Government off target for its carbon emissions inventory

Greg Hunt - "astonished
and angry".

The latest federal government carbon emissions inventory shows Australia has increased its emissions and has come under fire for allegedly vastly underestimating the amount of land clearing that has occurred, and its associated emissions.

The Quarterly Update of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, which counts emissions in Australia up to September 2015, says greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing have fallen to record lows.

But Guardian Australia reported last month that a report commissioned by the Wilderness Society showed a land clearing surge in Queensland since 2012 has been so big that it would create emissions roughly equal to those saved by the federal government’s emissions reduction scheme, where they paid other farmers more than $670m to stop cutting down trees.

Read The Guardian story - “Australia's emissions rising and vastly underestimated, says report.”

(“Astonished” is closest to how I feel (although “angry” probably should go ahead of that) when Australia’s Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, can blithely claim that Australia will “meet and beat” its carbon dioxide emissions targets. Either he is telling outright lies or he is totally misinformed, but whatever the case, it does not become an Australian Government Minister.

His mantra of “meet and beat” is sufficient information for those not prepared, or unable, to delve into the whole climate change conversation.

Mr Hunt’s populist “meet and beat” chorus is about him and his party being re-elected and not about genuinely caring for the future of Australia, and Australians – Robert McLean).