Dear Mr Kevin Rudd,
Mate, one day soon you’ll realise you actually have to phase out the coal industry, and the sooner the better. Major disruptions notwithstanding. We’ll manage. One day we will thank you for it.
But, meanwhile, the cheapest, quickest, and best way to make deep emissions cuts is to stop all logging and deforestation (except for some micro volume, high-quality products). Yes, in Australia too, sorry. The science is clear. Every substantial bit of natural forest is important as a carbon store, and as an absorber.
The word in stopping logging is effectively ALL. It doesn’t need a complicated accounting system based on trading. That only encourages loopholes. It needs a recognition by all countries that natural forests are the earth’s lungs, which absorb CO2 just like the oceans.
Forests are the world’s property – they just ARE – and they should not be tradeable. Rich countries need to compensate developing countries to protect their forests – that follows from our exploitative history as well as present-day economic realities – but we should not NOT accrue any sort of credit (other than recognition as a responsible global citizen) for doing so. You must make your emissions cuts truly at home.
No one owns the oceans. No one owns the atmosphere. No one owns the clouds. No one owns the forests either. I’m sure a recognition of this principle would upset your applecart, but it’s the truth.
PS: And you don’t even have to argue about additionality, or measure the sizes of trees, or growth rates, or depths of peat layers. The bean counters can be more usefully employed measuring real emissions from real human polluters.
