Why the Emissions Trading Scheme is reckless

No doubt Global Warming is a difficult issue because it requires global co-operation and leadership by world leaders. *cue laugh track*

Add to this, Greenhouse gases come from virtually every process of sustaining human life, such as agricultural production; fertilizers; human, animal and plant methane; pre-dominate forms of electricity production and transport. These all not all carbon emissions. And only carbon emissions will be included in the scheme.

With a growing world population agricultural Greenhouse emissions will rise significantly. As global food shortages become more acute, the chances are that organic agricultural production will not increase as it suffers from lower yields; which is a bulwark to the roll back of commercial fertilisers - a major Greenhouse pollutant.Unless more productive organic agricultural production techniques are employed, organic produce will remain a niche consumer product.

The sheer immensity of the problem surely strikes glee into the hearts Australian Coal Association and many other carbon-intensive lobbyists. For, without a doubt, there are no shovel-ready solutions to this global problem. Dithering and distraction tactics have not helped the cause.

Nevertheless Rudd is playing the issue like a slimy spiv. He plans to increase emissions in Australia up to 2015 and possibly beyond whilst buying carbon credits from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. These credits are in lieu of forgone deforestation.

Firstly, how do we know that these areas are being 'saved' from deforestation in the first place?

Knowing the Australian government, they are adept at creative accounting. The Gunns Pulp Mill in Tassie was brokered on the 'compromise' that a section of the wilderness would be protected from clearing and logging. However Labor snavelled a neat deal for their Gunns mates in that only the virgin rainforest that was too mountainous to be commercially viable for logging was 'saved'. In reality it was never going to be logged whilst vast swathes of virgin rain forests (some of the oldest and most bio-diverse in the world) are to be felled to make... paper?

Secondly, is it a good idea to donate potentially billions of dollars to two of the most corrupt countries in the world? They could easily gobble the money and take no action. For one, their bureaucracies are not capable of enforcing existing agreements regarding deforestation let alone gargantuan extensions of such agreements. Indigenous peoples lose out significantly with such agreements and corrupt plutocrats gain. Just as an example, the Forestry Minister in PNG owns a home that was donated to him by a logging company. PNG falls below Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and other failed states in Transparency International's 'International Corruption Perception Index'. I wouldn't be surprised if money funneled into PNG and Indonesia creates Boris Yeltsin-esque kickbacks for Labor pollies either.

Both the dithering and distraction must end.