Net Zero
The calamity that is net zero
Climate change is the longest-running show in Australian politics. But for one group in particular, they have seen this movie many times before.
They are the victims of the great environmental swindle of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, when the Howard government was desperate to give the appearance of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions without affecting our heavy industries.
It invented the Australia clause as a novel part of the international Protocol, whereby the bulk of our contribution to ‘saving the planet’ would come from restrictions on land clearing. If Australia kept enough trees that soaked up carbon, we wouldn’t have to do any real emissions reduction.
It was sneaky politics and clever economics. Except for one excruciating catch: it pushed the heaviest burden of Australia’s Kyoto compliance onto farmers in a relatively small part of the country – Central West and North Western NSW and regional Queensland. Their land was locked up, like wards of the state, with its financial viability sacrificed at the altar of climate change.
They were the first victims of this wretched policy and now, as Scott Morrison tells Glasgow of his commitment to net zero, we should remember them. These farmers can teach us about the true impact of selective climate sacrifice.
For starters, they never received any compensation for the way in which governments prevented them from clearing their land for agriculture. The New South Wales and Queensland state governments did the dirty work for the Commonwealth, thereby avoiding the ‘just terms’ compensation clause in the Australian Constitution.
There’s nothing new in the net zero debate. The nation’s first experiment with coercive climate laws commenced twenty-four years ago. State land-clearing laws have resulted in devastating economic and environmental impacts on the farmers, their communities and the land itself. Continue reading Latham’s Law
