A recent claim that the forestry practiced by Forestry Tasmania, increases carbon, stored in the forest.
This is despite a recent report by the ANU showing that a forest that is subject to logging will be about 40% to 60% lower in stored carbon.
The claim totally ignores the emissions from the activities of the logging, transport, burn offs and processing of the timber. All of these have a huge impact on emissions.
The mills themselves are powered by electricity, which is mostly now imported from The Victorian coal power stations, which are the biggest emitters of CO2 of all.

Forestry Tasmania say that they are cutting nearly five million tons a year and there is probably another million or two added to this figure going by the amount they burn off of as “unsuitable” timber.

The claim is that there will be more trees than there are now.
The “more trees “ will only be part grown and there will be a smaller selection of species. It takes twenty years for a new tree to reach a size where they will hold a reasonable, amount of carbon and in that time another one hundred million tons will have been cut. So there will always be a net loss of carbon..

The “wet’ forest will have been dried out so the soil will have less moisture.
This will result in fiercer fires. A forest produces rain through the transpiration, with smaller trees and lower moisture content, rainfall will be reduced resulting in lower growth rates.

We are asked to believe that when the pulp mill is in operation that this will actually decrease emissions because the mills “light” footprint..
This is despite an increase in logging, increase in the transport of logs, increase in power demands for the mill.
They claim the mill will be supplied by renewable electricity. This will be supplied by burning more forest adding more CO2.
The mill will use enormous amount of water. There will be pollution of the air and sea. Forest burn offs are 40% of the carbon emissions in Tasmania

You are absolutely right. It is another mess that devolved from selfishness/uncontrolled capitalism a problem that MUST be solved!
But how? No elected govt has the nerve to fix it.

Two points to consider.

-what to do with all those unemployed workers?
Many lack skills or mentality (tradition)to do much else.

- How do you fund the government then? As it stands Gunns etc are a large slab of their income. People in other states would resent sending more money to them.

We need to come up with an entirely new less resource exploitive industry but what?

I am pretty sure that with looming Peak oil the Tourist industry is going to disappear so that’s out for retraining.
It will become essential to produce food in a local environment as transport and the lack of oil based fertilizers hit home. So this would be one source of employment and it will be very labour intensive because of the lack of oil.
The other “new” employment would be in the Alternative power industry. Wind, solar Thermal solar and a pet one of mine, Wave power.
This could be a source of a great number of jobs in the building and operation of seagoing wave powered generation.
Another is the refurbishment of existing railways and the installation of new ones.
Public transport will have to be greatly expanded to cope with the gradual disappearance of private cars.
I am sure that more jobs will appear in time.

Let Them Grow Hemp

Far more environmentally sound than logging and capable of producing a huge range of products from oil to clothing.

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/aboutus/news/recent-news/agriculture-news-releases/industrial-hemp