Page 2755 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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spending announcement on climate in any number of ways, shapes or forms. Inevitably, programs that had little to do with climate were rebadged as climate spending, and climate spending that was promised, say, over four years was simply extended out over a decade or more.
I fear that we are heading down the same path here in the ACT. When the government announced their $100 million of climate spending—just in time for the election, mind you, when their polling was probably telling them that environment issues and the Greens were polling well—it was an interesting coincidence of timing. Sixty per cent of that funding has gone to tree planting programs that in the main would probably have occurred anyway.
The urban tree program, for example, was always going to need to happen for reasons other than climate change if we wanted to manage and preserve our urban environment. We are as yet unclear about how carbon neutral it will even be. The arboretum website does not even mention climate change, yet surely, judging by the funding, that is its raison d’etre.
It was reassuring to hear that there has been at least some assessment of the carbon sequestration capacity in the ACT. I look forward to seeing the report when the minister for climate change and water tables it in the Assembly.
This brings me to the very interesting part of the government’s response to the estimates committee. Ms Le Couteur has touched on this already, but there is an extraordinary paragraph here in the report. It says:
A carbon sequestration audit … estimates that the Arboretum will reach a maximum carbon stock of around 70,000 tonnes with 90 per cent of this amount sequestered within 200 years.
Fantastic! Within 200 years. If we look at 70,000 tonnes and if we take 90 per cent within 200 years, that brings us out at 63,000 tonnes, so already the numbers are a little less impressive. If the issue were not so serious, this would be quality comedy. It begs the question of whether anybody in government has actually read the climate science. Folks, we face a climate emergency, not a picnic.
That 63,000 tonnes is accumulated over 200 years. It is a bit rough-and-ready science, and it has probably had a few scientists spinning in their graves, but, if you take an average, that is 315 tonnes a year over 200 years. The ACT’s emissions in 2005 were 4,448,000 tonnes. That 315 tonnes each year is 0.00007 per cent of the ACT’s emissions.
Mrs Dunne: How many zeros?
MR RATTENBURY: That is four zeros—0.00007 per cent. Yet around one-sixth of the government’s $100 million climate change budget is being spent on this project.
Mrs Dunne: That is $700,000.
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