Fatally flawed

Dave Groves

In Tasmania, tax minimisation schemes, government subsidies and fast track legislation all conspire to push onto the community a fatally flawed paradigm. This is the concept of value adding to wood chipping by turning it into pulp in giant chemical digesters.

The New Reality

We have been trucking busloads into the tree mining operations in Launcestons catchment area. They all took photos, many were uploaded. Everybody can see what’s going on and how you are covering it up. Your problem is that the genie isn’t going back into the bottle. It’s out, it’s public and we are angry. This is our survival you idiots are dithering with. Ten years ago, perhaps. Today it’s just not going to let you off so easily. We see you as just fossil fuel errand boys.

IN a world now so reliant on computer technology it amazes me that we are scrambling to turn our native forests into exotic water guzzling monoculture to make paper.

In my office for example with one hundred projects and around 70 clients I only use a handful of A4 sheets each week.

With talk of further expansion of the broadband network, the paperless office is indeed looking very close for me.

How are you all doing in your efforts to reduce consumption?

In Tasmania, tax minimisation schemes, government subsidies and fast track legislation all conspire to push onto the community a fatally flawed paradigm.

This is the concept of value adding to wood chipping by turning it into pulp in giant chemical digesters.

Wood chipping of course has its place in the forest “industry”, but it should represent a minor portion, a way to utilise the few waste scraps from the high value production of selective sawn logs.

These chips could be pulped by a small scale pulp mill (say TCF closed loop or better) and turned into paper and even sold through Tasmania, thus vertically integrating the sawn log waste and avoiding the export of this commodity into a volatile world market.

Instead what we are witnessing in Tasmania is a notion that this industry is required to keep Tasmania from slipping into the “dark days” of extreme unemployment.

Massive machines and new technology mean that many forest workers, like the A4 sheets used in my office, are now redundant, so the much touted “jobs” mantra should wither and die a natural death.

Add to this scenario massive water consumption both by these exotic “woodlots” and the proposed pulp mill in a world now in drought in many areas, including Tasmania, coupled to the huge output of effluent, the wanton destruction of forest habitat and the poisoning of flora and fauna by chemical spraying and we are witnessing a looming catastrophe in Tasmania.

Like Nero at the fiddle, we stand by and watch those perched atop the pyramid making a fortune while the serfs below scramble for the crumbs.

Our rich farmland our precious food bowl is under threat, and given that half of mainland Australia’s farmland is in drought, we could be supplying the rest of our country and also exporting wholesome GMO free organic produce, but instead rabid conversion of this land to Eucalyptus Nitens plantation will instead see a focus on cheap imports from lands far away to supply our needs. All you have to do is look at the country of origin on the produce in our supermarkets to confirm this frightening trend.

Please act now before it is too late.

We need to restructure this industry so massively and erroneously geared to its misguided objective before this generation and those to come must repair the grievous damage already so heavily inflicted.

We need to help those who have invested in this illusion and unite Tasmania once and for all by making an industry that connects people and our environment, bridging the divide between those who have and those who do not, stop the poisoning of everyone and every thing and repair the tarnished landscape for future generations.

Please see some photos attached taken in North East Tasmania on 11/10/07 … Launceston Show Day!

The New Reality Will We Tolerate The Turnbull-Garrett Climate Change Holding Pattern?

OFTEN identifying the problem is the first step in its solution.

So we have a global problem that both competing environment ministers have accepted with all its stated urgency. What they haven’t accepted is Australia’s status as the world’s largest coal and wood-chip exporter has to change.

Those two industries are the sacred cows of the climate change debate, at least in the eyes of our long-winded environment ministers. They want us to look everywhere else than at the solution, because of the dizzying amounts of cash involved. Sorry ministers but that old stance doesn’t wash anymore.

We have been trucking busloads into the tree mining operations in Launcestons catchment area. They all took photos, many were uploaded. Everybody can see what’s going on and how you are covering it up.

Your problem is that the genie isn’t going back into the bottle. It’s out, it’s public and we are angry. This is our survival you idiots are dithering with. Ten years ago, perhaps. Today it’s just not going to let you off so easily. We see you as just fossil fuel errand boys.