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The Forum > Article Comments > Forests - the essential climate fix > Comments

Forests - the essential climate fix : Comments

By Lucy Manne and Amelia Young, published 1/7/2009

Native forests must be preserved: they play a critical role in securing a safe climate future.

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The people of Victoria own Brown Mountain as it is Crown land. Unfortunately the Victorian Government doesn't recognise that it (and all other native forests) are sensitive ecosystems that store large amounts carbon. They treat these forests as "resources" - which end up as about 2% high quality wood products and 80% woodchips. The very high carbon emissions - scientifically proven - is not factored in to their logging regime and forest destruction.

This is good article.

I wonder when Enviroment Minister Gavin Jennings will release the DSE report about threatened species in Brown Mountain's forest - a proportion of which was logged late last year?

It is past time for native forest logging to stop
Posted by Peter Campbell, Wednesday, 1 July 2009 2:10:46 PM
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Wing Ah Ling
Says that the earth is cooling.

So why is the last ten years the hottest on record and last year was the eighth?
Do you know better than NASA at?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Posted by PeterA, Wednesday, 1 July 2009 2:24:21 PM
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Peter
It is a complete fiction that "the people" own state property. The state does. If you think you own a proportional share, try and take possession of your property and see what happens.

It is nothing but ignorance to think that the issues are the scientific ones of how much carbon is produced. Because even granted all that you say on that... so what? That is not the issue.

The issue is not whether native forests produce this or that, but whose values are to be preferred and how are we to decide?

The issue is not whether logging should be stopped, since it could be stopped either way - by buying them, as I suggest, or by imprisoning anyone who disagrees, as the greens advocate. The issue is whether you should be able to force other people to pay under compulsion, for values you are not willing to pay for voluntarily.

You have not given any reason why the stopping of native logging should not be by way of those in favour of stopping it, buying the relevant lands.

It is precisely the fact that the state, not the people, own the land that is causing the problem. Yet the greed of the greens, in wanting to force others to pay for their values, is what causes them to embrace big government, in the hope that it will confiscate from others, the funds they are too hypocritical to provide themselves.

When the result of government control is, yet again, planned chaos, they affect outrage based on phony moral superiority.

If you will only give up your fascist tendencies, and adopt the principle of respect for the values of others, and responsibility for your own, you can have what you want.

I for one will contribute to buy the forests in those circumstances.
Posted by Wing Ah Ling, Wednesday, 1 July 2009 2:30:15 PM
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This article illustrates the pathetic state of Australia's environmental movement and the niavety of its supporter base. Sadly, there is no other way to describe a movement that is so hung up on an ideological objective that it advocates a "solution" that is counterproductive to the very outcome it is striving for.

Misrepresenting Australian timber production (in which harvested forests are immediately regenerated), as being akin to permanent deforestation in developing countries, is simply deceitful.

Equally as deceitful is avoiding proportionality and perspective. My understanding is that the disputed Brown Mountain coupe is just 18 hectares, whereas the whole East Gippsland region has 225,000 ha of old growth forest - over 90% reserved - as well as a further 120,000 ha of reserved forest which is expected to become old growth in the next 50 years. Clearly, logging is an issue of very low environmental significance.

Killing off our own timber industry to satisfy perverted political activism will simply encourage more timber imports arising from tropical deforestation, as well as greater use of emissions-rich alternatives such as steel, concrete, and aluminium. Is that really the way to fix climate change?

Fortunately, the IPCC is able to distinguish the fundamental difference between sustainable forestry and land clearing. If Australia's forest activists believe they are doing the IPCC's bidding, they should think again:

"In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit." IPCC, 2007

The central premise of this article is that if we stop logging, all our forests will become 'old growth' and store carbon forever. This is an incredibly niave given what we know about fire. It was hoped that the 2009 bushfires would finally knock some sense into a movement that is denial about the role of fire as the ultimate arbiter of Australia's forests. We simply cannot "preserve" forests, they are not museum pieces.
Posted by MWPOYNTER, Wednesday, 1 July 2009 5:50:56 PM
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Wing Ah Ling,

Crown land is land that is owned by the Crown. This land is set aside for public purposes and may become freehold land by the issuing of a Crown Grant.

Given that governments are supposed to represent the people of the state it is clear that the majority of Victorians who want their forests protected are entitled to expect them to be.

But the government does deals with the logging industry, whose nonsense about being "sustainable" and "carbon neutral" are palpable and provable lies, as a reading of MWPOYNTER post reveals. By the way, he was (possibly still is) a paid PR person by the logging industry.

The issues at play here are multifaceted. There is government mis-management - and possible corruption - which is leading to the destruction of native forests.

There are political considerations - the CFMEU strongly influences Labor government policy in favour of native forest destruction, even though employment continues to fall in the sector, and very few are actually employed in it.

There are scientific considerations and impacts - climate change, threatened species, water loss. All proven by science yet ignored by Government, or given lip service.

There are business considerations - Japanese companies make a lot of money from woodchips from our forests.

It really isn't clear to me where your accusations about imprisonment, compulsion, phoney moral superiority, fascist tendencies are based on.

Since Crown land cannot be purchased, the logging should just be stopped, as Labor promised to do in 2006. This will be a topical issue at the 2010 election.

For more information and photos on Brown Mountain see http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Brown_Mountain_old_growth_forest
Posted by Peter Campbell, Thursday, 2 July 2009 12:23:29 AM
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There are a couple of issues to be considered when comparing logging V no-logging.

Firstly, I believe carbon is only released from timber (trees) when it is burned. Even the timber used to build houses stores carbon.

Secondly. I also believe it has been proven that a hectare of crops exhaubs more carbon than a hectare of forrest (due to growth rates). Bamboo (grass) exchaubs more carbon that trees.

Trees only exhaub carbon when they grow and, they do most of their growing from seedling to maturity. After this their growth rates slow like most other growing things, so to does the amount of carbon they exhaub.

The whole 'save the forrest' agrument to 'save the planet' is over stated.

Having said this I think 'old forrests' should be saved, but not for the benefit of the environment.
Posted by rehctub, Thursday, 2 July 2009 6:53:03 AM
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