Carbon

Farmers welcome Greens-Albanese deal on climate change bill

Sheep Central, March 27, 2023

FARMERS for Climate Action has welcomed amendments to the Albanese Government’s climate change safeguard mechanism package in legislation passed in Federal Parliament today.

The amendments include a hard cap on the emissions driving climate change, reduced use of and improved scrutiny of carbon offsets, and a freeze on the most controversial method of creating carbon offsets, known as “human induced regeneration” of tree cover.

The Albanese Government today passed its Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022 with the support of the Greens, in return for 13 amendments, including a new amendment that sets tougher limits requiring corporations to reduce pollution as well as buy carbon credits to offset their emissions.

The Greens deal effectively supports the government’s intent to achieve a 43 percent in net emissions by 2030, backing Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen’s reforms to the safeguard mechanism that caps the emissions of big carbon polluters. Under the legislation, the country’s 215 biggest polluters must reduce their emissions each year or buy carbon credits if they fail to do so.

Farmers for Climate Action chief executive officer Fiona Davis said the group, representing more than 7700 farmers across Australia, has pointed out many times the perils of unlimited carbon offsets at a capped price taking over too much farmland.

“This agreement contains sensible measures and is a good start.

“The substance is in the execution and we’ll be watching closely as this unfolds,” Dr Davis said.

“The idea of having corporations justify their use of offsets for more than 30 percent of their baseline is a good one.

“A review of offsets in 2026-27 by the Climate Change Authority is also welcome, and the key to both is in the implementation,” she said.

“Giving incentives to businesses who are willing to reduce their actual emissions is a logical step, especially as it reduces reliance on offsets.

“It’s vital that all Chubb Review recommendations are implemented by the first of July to ensure the integrity of offsets,” Dr Davis said.

“Minister Bowen has previously said that a 43pc emissions reduction is a floor, not a ceiling, and we hope to substantially exceed 43pc.

“Farmers have experienced devastating droughts, bushfires and floods driven by climate change, and this is driving up insurance premiums,” she said.

“We need to reduce emissions to protect Australian farms so we can farm forever.

“We also want farmers and rural communities to be able to grasp the huge opportunities a shift to a low emissions economy brings: tens of thousands of renewable energy jobs for regional Australia and diversification of farm income into selling offsets, which can provide income during drought,” Dr Davis said.

“These measures are a sensible beginning. We compliment the Government, Greens and cross bench on negotiating.

“We hope all MPs, including those from the Coalition, join future negotiations to create more certainty for farmers.”

FCA welcomes a freeze on the HIR method as it believes this means less competition for agricultural land.

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Comments

  1. Mike Elliott, March 30, 2023

    I am surprised the farming community is not concerned about the serious environmental and blot on the landscape cost of all the unreliable solar and wind energy projects that are being proposed.

    The AEMO’s ISP document recently advised $12 billion of tax payers’ money will be spent on 10,000 kilometres of transmission lines to service said unreliable energy sources. That’s about 40,000 actual towers, plus the myriad of wires hanging between them. That’s not minding the 28,000km of transmission lines that the MSM keeps saying for this ‘initiative’.

  2. Barry Ashwin, March 29, 2023

    “Turkeys welcome early Christmas” would be a fitting headline. This can achieve nothing except destroy Australia’s primary industries. How about we increase carbon dioxide to assist with growing vegetation?

    • Peter Small, March 29, 2023

      Great point Barry. No one mentions how the planet is greening through increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Crops, forests, grasses, plants, all increase growth with CO2. No one gives any credence to nature’s ability to compensate and restore over time, the balance.

  3. Jim Simpson, March 29, 2023

    I can only but endorse the foregoing comments & would invite those Farmers for Climate Action who ‘believe’ CO2 to be a problem should make an effort and read what Emeritus Professor, Ian Plimer had to say on that issue recently at https://politicom.com.au/climate-emergency-an-expensive-myth/ together with following insightful comments from readers on that site.

  4. Rafe Champion, March 29, 2023

    Our climate policy is really a national suicide note. There is no warming to worry about and CO2 is a minor contributor to the beneficial warming that we have enjoyed since the truly alarming cold of the Little Ice Age that ended near the start of the Industrial Revolution.

    The Australian energy crisis will deteriorate when more coal power stations close but the general public has not been told the truth of the matter. Read all about it at the site of the Energy Realists of Australia. https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/list-of-briefing-notes

  5. Dr. John Happs, March 28, 2023

    Had farmers done their due diligence, they would find there is no evidence to support the nonsense that climate change is increasing the frequency of droughts, bushfires and floods.

