far reached its emission targets is that we've stopped cutting trees down so fast.

The problem is, of course, that the research shows that, if you exclude the carbon stored in our forest and land, Australian emissions have actually increased in the last 15 years, putting us in breach of our own weak targets. In other words, it's forests that are doing the heavy lifting while the government flounders. Even that achievement is potentially a mirage, because once the intact forests are felled the carbon they store is released, possibly forever. Such irrecoverable carbon means that protecting our existing forests must be a top priority for all Australian governments, especially in my home state of Tasmania, where the forests are some of the most carbon dense in the world. In fact, we rely on them to draw down some 10 million tonnes of carbon per year—enough to offset all of the state's other emissions.

Indeed, this matter is so important that, by protecting half a million hectares of forest and halving the logging quota, Tasmania was able to go from being an emitting state to being the first jurisdiction in Australia to be carbon neutral. That is an amazing achievement not to be understated, although this is only part of the puzzle, because carbon sinks aren't an excuse for business as usual elsewhere and shouldn't be relied upon by state governments or the federal government to hide the fact that our real emissions aren't actually going down. This is certainly the case in Tassie where, despite achieving net zero, there has actually been little change in our emissions across other sectors. In fact, emissions have risen in many areas, such as transport and industry. In other words, just as at the federal level, the Tasmanian government is relying on the forests and other natural carbon sinks to bring down our numbers.

Of course, we can't offset our way to zero simply by relying on trees. We also must rapidly phase out coal, gas and oil and fast-track to 100 per cent renewables. There are just not enough trees to suck up all the filth we pump into the atmosphere. It's blindingly obvious to anyone following the science and anyone watching the weather that we need to actively reduce emissions across the country, in all sectors, and that goes for Tasmania too. The trouble is we have a federal government obsessed with fossil fuels that will try anything to keep polluting, including pouring money into fanciful distractions like carbon capture and storage, even though this technology remains an unproven, expensive furphy, peddled by polluting companies not only to justify their continued emissions but, in some cases, even to reach deeper stores of oil and gas that should instead be left in the ground.

That brings me back to trees and the fact that they're still the only way to capture carbon on a mass scale, and they're literally standing right in our backyards. We must protect them, because it's crucial we protect those natural carbon sinks which work to suck down and store our carbon emissions, especially now with the federal government claiming, on the international stage, to be committed to ending deforestation. We're already seeing the devastating impact of climate change in Australia and we know that every fraction of a degree of temperature rise we can avoid by reducing emissions really matters. But we also know that, even if we phase out fossil fuels immediately, there is already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and somehow we've got to capture that. Fortunately forest ecosystems store more carbon than the atmosphere. Protecting our forests is a straightforward way to slow dangerous climate change. Across Australia, and particularly in Tasmania, it's quite simple. Forests soak up carbon, and cutting them down releases it. They are worth so much more standing.

See this speech in context