Obama adds fuel to carbon debate

Australian
Thursday 26/2/2009 Page: 4

INTERNATIONAL momentum towards an agreement on climate change was boosted yesterday when US President Barack Obama urged Congress to draft legislation for a cap-and-trade emissions trading system. Australian observers said the speech had "breathed life" into international talks for a climate change deal, even though White House officials said the US legislation might not pass Congress before negotiations in Copenhagen later this year.

The Climate Institute Australia's chief executive, John Connor, said: "Obama breathed new life into a global approach and he rang the bell on the way clean energy can be part of the economic stimulus." The Rudd Government has been under attack for moving too quickly with its emissions trading plans, while the rest of the world has second thoughts because of the global economic crisis.

Recent comments by new US Energy Secretary Steven Clue floating the idea of a carbon tax added to concerns that Australia could be isolated. Mr Obama dismissed fears that the economic climate would force him to scale back ambitious plans for energy reforms, and drew a direct link between long-term US economic interests and the development of clean energy. The President's speech came as the Rudd Government dismissed a plan being developed by the federal Coalition to advocate a higher greenhouse reduction target by paying farmers for storing carbon in the soil and revegetating their land.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke told the National Farmers Federation and other farm groups yesterday they supported the idea of allowing farmers to claim credit for carbon that could be stored in soil, but that more work needed to be done on the technologies and the measurement of the carbon they abated. Mr Burke also suggested Malcolm Turnbull was making exaggerated claims about the quantities of carbon that could be abated through tree planting on farms. He said calculations in a report cited by the Opposition Leader involved planting trees over vast tracts of prime agricultural land.

"Mr Turnbull referred to some extraordinary tree planting, which he believed was possible, and cited this report predicting that nine million hectares of trees could be planted," Mr Burke said. "Now, when you look at the maps, the problem that Mr Turnbull didn't acknowledge ... is the areas where you would be planting trees take over prime agricultural land. To get to the nine million figure in the report that he cited, you would be losing farmland in prime areas like Tamworth, Glen Innes, Cooma, Wagga, right through to the West Australian wheat belt.

"To reach the figures that Mr Turnbull is talking about, we are actually going down a path in his world where we will take our prime agricultural land, stop growing crops and start planting trees on it. It's a world where, realistically, you would sequester a whole lot of carbon, but there'd be a lot less to eat." Mr Burke said the Government would concentrate tree planting on "marginal" land.

He said the reason Mr Turnbull's plan "looks too good to be true, is because it is too good to be true". NFF president David Crombie said he welcomed the Government's plan to do more research into the ways farmers could help emission reductions. "We understand that agriculture doesn't fit into the emissions trading system right now," Mr Crombie said.