    The evidence is available to anyone who seriously looks for it, as is the evidence that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from which much of this alarmist nonsense comes from, is a political/ideological group that has been committing scientific malfeasance since its inception in 1988.

  6. Robert Close, March 28, 2023

    I agree with the two comments posted. I do not blame rural people for not being able to understand the details of climate science, as it has largely been misrepresented and misunderstood by the so-called world authority the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Irrespective of your background, it pays not to get too emotional about the environment and the politically generated climate emergency.
    Science has not shown that CO2 from emissions nor the dominant natural sources are causing significant global warming, rather natural warming is causing ocean degassing CO2 to rise, plus minor emission input. We are still gradually warming up +1 degrees Celsius from the solar minimum event that caused the Little Ice Age 150-200 years ago, and we passed a solar maximum cycle 20 years ago. But soon we will be cooling toward the next grand minima in 15-25 years. Can anyone honestly say they have felt modern warming at 0.1C per decade? We are not in control of climate, so efforts to reduce industrial emissions can have little or no effect on climate. It’s simple really.
    Therefore climate isn’t the real problem, but the political mitigation policy solutions imposed by the Paris Agreement are causing immense social and financial damage to our society and the undeveloped world. You have to ask yourself who benefits from this? Well at present it’s China, India and Russia, the Brics — so-called developing nations — who are going flat out with fossil fuel energy to increased prosperity.

    These farmers are therefore just trying to cash in on the renewables subsidies being handed out by naïve ignorant governments who have not bothered to do the basic checks and balances, that is the cost /benefit analysis usually required before approving economy changing policies that affect our wealth generating primary industries. Anything that the Greens approve is automatically bad for this country. Australia is in a mess of its own making and can’t see the wood for the trees.

    • Peter Small, March 29, 2023

      An argument well put Robert. Most farmers agree 100 percent. But where is the National Farmers’ Federation and the Victorian Farmers’ Federation?
      What the Greens have successfully done across the whole western world is to complete the deindustrialization of our economies. Germany is the latest industrial economy to be wrecked; engineered by the German Defense Minister and Greens leader Annalena Baerbock.
      As you correctly indicate Robert, industrialization has not stopped. But it has moved and is still moving to the non-west, including the BRICS countries. Take one measure, steel production. In 2021, world steel production was 1951 million tons. The US produced 85 million tons and China 1032 million tons. Steel is not everything, but it is pretty important if you think you are going to fight a war.

  7. John McBratney, March 28, 2023

    I regret to have to inform you that all this mucking about with carbon credits etc will be to no avail. Big business will leave the country for others where sensible policies exist and here in Australia we will descend into chaos with regular rotating blackouts as our mindless leaders cull coal fired generators with no reliable back-up to inherently unreliable solar and wind generation. We will all end up in poverty with no manufacturing, and intermittent power with huge increases in power costs. Mindless policy. Why cannot the politicians see the obvious? Look at the United Kingdom and Germany.

  8. Chris Ottaway, March 28, 2023

    These farmers are among the many deluded, gullible people who accept that the AGW/CC hoax is real. It is very sad to see so many simpletons are on the land.

    • Tom Casey, March 29, 2023

      We deal with the climate every day. Out in it, rain, hail or shine. First thing most mornings check the forecast for either rain or sun depending on how wet or dry our country is. The last three years have been the best moisture in my 30-odd years of farming, so bring climate change on if this is what it’s like. As for renewables, having a property on the Macarthur turbines boundary they only turn them on when the power price peaks, if the winds blowing and not too strong for the delicate machines. So that’s how efficient and cost-effective they are. Any other business would have been sold up long ago. For baseload power, nuclear is the best no-emission power source; just like our new submarines.

      • Mike Elliott, March 30, 2023

        Tom, the record shows that the rain you have recently experienced is due to repeat La Nina events – not uncommon as the decades go by. The rains are within the long-term normal variations for Australia.

        Wind turbines are only ‘cost-effective’ when they are subsidised, which they are. Taxpayers also pay billions for the transmission lines that take their unreliable power.
        Wind operators mostly bid zero at each bid interval – five minutes, one hour and 24 hours. They do this because the legislation says whatever power they generate will be taken and used, and they will be paid whatever the coal-fired powered stations bid. This will cause pricing and subsidy chaos as the number of coal-fired power stations approaches zero. It’s absurd and uncompetitive.

        • Tom Casey, March 31, 2023

          Thanks for clarifying that Mike. On a hot summer day, I will do my water run in the morning. Turbines turned off on a good sturdy breeze. About two o’clock away they go when the power price peaks the winds are gusting and they are feathering the blades trying to slow them down. It gets real noisy as well.

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