Climate change, carbon sequestration and Tasmania

• “forest degradation” should refer to “any impacts of any human land-use activity that reduces the carbon stocks of a forested landscape relative to its natural carbon carrying capacity”; and
• “forest” should be redefined “to recognise the differences between the ecological characteristics of natural forests and industrialised forests, especially plantations. These differences include the higher biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, and carbon residence time of natural forests”.

These authors are building on ecological and conservation literature that better grasps the full range of forests ecological and social values. Nevertheless, they are possibly optimistic about the resilience of natural forests to wildfires, pests, drought and extreme climate events in an era of climate change. Thus, they play down the degree to which climate change raises questions concerning the adequacy of a hands-off approach to maintaining intact natural forests.

Overestimating liberal democratic institutions

In some academic, and much popular, literature a schizophrenic view of liberal democracy is in evidence.

On the one hand, many believe that liberal democratic governments should be, and are in fact, capable of acting in the general public interest. Thus, the argument goes, the policies we get are optimal because governments have consulted all relevant interests, enlisted expert advice, considered available data, and conducted cost-benefit and/or other analyses to reach an appropriate, informed policy decision.

This belief in the autonomous power of governments to make policy in the public interest sits in stark contrast to our awareness of the powerful forces in society that seek to have their own interests met and that threaten trouble, behind closed doors as well as publicly, if they are not.

Our ideal conception of an autonomous state capable of expressing the public interest conflicts markedly with our experience of the state as acting at the behest of powerful societal interests.

Evidence for both conceptions of the state exists. The extent to which one encounters the autonomous or compromised state depends on the country, the sector and the period being studied.

As Lindblom (1982) and others have noted, however, it is a fundamental feature of our capitalist market economy that business is in a privileged position to influence public policy deliberations.

Under capitalist market economies, government has devolved responsibility onto business to invest in production, creating profits for companies, jobs for workers and taxes for governments. These benefits also legitimise governments, enabling them to run strong campaigns for re-election.

The general dependence of governments on business is especially evident in natural resource industries like agriculture, forestry, mining and fisheries. In these sectors, well-organised special interests can bend the public policy agenda in their own direction.

Liberal democracy is permissive with regard to this type of natural resource politics.

As currently structured, liberal democracy cannot deliver sustainable development because governments are incapable over time and across sectors of performing the neutral, impartial role assigned to them in liberal democratic theory.