Yes there's a case for decarbing the economy, but hardly any for compelling graziers doing the lion's share! It would help if our energy choices weren't limited to now increasingly price gouged coal fired power or even more expensive, economy crippling renewables. That said, mulga country a first rate candidate for a different land management style, that includes short term cell grazing, dung beetles and some agriculture. This incorporates feedlot finishing utilising native wisteria and the harvested seed, which is first crushed for its high oil/biofuel component, with the remaining protein rich material guaranteeing far better production per acre then grazing alone, regardless of climate conditions. Assisted by planting in shallow trenches and plastic film cover, which channels all rainfall to the root systems and controls woody weed infestation. The crushed seed suitable as feedstock for a number of feedlot production types. As diverse as chickens, pigs, sheep, cattle or farmed fish. Native wisteria is a drought, salt and frost tolerant native legume that fixes nitrogen for the seven years or so of its most productive life cycle. When it can be ploughed in fixing the harvested carbon back into the soil. And as the writer indicated all grain types also harvest carbon from the atmosphere at far better rates than any old growth forest. And for thousands of years if the stubble is ploughed back in after doing duty as mulch for the succeeding crop or fallow. Intensive cell grazing utilizing goats also controls other less useful woody weeds as does camels, which helps to control prickly acacia. Moving them from paddock to paddock, as simple as remotely turning off or on their drinking water. Alan B.

Strawman!

The real reason greens oppose the native vegetation clearance is the amount of methane that doing so emits into the atmosphere.

Apologies, if you have difficulty reading my posts! Microsoft claims, when you purchase word from them it transfers from device to device, yours. XXX Not true! I've owned four computers and I've purchased word twice in the seven years or so I've had any. Including two desktops, a windows 98 and an XP, both rendered obsolete, not by age or electrical failure but designed obsolescence. Since then I've owned two laptops, the first sabotaged (ONLINE TECHNICAL HELP) to the point where I can't even switch it on! And with my authenticated windows ten, disc locked in its belly, after I replaced a highly infected hard drive with a brand new one. XXX I could have returned to the computer tech who installed the hard drive, but replacing the note book with a brand new pre programmed one from Harvey Norman was both far less expensive than seeking TECHNICAL HELP off or online. XXX I have an allegedly free copy of word, but need to activate it with the widows password needed to download my current copy of, wait for it, pre-purchase installed, windows ten. XXX I've read every bit of material that came with the purchase and nowhere in it is the requisite password, nor is the password I need to start my purchased copy o validate windows, effective or recognized. I suppose I can remedy this problem of Microsoft's making fixed? By paying a small fortune to lease a programme from some slum dog millionaire? Or another visit to a local computer hacker, merely masquerading as a bono fide business operator, making a fortune rebuilding old computers with a few cheap plug in modules or free to them, public domain programs? Which probably explains why there are now so many of them and why they target the (easy target) old, the disabled and the terminally ill!? Microsoft even allowed me to receive my gmail emails, always proviing I allow them to read and edit them all. XXX Alan B.

There're ways of limiting the methane produced by belching herbivores and vegans. Kangaroos produce none! CISRO have produced a food supplement that improves digestion, weight gain and at the same time, virtually eliminating methane production in cattle? Deer do far better than cattle on the same graze with far better food utilization/conversion, all while producing far less methane ! Alan B.

Yes, Alan, but I was referring to the methane produced by soil microbes rather than that produced by animals.

Perhaps so.
Meanwhile much/most of our farming practices are little more than strip-mining the soil of both minerals and more importantly the highly complex micro-flora that are essential for healthy soils, and by extension healthy food.

Meanwhile check out the book The Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy - a man who has been a farmer for several decades and who has done his research re how to build up soil fertility without the use of artificial chemicals, and the ecological and cultural contexts which (mis)-informs our current land-degradation practices - what he quite rightly calls the Mechanical Mind.

Based on his research he points out that world-wide many/most of the planets soils are severely degraded, even to the point of total exhaustion - with the consequent very real threat to the survival of humankind.

Viv Forbes clearly doesn't limit his nonsense to climate change. One of the biggest impacts on biodiversity in Australia is habitat loss and land-clearing is one of the major contributors.

More land can be cleared in Queensland for grazing, however, it is almost certain to lead to greater soil erosion, altered rainfall patterns, weed invasion and biodiversity loss.

There is plenty of nonsense spouted by the Greens in Australia, it would be a pity if Viv Forbes managed to tackle some of that. It would spoil his average of being wrong in everyone of his articles on OLO.

Yes Daffy, and good practise builds the soil and its nutrient load up and includes very short-term intensive cell grazing and dung beetles that help restore fertility . On the other hand, trees can suck it all out and fire can and does send millions of annual tons of scare mineral up into the atmosphere to finally come to rest in our oceans where they stimulate coral choking slime growth and subsequent biology more appropriate in sewerage works. Burning also bakes the soil causing it to become impervious to rainfall and allow flash flooding, erosion and reduced production/ soil fertility. Very short-term grazing reduces fuel load and breaks open the soil allowing maximum penetration by rainfall, also assisted by dung beetles. Alan B.

Speaking of Woody Weeds - and I mean the man not the substance;
Richard Di Natale wants to become the biggest dope dealer in town.
http://abc.net.au/news/2018-04-16/greens-call-for-cannabis-to-be-legalised/9664952?pfmredir=sm
Now that's putting the Green back in Greens...

Live out west do you Alan?

I liked the idea of dung beetles on my light sandy higher paddocks, particularly with horses which make poor use of their feed, & poo a lot. Unfortunately I live near the coast.

With in a week of distributing them, & watching fresh poo disappear in just a couple of days like magic, the damn Ibis had erected a McDonalds or similar sign, inviting all their mates to the feast at my place.

A couple of hundred were patrolling the place daily for a month or so. They disappeared a few days after the dung beetles.

Trying to help nature rejuvenate can be a thankless task. About 23 years ago Paulownia trees were all the go. The leaves were supposed to be good fodder, their deep roots recycled nutrients up to the surface, & their timber was useful.

My ex turf farm was very bare, so I planted a couple of hundred in double rows as windbreaks & shelter. Of course I planted at the start of a 2 year drought, which required much cost & effort to keep them irrigated & alive. When the drought broke, it did so with a very wet year as usual. Paulownia don't like wet feet, so they promptly died of root rot.

The silky oaks that replaced them look nice, but it is lots of legumes combined the couple of thousand bales of Lucerne, passed through horses that has added the needed humus to the soil that has done the trick. It produces great grass, now we don't have any stock to eat it.