Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Lasts night we were talking about the fact that Australia had not elected in the first commitment period to be part of article 3.4 activities, predominantly because of drought, fires et cetera. I was asking whether, in the negotiations on the post 2012 or a second commitment, it was true that Australia was pushing to have the bushfires, catastrophic events, or natural disturbances—which, in the Australian context, would mainly be droughts and fires—excluded so that Australia might be able to sign on to a land use change in forestry set of provisions.

My concern about what the minister has just said is that Australia’s position seems to be, or is being said to be: ‘Let’s account for what the atmosphere sees’—the emissions that are actually going into the atmosphere. I accept that, if you had an unlimited period of time and a fire that burns this year and puts a huge amount of emissions into the atmosphere, then, over the next hundred years, the forest may well recover and—you could mount an argument—take up, over time, that same volume of carbon dioxide with regrowth. The problem I have with this is the quantum and the time frame.

In the case of the Victorian fires, my understanding is that in the order of 190 megatons—some extraordinary amount—went into the atmosphere. We do not have a time frame of another hundred years to allow that to be neutralised, so, if it is not counted, it is actually a deceit because you are putting all that carbon into the atmosphere and we do not have a huge length of time to take it out again. Unless it is accounted for, we will actually be pushing the climate over the tipping point by front-loading the atmosphere. What I am trying to understand is: how would the emissions from fires be accounted for in the time frames if the IPCC is right in saying that global emissions have to peak and come down by 2015? I have lately heard people saying, ‘Well, let’s take that out to 2020.’ I do not accept that, but it is the next decade anyway. How would you account for those emissions from fires?

Secondly, this is about taking out natural disturbance, and my point is—and I will speak in the Tasmanian context because it is the one that I know best—that the majority of fires in Tasmania are deliberately lit, so these are not natural disturbances. These are anthropogenic fires caused by arsonists going out and lighting the bush. In particular, just two years ago we had the Tarkine burn as a result of somebody in a four-wheel-drive leaving the Tarkine Road, lighting the Tarkine in order to draw attention to himself and letting the whole place go up. That is not a natural disturbance. I am interested to know how you intend to handle this issue and how you can justify not reporting in the accounts a catastrophic event, whether it is drought or fire, given that you have a global carbon budget which cannot wait, which is not generous enough to be able to wait for the uptake over the 100 years to neutralise the extreme event.