Forest Sham

AN Australian plan to combat global warming by saving rainforests in neighbouring countries is in trouble.

The Federal Government wants to pay to protect tropical rainforests in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, and to count the greenhouse gas emissions saved as Australian.

I guess this means our tax money we will be paying to save the planet will be funnelled through the carbon emissions scheme into the pockets of the very rich to stop them from logging some forest they had no intention of logging!
Is this how it works?

There are 30,000ha of Mulga bush north west of Broken Hill and I have decided not to log it even though the trees are only 1 metre high! For not logging it, you the taxpayer, will most kindly give me a shipload of money through some carbon emissions scheme that a shonk like Al Gore is running.

Yeah I reckon that is fair. Well, to Al Gore and me it is very fair but how do you feel about it?

The Government was relying on the forest sham to meet its promise to cut emissions by up to 25 per cent by 2020.

The Copenhagen climate summit was supposed to sort out the forests scheme, known in summit-speak as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
But negotiations have run into trouble and conservationists are warning the REDD scheme may not get off the ground, or may not work properly, which could make it harder for Australia to meet its promise to reduce emissions.

Virginia Young from The Wilderness Society said the REDD scheme was "precarious" with just four days of Copenhagen negotiations left.

"This could turn into greenwash for industrial emitters instead of actually reducing emissions from destroying forests," Ms Young said from the summit today. "It's D-day for forests."

Ms Young said negotiations were fracturing, with a draft REDD scheme on the table that contained lots of options and was not nearly ready. She was concerned that there was not enough time to finalise the scheme so it might languish.

"Or we might get something that's weak," she said.

Conservationists want the REDD scheme to exclude companies who log forests then put in plantations.