Slam carbon scams

Should creation of a controversial new class of financial products be left to the discretion of a minister and a committee of government-selected agricultural alchemists and other experts?  Should this group decide whether a methodology measures up against the nebulous concept of “environmental integrity”, and whether it will have any measurable impact on the climate? Should a minister alone determine whether, for example, manure can be transmuted into money, into carbon-cash?

Minister Combet has approved four methodologies: destruction of methane generated from manure in piggeries; capture and combustion of landfill gas; environmental planting and savannah burning.

Exhibit A: Pig Dreaming

On 21 September last year, DOIC endorsed a Methodology for the Destruction of Methane Generated from Manure in Piggeries, ruling it complied with Section 112 (3) of the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011.

The DOIC assures us that: “appropriate equations are specified for the calculation of emissions for both the baseline and project cases and appropriate means of data collection, monitoring and reporting are specified to enable verification of the estimations.” But who regulates the DOIC?

Exhibit B: Savannah Dreaming

The Commonwealth is distributing the spoils of its multi-billion dollar “carbon price” regime in what, according to the Minister, is a “socially fair and responsible way”. Novel ways are being proposed to legitimise carbon-cash transfers to the nation’s underclass.

A sum of $5.2 million is committed to an Indigenous Carbon Farming Fund (ICFF) to develop “low-cost methodologies” that “help to create real and lasting opportunities for Indigenous Australians”. The ICFF includes $17.1 million to “help Indigenous communities establish or participate in carbon farming projects”.

Indigenous Australians reportedly “manage” around 20 per cent of Australia, by “drawing on traditional knowledge of the landscape and its response to fire, flooding and drought.”

Mabel Creek, a 5,000 square kilometre South Australian cattle station, is keen to be one of the first indigenous-owned “carbon farming projects”. John Kite from Watarru, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, is in charge of it.

According to University of Melbourne carbon farming expert, Richard Eckard, the owners could receive carbon-dollars from “strategic” savannah burning. “One of the traditional forms of treating the land, repairing the land, was savannah burning and the management of that also reduces greenhouse emissions.”

Another proposal recently released for public comment estimates greenhouse gas abatement achieved by “human-induced native forest re-growth”. “The principal carbon pools estimated are in the tissues of woody plants, and include coarse woody debris on the forest floor.”